Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!

About

On the band’s landmark 1978 debut album, New Wave trailblazers Devo made some of the most captivating rock music around—and did so by inverting practically everything rock music stood for at the time. Hip-swinging grooves were replaced with nervy stiffne, flamboyant fashion was replaced by hazmat-suited anonymity, and screaming bouts of emotional self-expression were replaced by a guy literally singing a Burger King jingle (“Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce/Special orders don't upset us”). Fleetwood Mac told you to “Go Your Own Way,” while Devo implored you to “Shrivel-Up.” It was protest music, but done with a satirist’s pen and a Dadaist’s sense of pranksterism. And it would would have a seismic effect on alternative rock, music video, and, eventually, advertising. Devo started out in the early 1970s as an audio and visual project out of Akron, Ohio. The group eventually sought to make “outer-space caveman music” that mirrored their tweak on the theory of “de-evolution”—a semi-satirical outlook rooted in the idea that society was regressing instead of advancing. A fave of such tastemakers as David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Robert Fripp, and Neil Young, the band recorded its debut in Germany with sound sculptor Brian Eno, and were eventually signed to Warner Bro. .

via Apple Music

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