Spud attack: Devo at the Warfield on Jan. 15. All photos by Peter Conheim.
By Peter Conheim
Devo valiantly tried to protect us from the ninnies and twits for a roughly a decade beginning in 1975. The buzz about this ferocious live beast from Akron, Ohio - the seeds of their rage sown at Kent State during the time of the National Guard shootings - eventually brought the band into the corporate maw of Warner Bros., through which they become superstars - for a while. A label fallout and the critical departure of drummer Alan Myers led to a hiatus, and then a reemergence on the smaller Enigma label with a new percussionist and pair of near-horrendous studio albums in the late 1980s.
Yet Devo never quite went away. The past decades have seen the group - which can only be loosely defined as a band, considering they no longer create new material - rearing its head only for corporately sponsored mini-tours or one-offs of an equally well-funded nature (patrons have included Vans sneakers, Acura, ZDNet, et al). Nonetheless, the majority of their performances in the past five years have been full-throttle affairs with the combo in fine form, tossing out hits and misses with nary a sampler in sight, the Brothers Four (two Mothersbaughs and two Casales) comfortably deep into middle age and completely ripping it up with abandon.
It came as little surprise, then, that these spuds would appear on Jan. 15 at the Warfield - for the first time since New Year's Eve, 1981 - as the evening's entertainment at "MacBlast," Macworld's biggest private party and the launch of Microsoft Office 2008.
Yes, a truly unholy alliance of ninnies and twits: dual technology titans and legendary rivals brought together to celebrate market dominance while sitting back and letting bygones be bygones with two free-drink tickets each. Good thing cheap plastic Devo Energy Domes had been passed around the audience - the better to protect skulls from the endless barrage of free (and sometimes heavy) peripherals, such as track balls and desktop speakers, which Microsoft employees were hurling from the stage before and after the performance.
What came as a surprise to this reviewer, however, was the blast of radio silence that greeted the band upon their appearance - the polite applause of 1,500 or so suits who no longer wear suits, and the almost complete absence of reaction to each tune. Corporate party or no, what was the matter with these people? This is Devo, for chrissakes. True, current drummer Josh Freese was away on another gig and the group's favorite monitor mixer was sitting in - making for some slow tempos and the most devolved, deconstructed "Jocko Homo" ever - and the mix was erratic. But these are still basically the same spuds, and they deserved their audience's attention. "Good Thing" led to "Peek a Boo," a fantastic "Secret Agent Man," and eventually "Whip It," and somewhere along the line the hardest-core fans in the audience became vaguely riled up. Still, the loudest sound remained the muted clinking of ice cubes in plastic cups.
"So, you un-PC spuds," deadpanned co-founder Gerald V. Casale, "there's something in the air, something even heavier than the new MacBook" - a reference to the foul odors emanating from the Bush White House, which met with little response. Quips such as this, coming from a band standing stiffly at attention in matching suits in front of a colossal "Macworld"-encrusted backdrop, were certainly unsettling. Was this the, uh, net result of de-evolution?
But at the end of the performance came a cosmic shift. Closing the encore, Booji Boy (generally pronounced "Boogie" Boy), a.k.a., Mark Mothersbaugh in a frightening rubber baby mask and oversized housecoat, squeaked out a heartfelt rendition of "(It's a) Beautiful World," perhaps Devo's most pungent and sarcastic song of satire. At the halfway point, the group quieted to a low throb as Booji intoned, "You know, when we first heard about computers, we thought about Big Brother - computers were bad. Computers meant Big Brother.
"But you know what? Nowadays, people actually like their computers. They love their computers. Can you believe that? People actually like them!"
The audience stirred with discomfort. "The world is coming to an end. It's not my idea, but it's coming to an end," continued Booji. "So what I want you all to do is to go home, or go to your hotels, since I know a lot of you are here for the convention, unplug your Internet connection - and throw your computers out the window! Throw them out the window! We can be an epicenter for change!"
Unsurprising, then, to have the Microsoft honchos leap to the microphone as soon as the curtain dropped for a raffle of door prizes with only the barest acknowledgment of Devo's just-concluded performance. We were again pummeled with heavy gee-gaws. Finally, proof that de-evolution is real: Devo, back to their primordial prankster roots, oozed up from the slime - yet also took the money and ran with it.
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