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Pic. Bob King
Don’t you feel ridiculous wearing inverted geranium pots? No. Perhaps not the best way to start. But things aren’t too rosy for Devo at the moment. It’s 1 pm on an unseasonally cold day. At least the wind’s died down though storm clouds still threaten. Monday 15th February ‘Devo Live’, outdoors, at Memorial Drive. Earlier today one gust sent the stage canopy sailing. Frantic road crews bail out conveyer belts and saturated projectors. Enthusiasm is dampened, to say the least. Worse still, less than one third of the 10,000 available tickets have sold. A tribute to the promoters. Typical of what can happen to any international act who wear out their tolerance for press in the eastern states where most concerts could sell out on a rumour. Dear old Adelaide. Dear old Devo. Dear old cannon plugs that never fit into the Superscope when they’re supposed to. Dear old elbow that keeps leaning on the pause button. Oh dear! I’m reminded of THE PHONER coming through at 1.15. Devo have relented to the demands of the press (or the
chances of a sizeable walk-up tonight). Still wrestling with technology, I ask Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale if they’d enjoyed appearing on Countdown. They say yes, as much as we enjoy people smoking. Score 1-Tourists. On the show the boys had told Molly that they’d heard strange things about Adelaide. This stirred Molly’s sense of nationalism and he cleverly replied, “There’s nothing strange about Adelaide’’. There’s probably nothing too strange about Molly either. But it’s time to blow my cover. . . I ’m not really from 5MMM-FM at all, but from the secret society of young women we have here: Jerry: Yeah, we did want to know about that. Molly didn’t seem to know anything about it but you wouldn’t expect HIM to. What have you heard about the society? Jerry: We heard that they rented three or four houses and that they lived in groups. Kinda like random bands like that one Slits video. And that they stuck together. These are women who like each other. They don’t live for men. They are not competitive. They consider their sex superior and they use men for what they’re good for. In some of your songs and some of your filmclips you seem
to have what could be interpreted as a pretty derogatory attitude towards women. Like in. . . Mark: Now, now, now there. Women don’t get singled out in our films. Men get just as bad a treatment. Our case is with the human mind or lack of it on this planet. Do you think Devo is misinterpreted too often? For instance the way ‘Whip It’ was initiaily interpreted by some as a SM song? Jerry: Oh, year, you know we kind of expect it cause everything in this society is up side down. It’s hard to explain, but what is taken to be decent and upright entertainment is in our minds soft core filth and what is taken to be obscene is usually the good stuff. So it makes sense that the same people who like to watch Rod Stewart on the ground singing from between a woman’s spread legs something about GETTIN’ IT—and they love that!—would be the same people who watch ‘Whip It’ and go, ‘Oh Devo’s whipping a woman. Why, this is derogatory toward the woman.’ They’re also the same people who like to watch Olivia Newton John do the splits with a camera coming up through a glass floor and then watch ‘Love Without Anger’ and say, ‘How can they show a man and a woman as a
rooster and hen fighting?’ It’s amazing! Everything’s upside down. We’re commenting on the nature of society the same way Fellini did with Italian society. Out films are surrealistic dips that have a definite sense of humour and satire that would only escape Philistines and cretins and THAT’S EXACTLY WHERE WE’RE AT! You were quoted in New York as saying Devo is a musicai iaxative for a constipated society. . . Jerry: Oh . . . you read that! . . . Yeah! Jerry: Well, that’s right. Listen, I’ll own up to that quote. I did say that. Do you find continuaily explaining your concepts, your ideas, frustrating? Do you get sick of it? Jerry: Well it gets frustrating, I don’t get sick of it. But it does get frustrating when you’re not absolutely lucid about the best possible way to describe things, you know, you’re not always good at it. Year, it’s kind of DEmoralising. Weil, basically, DEvolution. . . Jerry: . . . yeah . . . What’s the shortest possible way to describe it? Jerry: Ah, ha (deep breath) Man is not the centre of the universe. He’s not the highest, most evolved being on the planet. He’s losing his capacities. That
JERKIN' BACK'NTORTH Jenny Eather gets 15 minutes of Adult Education from J e rry & M ark from DEVO.
he’s less in some ways smart now than he used to be and that he is basically degenerating. Mark: (with enthusiasm that almost knocks me off the chair) Right! It’s not being the centre of the universe but thinking that you are—that’s what gets most people into trouble! Some of that sounds pessimistic, but I’ve heard you describe yourseives as optim ists.. . Jerry: We’re neither. We’re realists! Weil being realists, how much faith in human nature do you have to change all that? Jerry: (long, long pause) The human being always responds at the last possible second for his own survival and we’re merely suggesting that we’re reaching a point in history where treating things in that way isn’t sufficient. So, therefore, in order to respond at the last possible moment now, you’ve got to go a little further, cause the last possible moment is going to occur sooner than most people think it is. And what about the human race. Where does that fit into the whole overall scheme of things? Jerry: The Black Hole!—it’s going to trickle right out the bottom . . . Well, no. It’s just that it seems safe to say that the future will look more like ‘Planet of the Apes’ than it will Sir Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’. Devo’s idea of communication. You’re interested in the dissemination of information. Jerry: That will be the thing that saves us most from the path we’re on. How do you feei about Wiiiiam S. Burroughs writing that ‘communication must become totai and conscious before we can stop it’ and that ‘modern man has iost the option of siience’? Jerry: That’s a Zen idea and William is even more Zen-like than he is aware of himself, I think. He also loves to play with other people’s ideas-ha ha—he loves to upset them, and that’s a nice upsetting thought. On a pragmatic level it’s more like Bucky Fuller’s idea to us. It’s like the planet is your vehicle, your spaceship and no one has the instructions. You should ROADRUNNEP
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