7. DevoAre We Not Men?
I only downloaded this album a couple of years ago. I’d completely forgotten about Devo. I think mainly because in the eighties I thought they’d got a bit silly, not that they weren’t silly in the first place, they got too silly. A bit too cartoony. It’s like the Americans finally got it when it became silly enough to get. I really loved the concept of de-evolution. I thought, "this is a very fascinating idea" that as medicine starts to allow us to live with things that previously would have killed us, are we actually diluting our gene pool? Are we now starting to de-evolve? It’s an interesting concept – I liked it! I also liked how with largely conventional instruments, they deconstructed how to play a song. Their version of ‘Satisfaction’ is fabulously deconstructed. I fucking hate The Rolling Stones but this… I just like anything that challenges the norm. I really liked the fact they challenged the idea of how you write a song. I was at their first gig in the UK – they played Eric’s in Liverpool – it was so rammed you could barely get in, and stood at the back. I could just about see their heads and the weird hats – couldn’t even see the boiler suits, because Eric’s stage was about 18 inches off the ground, so basically if you were six foot you banged your head on the ceiling.
