Really digging the DEVO album ‘Something for Everybody’ the first proper DEVO album (The Wipeouters and Jerry Jihad don’t really count, but are good too).
They’ve not lost their acerbic wit on songs such as Sumthin’, Fresh, What We Do, and Watch Us Work It – and of course they sound achingly current, because De-Evolution has been in progress for
nearly 40 years! Even tracks like ‘Running Out’ one of the best tracks on the soon to be released Scissor Sisters album sound completely like DEVO…
But all hasn’t been so rosy and red like the Energy Dome hats in DEVO’s past – read here an interview with Bob ‘Zero’ Lewis one of the founders of DEVO and managers who came up with the DEVO concept and manifesto – then had to sue them for credit and won a six-figure sum, but then had to keep quiet about his part in DEVO…the fact that such litigation and the Branson deal affected how DEVO was pushed is interesting, since really DEVO didn’t exist in the UK, they were a MTV/US band (the only Top 40 charting DEVO record ever was the first!).
Also something I knew about before but confirmed there is probably one of the strangest episodes in rock history – Branson dragging Johnny Rotten to Jamaica after the Sex Pistols split to meet members of DEVO suggesting JR become their front man. WTF?
I really think the tell-all book of DEVO hasn’t been told yet. Makes Kraftwerk seem like nuns, really.
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