Devo’s Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! in 4 Minutes

(projector rolling)

(Jocko Homo by Devo)

♫ Are we not men, we are Devo

♫ Are we not men, we are Devo

♫ Are we not men, we are Devo

[Narrator] It was nervous, robotic, nearly alien music.

It must've come from overprogrammed machines

or overstimulated humans.

It was the sound of de-evolution,

manufactured by a nerdy uniform clad group called Devo.

When their debut album Are We Not Men? We Are Devo!

came out on August 28th, 1978 the Akron, Ohio band

had already been honing their act for years.

The group was formed by art students

at Kent State University in the wake

of the 1970 student shootings known

as the May 4th Massacre which targeted an anti-war protest

that included Devo's Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh.

Intended as a Dadaistic response to the turmoil

and disappointments of the 60s,

Devo took their name from their own philosophy

of de-evolution which predicted the regression of mankind

due to technology and authoritarianism.

♫ Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce

♫ Special orders don't upset us

♫ All we ask is that you let us serve it your way

♫ There's too much paranoias

Though many inventive bands, including Pere Ubu,

the Electric Eels, and the Styrenes

were bubbling up down the road in Cleveland.

In Akron Devo created a hermetic world unto itself.

They declared that individuality was dead

and often dressed in matching yellow jumpsuits on stage,

projecting the image of an absurd army.

Their spastic, stripped down rejection

of bloated rock and roll imagined what a band

of devolved humans would sound like.

As Casale put it, We wanted to make

outer space caveman music.

♫ Space junk, she was smashed by

♫ Space junk, she was killed by

♫ Space junk in New York

Devo had self-released two singles

including a stiffened version of

the Rolling Stones' classic (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction,

which writer Clinton Heylin called a mechanical jerk off.

When in 1977 a friend passed their music

to Iggy Pop and David Bowie who were both smitten.

Later that year at a show in New York,

Bowie introduced Devo as the band of the future.

♫ I can't get no

♫ Satisfaction

♫ I can't get me no

♫ Satisfaction

♫ And I try and I try and I try, try, try, try , try

Soon after, word of Devo traveled to Brian Eno

whose band Roxy Music was a big influence on the group.

In early 1978 Devo flew to Germany to record

Are We Not Men? We Are Devo! with Eno

in the studio of legendary producer Conny Plank.

Eno created his own sounds to add to every song,

but Devo only used a few of them,

confident in their sharply defined vision

of how de-evolutionary music should sound.

With a title adapted from a chant in the film version

of H.G. Wells dystopian novel The Island of Doctor Moreau,

Are We Not Men? We Are Devo presents Devo

as a hybrid of man and machine.

It's filled with rigid rhythms but also flooded

with barely contained energy.

Opener Uncontrollable Urge is a quivering

cycle of tension and release,

as sped up guitar chords unleash waves of hyperactivity.

♫ Got an uncontrollable urge

♫ that make me scream and shout it

♫ That's right

During the circus-like Jocko Homo band members

shout the album title back and forth eerily

as if brainwashing themselves.

On Gut Feeling/(Slap Your Mammy)

they combine lock step beats and frantic crescendos

into a rush of sonic chaos.

♫ I've got a gut feeling, feeling

♫ I've got a gut feeling

♫ I've got a gut feeling, feeling

Devo would soon streamline their sound,

morphing it into music so accessible that they landed

in the Top 40 with the ultra catchy Whip It.

(Whip It by Devo)

But Are We Not Men? We Are Devo remains the definitive

statement of their pioneering sound and philosophy.

If nothing else since sounds like it,

perhaps that's because only the men

who invented de-evolution knew how to turn it into music.

♫ We must repeat

♫ D-E-V-O

♫ We must repeat

♫ D-E-V-O

♫ We must repeat

♫ D-E-V-O

♫ We must repeat

♫ Okay, let's go