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DEVolution: DEVO talks groupies, the GOP, and the future of Booji Boy


DEVO.

“Everybody writes about the same things in their songs—sex and death—and we just present it with a different viewpoint.”

—Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO

Here’s yet another reminder to anyone still clinging to the disinformation that the 80s were a terrible decade for music: in 1980, DEVO unleashed their third record, Freedom of Choice which yielded the monster hit (and their only gold-certified single) “Whip It.” Along with the positive reception of the first single from the album “Girl U Want,” and the title track, “Freedom of Choice,” the album put DEVO and their energy dome hats on the mainstream map. DEVO would make numerous television appearances following the May release of Freedom of Choice and the video for “Whip It” was wildly popular, though it did generate some controversy due to its content. According to DEVO bassist Gerald Casale, the band lost a booking for what Casale recalls was on the Midnight Special in 1981 due to the video for “Whip It.” Apparently, host Lily Tomlin saw the video which, as you may recall, features a woman having her clothing “whipped” off by whip-wielding Mark Mothersbaugh. Tomlin allegedly told producers to “Get rid of those guys!” which they did. So, yeah, not everybody “got” DEVO or “Whip It” (Mark Mothersbaugh has gone on the record saying the song was a kind of “pep talk” for Jimmy Carter who was running for President against Ronald Reagan in 1980 as well as a knock at Reagan being an actor).

But this didn’t stop the band from trying to enlighten the public and their fans about what made them tick. This brings us to the point of this post—a fantastic interview with both Mark Mothersbaugh and drummer Alan Myers published in Record Review magazine in December of 1980.

The interview, conducted by long-running journalist and author Jeff Tamarkin, occurred prior to Carter’s defeat in the November 1980 presidential race, and both Mothersbaugh and Myers weighed in about their thoughts on politics—and many other things, including demystifying their songs. Here are some of the highlights from the four-page interview, which does not disappoint:

On the political climate in 1980:

Tamarkin: Is there political significance behind the title of (the album) Freedom of Choice?

Alan Myers: Yes, there is. The significance is that people are being asked to use their freedom of choice in the presidential election. But it’s really ludicrous. It’s like a non-choice.

Tamarkin: Will you be voting in November?

Mark Mothersbaugh: We might be voting for Ronald McDonald. We’re going to put on blindfolds and just walk in, waving our arms.

Tamarkin: Do you find that your concepts keep proving themselves?

Mark Mothersbaugh: Yeah, look at the Republican Convention.

Alan Myers: It’s really true, though. Every time we come to New York, it’s filthier than the last time we were here.

Tamarkin: On the subject of nuclear power, if you were asked to do a benefit like the MUSE (the Musicians United for Safe Energy formed in 1979) shows which were filmed for No Nukes, would you do it?

Mark Mothersbaugh: I would do a pro-everybody that has anything to do with the nuclear power plant, as far as corporate structure and the people that govern it, being made to live within one mile of the nuclear site benefit. If they can get all those smart missiles together and they can’t even make nuclear power plants…that’s the worst end of capitalistic values. It’s perverse.

On Groupies (yes, DEVO had groupies):

Tamarkin: Does DEVO have groupies?

Mark Mothersbaugh: I don’t think you can call them groupies. If you mean do we have fans…

Tamarkin: No, regular groupies.

Mark Mothersbaugh: The kind of girls that are interested in DEVO and that we are interested in, are not your typical girls who take drugs and get as much out of you as they can and trade it in for a suck.

On why nobody seems to understand “their potato”:

Alan Myers: A few people do, though.

Mark Mothersbaugh: We’re misunderstood, that’s true. But we’re holding on, and we keep restarting the case.

Alan Myers: We keep trying to say things in more common terms. We always thought we spoke in common terms, but people think…

Mark Mothersbaugh: that we’re too bizarre and oblique.

Alan Myers: In their private conversations and things, people are capable of applying irony and interpreting things. But once you become a mass object of investigation, then people don’t take things past the first level of comprehension. So we’re learning how to communicate exactly what we want to say.

 

A photo of the legendary Spud/Spudocaster guitar.
 

On the future of Booji Boy:

Mark Mothersbaugh: Probably future mutations.

Alan Myers: Marriage, family. Nine-to-five job.

Following the release of Freedom of Choice DEVO hit the road in a big way and embarked on a tour with 77 stops across the world—recording two shows which were released as a DVD in 2005, DEVO Live in 1980. The back cover of the double-disc includes a quote from Gerald Casale who accurately sums up the impact DEVO made 39 years ago:

“This lone artifact offers indisputable evidence that in 1980 Devo had reached a turning point. We were no longer just art monsters, we were mainstream performers too.”

 

Footage of DEVO broadcast on the French comedy television show ‘The Collaro Show’ (air date June 18th, 1980) performing “Girl U Want” somewhere on the streets of Paris while Mark Mothersbaugh licks an ice-cream cone.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Are We Not Men?’ The Devo Documentary
‘Devotees’: Beautiful mutants create insane DEVO tribute album, 1979
Attention all spuds: Devo in concert 1980
Booji Boy: When DEVO’s Mark Mothersbaugh was guest DJ on ‘The Doctor Demento Show,’ 1980
DEVO meet William Burroughs: ‘David Bowie would never make an audience shit their pants. We would.’

Posted by Cherrybomb
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05.06.2019
10:47 am
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Rudy Ray Moore, Mark Mothersbaugh, Timothy Leary, Steve Albini, David Yow in ‘Duelin’ Firemen’


David Yow and Steve Albini on the set of ‘Duelin’ Firemen’ (via Bogart9)

The video game Duelin’ Firemen would have blown minds if it had been released in 1995. Think the Jodorowsky Dune of games. Much of the cast is straight out of the pages of Mondo 2000 or Fiz: Rudy Ray Moore, Rev. Ivan Stang, Mark Mothersbaugh, Timothy Leary, David Yow, Steve Albini, the Boredoms, Terence McKenna, Buzz Osborne, and Tony Hawk all had parts to play.

But unlike other worthy computer games that were actually produced in order to suck away vital months of my adolescence, such as DEVO’s Adventures of the Smart Patrol and the Residents’ Bad Day at the Midway, Duelin’ Firemen never passed from becoming into being. All that remains is a seven-minute trailer and a seven-inch record with David Yow on one side and the Boredoms on the other, both embedded below. From 23 years ago, here’s Rev. Ivan Stang’s account of the shoot:

12.21.1994- Run-n-Gun! filming
by Reverend Ivan Stang

I’ve been in Chicago for the last week, and although I took the modem with me, I never had time to plug it in. I was being an actor in a CD-ROM interactive video game called DUELIN’ FIREMEN being produced for the 3D0 system by a group of SubGenius filmakers and computer animator/vr programmers called Runandgun. It’s a combination of multiple-choice filmed scenarios and v.r. game situations, all taking place in Chicago while the entire city burns to the ground. I have played two roles in it so far—first an evil Man-In-Black and second, Cagliostro the evil 1,000-year old Mason whose spells started the fire. What sets this game apart from anything else I’ve ever seen is the TOTAL MIND-RAPE HILLBILLY SPAZZ-OUT STYLE of it. It makes Sam Raimi look like D.W. Griffith by comparison… makes Tim Burton look like Ernie Bushmiller. It is sick, twisted, weird and ‘Frop-besoaked like nothing on earth. It stars Rudy Ray Moore aka DOLEMITE as the main fireman with cameos by Tim Leary, Mark Mothersbaugh, Terrence McKenna, David Yow of Jesus Lizard and all manner of local Chicago freaks and jokers. (YES! I spent the week WORKING with DOLEMITE. We DO BATTLE in a scene and you get to “PLAY” us in the game section. Now is that cool or what. Of course, you’re probably too SOPHISTICATED to even KNOW who Rudy Ray Moore IS!!! (None of the crew did, although the winos outside the set recognized his VOICE.)) The real stars are the animation, fx and sets. It’s like a LIVING-SURREAL CARTOON from the mind of a CRAZY MAN (in this case, director Grady Sein). The Runandgun crew are like this commune of crazed hillbilly technoids. I had the time of my life. The game won’t be finished till July ‘95, though.

Stang

 

 
The trailer’s quality reminds me of the way videos looked on the screen of my Macintosh Performa during the late Nineties, except that back then they were about the size of a matchbox. What I’m trying to say is: prepare your mind and body for ugly fat-pixel video…

Watch after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Oliver Hall
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12.22.2017
06:57 am
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‘My Home Town’: The unexpected union of DEVO and ‘The Andy Griffith Show’
05.12.2017
12:31 pm
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I was recently involved in a Facebook discussion of a stupid article that purported to rank “The 25 Worst Places to Live in America” or some suchlike crap. Conspicuously absent from the list were Gary, East St. Louis, and the entire deep south, but no fewer than SEVEN cities in Ohio took “honors.” As an Ohioan, I took a bit of umbrage—not TOO much since it was in the end just a clickbait article—but since a couple of those cities have experienced significant rebounds in recent years, the listicle seemed like it was based on outdated info, if it wasn’t all just an outright ass-pull. (A couple of the Ohio cities named really DO belong on such a list, I must say if I’m to be fair.)

On that thread, someone posted this WONDERFUL video of “The Akron-Canton Hometown Song,” a booster song recorded and vanity-pressed in 1962 at Cincinnati’s Rite Record Productions for Akron radio station WHLO 640AM. Credited to Terry Lee with backing vocals by the WHLO Hometowners, the one-sided record has no Discogs page, so it is now my mission to find a copy in the wild:
 

 
Is that not a delight? Between the word “Hometown” in the title and its goofy, totally guileless boosterism (“Akron, Canton, they’re sure okay!”) it made me wonder if it wasn’t an inspiration for “My Home Town”—not the droning Springsteen hit, but the song by DEVO’s Mark Mothersbaugh on the 1987 Ralph Records compilation Potatoes Volume 1. (There was never a Volume 2, though the 1989 CD reissue boasted an expanded track list.) It’s a parody of exactly the kind of optimistic civic pride expressed in the radio song, but with a cynical Rust Belt downer edge. The LP credits cite a 1976 composition date, going on to state that the song was re-recorded in 1986. I’ve been unable to find any evidence of an extant 1976 recording, but here’s the one that’s been around:
 

 
I love that song. I’ve had that album for almost as long as it’s been out, and I have belted that song out in the shower, changing the word “Akron” to “Cleveland,” which is my home town. The two cities are about 30 minutes away from one another, and their fortunes and declines have been pretty much parallel, so no other lyrical alterations are really necessary. Since Mothersbaugh is rather famously an Akronite, and he’d have been around 12 when that WHLO record came out, it didn’t seem unreasonable to wonder if he may have heard it on the radio? I mentioned my curiosity about that possible connection in the Facebook discussion and was rather swiftly corrected. THIS, I was advised, was a much more likely inspiration. Much, much, much, much, much more likely…
 
The mystery thickens, after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Ron Kretsch
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05.12.2017
12:31 pm
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Meet the Wipeouters: DEVO’s surf-rock alter egos created for a children’s show
04.26.2017
12:08 pm
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Mark Mothersbaugh has quite the musical repertoire outside of being the co-founder, keyboardist and lead singer of one of America’s most inventive and beloved new wave groups - the almighty DEVO. In 1989, Mothersbaugh founded the production company, Mutato Muzika, which has also served as the band’s headquarters since its inception. Glancing at the company portfolio, Mutato Muzika (“mutato” being portmanteau for “mutant potato”) has produced music for hundreds of commercials, movies and TV shows, with credits for Wes Anderson films, Nickelodeon’s Rugrats, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, The LEGO Movie, and the soundtrack for the computer game, Sims 2 and much more, too much to mention.

In addition to the above, Mutato Muzika has also spawned The Wipeouters, the surf-rock DEVO offshoot with a rather vague existence. In the late 90s, Mark Mothersbaugh was approached by Klasky Csupo, Inc. the animation company behind Rugrats, to create the theme for their new extreme-sports themed cartoon series, Rocket Power which followed a group of SoCal kids who surf, skateboard, snowboard, rollerblade, BMX bike, play street hockey, and any other adrenaline-fueled sport you can think of. While their airborne stunts may sound intense, the adolescent complications they faced seemed to be the most challenging: math homework, getting grounded, bullies, confronting one’s fears and insecurities, and so forth. Mothersbaugh assembled his team at Mutato Muzika to record the theme to Rocket Power, which premiered on Nickelodeon in August of 1999.

At this point on the Devolution timeline, the band was, for the most part, pretty inactive. After poor record sales for 1990’s Smooth Noodle Maps and the dissolution of Enigma Records, DEVO itself pretty much disbanded in 1991. Over the years came a few one-offs, including their “Head Like a Hole” cover, the soundtrack to their CD-ROM adventure game “Adventures of the Smart Patrol,” and a few reunion shows beginning at Sundance, then the Lollapalooza tour, and onward. DEVO’s absence in the 90s, allowed Mothersbaugh to cultivate the success of Mutato Muzika as a commercial music production company powerhouse,  establishing itself outside of the DEVO context.
 
Mutato Muzika located in West Hollywood, CA
Mutato Muzika’s lair located in West Hollywood, CA

And then came the Wipeouters. The mysterious group of surf revival Mutatos featured Mark Mothersbaugh (keyboards/vocals), Bob “1” Mothersbaugh (guitar), Bob “2” Casale (guitar), and Josh “not from DEVO” Mancell (drums). At the recommendation of Gabor Csupo, co-creator of the Rocket Power series, the Wipeouters released a full-length record called P’Twaaang!!! in 2001. Inspired by the works of the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, Dick Dale, the Trashmen, and the Ventures, P’Twaaang!!! features 48 minutes of hard-driving tubular guitar riffs, with wacky synths on top to give it that classic DEVOtional flair. Even if you had never listened to DEVO before, the music sounds much like the same band who brought us 1979’s cover of the spy-surf classic “Secret Agent Man.” In addition to the recognizable cast of spuds noted above, the record also features notable guest appearances from Jerry Casale), Jim Mothersbaugh, Robert Casale Sr. (father of the Casale brothers), and other members of the Mutato Muzika family.

More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Bennett Kogon
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04.26.2017
12:08 pm
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Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO to sell (and play) a one-of-a-kind 45 with two new songs in Los Angeles
03.14.2017
09:14 am
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DEVO mainstay Mark Mothersbaugh is taking part in an group exhibition dedicated to “Pure Joy” that starts at the end of the month. Curated by Kii Arens, the show is called “For Goodness Sake,” and it runs from March 25 to April 21 at La La Land Gallery, which is also run by Arens. Among those participating in the exhibition are Peter Blake and Shepard Fairey.

With his knack for faux-inane pop (and also for promotion), Mothersbaugh came up with an ingenious and well-nigh irresistible idea for his contribution to the show: two new songs on a single pressed by Mothersbaugh himself, to be sold during the opening reception on March 25. The song will be played for the group present at the reception, and after that it belongs to the owner—a one-of-a-kind Mothersbaugh single with which the owner can do whatever he or she wishes. There will be no other way to obtain a copy of the single.

Arens’ statement on the exhibition is as follows:
 

As this new “cuckoo pants” year begins, I would like to invite you to take a well needed mental vacation with this new joy-filled For Goodness Sake group art show. The idea is clear and simple. Each artist is being asked to create a brand new piece that elicits nothing but Pure Joy.

With all that’s been going on around the world lately, this will be a refreshing change of pace and a positive new look for the future.


 
La La Land Gallery has partnered with Oxfam America for this show to donate to Syrian Refugees Relief.

Dangerous Minds readers might remember an item we did a couple years back, about Musique Pour Supermarché (Music for Supermarkets), a full album by Jean Michel Jarre for which there also exists just a single copy. This happened in 1983. Similar to Mothersbaugh’s single, the idea for the project came out of its relation to an art exhibition.

Jarre auctioned the record off after documenting that he had destroyed the master tapes and plates. A bit like the Mothersbaugh idea, there was also just one public playing of Jarre’s album, although in that instance it was on the radio, and yes, a good many listeners did think to record it.

More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
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03.14.2017
09:14 am
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When DEVO met the Stranglers
10.28.2016
09:20 am
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The Stranglers took a short break in between Black and White and The Raven. While JJ Burnel worked on Euroman Cometh, Hugh Cornwell went to LA to record Nosferatu with Captain Beefheart’s drummer, Robert Williams. Cornwell writes that the album got its name from a series of late nights:

I was buying a lot of cocaine at the time and we were constantly leaving the studios at five in the morning and going to sleep as day was breaking. I think that had suggested the vampire connection to me, hence the album’s eventual title, Nosferatu.

There are famous guests all over Nosferatu: Ian Underwood of the Mothers plays synth on a few tracks, the Clash (credited as “various people”) sing backing vocals on “Puppets,” and Ian Dury turns up as “Duncan Poundcake” on “Wrong Way Round.” Cornwell and Williams co-wrote one song, “Rhythmic Itch,” with their brothersbaughs from other Mothersbaughs, DEVO’s Mark and Bob 1.

For the next two minutes, you’ll be listening to a song recorded in late ‘78 or early ‘79 by Mark Mothersbaugh (lead vocals and Prophet synthesizer), Bob Mothersbaugh (guitar and backing vocals), Hugh Cornwell (guitar), and Robert Williams (drums and bass marimba). Have fun in punk/new wave heaven, or hell, as the case may be.
 

Posted by Oliver Hall
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10.28.2016
09:20 am
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Wild Man Fischer and DEVO’s Mark Mothersbaugh interpret ‘The Way We Were’
11.06.2015
09:25 am
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I never cared much for “The Way We Were” as Barbra Streisand sings it, but if you’re going to put on Larry “Wild Man” Fischer’s version when I’m around, you’d better bring a whole box of tissues. There are going to be all kinds of bodily fluids happening.

As Fischer is il miglior fabbro, his is the superior version in every way. In just over one minute—less than a third of the original’s length—Fischer delivers three times the emotion of Streisand’s rendition. He chooses an arrangement that is simple and direct, not smeared over with goopy strings and petroleum jelly wah guitar. And with Babs singing, that opening line about “mem’ries” illuminating “the corners of my mind” never rang true. Wild Man Fischer, now there was a guy whose mind had corners: pointy, dark, unswept intersections where peeled scabs and fingernail clippings fought cobwebs for space. I can picture a Sub-Zero refrigerator, a Christmas painting by Thomas Kinkade and a Bosendorfer in Streisand’s head, maybe even a few alcoves—but corners? Don’t shit a shitter, lady.

According to WFMU, Fischer and Mark Mothersbaugh recorded this tearjerker for the last episode of Pee-wee’s Playhouse (“Playhouse for Sale,” aired in November 1990), but the show’s producers decided not to use it. The song belatedly came out on the 2001 promo CD Mutato Meatballs Smorgasbord, a collection of tracks recorded at Mothersbaugh’s Sunset Boulevard studio. That’s Mothersbaugh playing the keys, and it sounds to me like he’s singing harmony, too, though I have only the testimony of my half-ruined ears.

(If you need more Wild Man Fischer, the worthy documentary dErailRoaDed is now quite cheap on DVD.)
 

Posted by Oliver Hall
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11.06.2015
09:25 am
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DEVO’s Mark Mothersbaugh predicts the rise of matriarchy
06.22.2015
03:17 pm
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This interview with Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO has been bouncing around for a while but with inexact provenance information. Yesterday Televandelist uploaded a better copy and usefully marked it as coming from The Cutting Edge Happy Hour, an MTV show started by the I.R.S. record label in 1983. For most of its existence the host of the show was the Fleshtones’ lead singer, Peter Zaremba, whose flat Long Island accent can be heard at the start of the clip.

It’s safe to say that this clip dates from 1987—Televandelist labeled it as 1987-1988. First off, Wikipedia explains that The Cutting Edge Happy Hour went off the air in 1987. Furthermore, Mothersbaugh was being interviewed to promote an exhibition of his postcard paintings—the astute Dave Thompson mentions in his book Alternative Rock that Mothersbaugh had just such an exhibition of his postcards in Los Angeles in 1987, so that’s certainly what we’re looking at here. 
 

 
These are the same postcards featured in Mothersbaugh’s 2014 book Myopia, which we wrote about last November.
Towards the end of the interview Mothersbaugh offers his views on the future of society—not so strongly in the hyperbolic Mothersbaugh “character”—and they’re pretty darn interesting:
 

I’m anticipating a matriarch system, where women finally say, “We’ve had enough of this shit [bleeped] with men in control,” and they take over. I mean, they’re smarter, they’re prettier, they live longer, they’re healthier, they don’t need men to have children anymore, they don’t need us as beast of burdens anymore even, they got machines to take care of all that, and so I think men should be ready to assume their logical place on the planet, and that is as objects of pleasure for females.

 
Amazing! Mothersbaugh accurately anticipated much of this decade we are in—women are increasingly the breadwinners in many families, and the question of machines supplanting workers in general has already become a pressing issue for unions and politicians for the foreseeable future.
 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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06.22.2015
03:17 pm
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DEVO’s Mark Mothersbaugh talks of being legally blind & getting glasses, set to beautiful animation
03.05.2015
06:08 pm
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Midwesterners are quick to claim DEVO as native sons (as well we should—shout out to Akron, Ohio!), but this lovely little animation—a collab between Google Play and The California Sunday Magazine—illustrates their Hollywood migration in Mark Mothersbaugh’s own voice. But not before the prolific composer/artist/frontman/fashion designer (etc, etc, etc.) explains how he saw the world—fuzzy—until someone had the bright idea to test his vision when he was in the second grade.

I will say I feel like a complete dick after watching it. I had always subconsciously assumed Mark Mothersbaugh’s glasses were a bit of a nerd affectation/fashion choice (nothing wrong with fashion, and to be fair, they were certainly fashion for a couple of of DEVO fans I’ve met). Don’t get me wrong, I figured he needed specs, but I suspected the heavy frames of said specs were chosen more for their ostentatiously geeky aesthetic than mere functionality. Turns out there’s a lot of glass in those glasses, because he is legally blind and needs them to see damn near anything.

It also turns out that I am a cynical jerk. Sorry Mark!

Unsurprisingly, Mothersbaugh’s got his own line of eyewear. Is there anything this guy doesn’t dabble in???
 

Posted by Amber Frost
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03.05.2015
06:08 pm
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Myopia: New art book by Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO
11.03.2014
09:17 am
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Is there such a thing as a natural-born pop artist? I don’t really think there is, but the voluminous graphical art of Mark Mothersbaugh, well known to Dangerous Minds readers as the frontman and co-founder of DEVO, is enough to give me pause.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver on Thursday opened Myopia, a very large exhibition showcasing the art of Mark Mothersbaugh that runs through April. (If it rings a bell, it may be because we wrote about it last winter.) Adam Lerner, director of the museum and curator of the show, takes pains in the book accompanying the show published by Princeton Architectural Press, to emphasize Mothersbaugh’s almost preposterous productivity: “Mark Mothersbaugh is a fountain of creative energy. He creates postcard-size drawings and collages on a daily basis (more than 30,000 of them so far) and uses them as the basis for other works. ...”

It’s well known that the spark that led to DEVO’s formation was the tragic shooting at Kent State in May 1970, which Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale witnessed. Mothersbaugh puts it well in the book: “For a lot of reasons, the shootings gave me a focus.” To flip through Myopia is to wonder just what button that event pushed in Mothersbaugh’s brain—there seems to be no cessation of the combinations of icons and slogan-like textual elements that Mothersbaugh can’t put together in an arresting image. Lerner wants to emphasize that DEVO is merely one channel for Mothersbaugh’s creativity, with the works featured in Myopia representing some of the others, and that’s perfectly true. It may not be “fair” that DEVO overshadows the entirety of Mothersbaugh’s other output, but that’s the nature of showbiz. A less curmudgeonly way of thinking about it is that Mothersbaugh has found success in the opposed worlds of pop culture and high art in ways that reinforce each other.

It kind of goes without saying for anyone who knows his or her DEVO, but Mothersbaugh’s sloganeering impulse is strongly influenced by advertising. Picking almost at random from the images, you can find phrases in Mothersbaugh’s pictures such as “Don’t Bullshit God, Padre!” “Press My Tummy, Buttwipe!” “I’m Keeping Score, You Fiend!” “Soiled Linen Pantaloons, Yakety Pants,” and on and on. The exclamation points aren’t incidental—there’s a hectoring quality that maybe prevents Mothersbaugh’s images from penetrating the upper echelons of art, but he’s awfully adept and they function really well below that threshold. Hell, even the ones without words are almost as emphatic—the man understands his icons. As for originality, obviously Mothersbaugh owes a huge debt to the pop art movement of the 1950s and after: The Ben-Day dots, visible on the cover, are obviously a nod to Roy Lichtenstein and through him to pop art in general.

My guess is that 90% of DEVO’s fans have no idea just how startling and accomplished an artist Mark Mothersbaugh is. If you take DEVO’s output and convert it to a collection of paintings, it would look a lot like the pieces in Myopia—possibly just because of the sheer number of postcard-style paintings and doodles Mothersbaugh has produced, the graphical art ranges a little wider and more freely than DEVO’s catalog, for reasons that should be mostly obvious. Also, the pretense of the Devolution schtick isn’t quite as present—the levels of pessimistic irony are a little flatter in the paintings, so you can apprehend it a little easier. It’s still about showing you the ugliest side of our noisy culture somehow, but you can admire it purely as an aesthetic thing without the oxytocin hit of DEVO’s spastic 4/4 beat.
 

Riggs’ Class Record No. 101 (No D) (pages 18 and 19), 1971
 

Untitled, 1984
 

LuAnn, ca. 1984
 

Untitled, 1991
 

Untitled, 2001
 

HA, 2004
 

Kiss Me, 2004
 

Untitled (Censor), 2004
 

Are We Not Men?, 2004
 

Untitled, 2010
 
(Most of the images in this post can be clicked on for a larger version.)

Here’s the first section of a roughly 75-minute interview conducted at the Museum Of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles a month ago:
 

 
(All images from Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia edited by Adam Lerner, published by Princeton Architectural Press, 2014. The book goes on sale November 4 but you can pre-order it before then.)

Posted by Martin Schneider
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11.03.2014
09:17 am
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Post Post-Modern Man: DEVO’s Mark Mothersbaugh plans massive fine art retrospective
02.06.2014
12:24 pm
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Love Is For the Birds, Baby!
Mark Mothersbaugh, “Love Is For the Birds, Baby!”
 
Mark Mothersbaugh’s work in DEVO (not that he did it alone) has often seemed like an extension of pop art into the commercial realm. DEVO’s “exhibitons” were albums, their “retrospectives” were compilations, and for a while there, their “museum” was effectively MTV. Pop Art 2.0, let’s call it: every bit of cover art or promotional gimcrackery seemed like a new Roy Lichtenstein with a political edge, as befitted a bunch of arty freethinkers from the cultural wilderness (or is it?) of northern Ohio. DEVO famously had a concept, and they fleshed it out with all manner of bold, cartoonish (yet strangely disturbed) pop paraphernalia.

Thus it’s no surprise that Mothersbaugh, at least, has been spending his free time churning out all manner of “paintings, prints, photography, rugs, sculpture and odd inventions like an instrument that plays bird calls” including “30,000 informal, post-card sized drawings that Mothersbaugh, 63, produced during decades of obsessive, mostly private, art-making.”
 
Mothersbaugh
Mark Mothersbaugh, “1932 Matchmaking Stats, Pt. 1”
 
Mothersbaugh
Mark Mothersbaugh, “Robot Loses His Head”
 
It sounds like Adam Lerner, curator of the upcoming show “Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver has his work cut out for him. Fortunately the show will cover all three floors of the MCA. “A lot of these things, it will be the first time any human other than me ever looked at it,” Mothersbaugh said.

The dates for the exhibition are October 31, 2014 to February 15, 2015. If you happen not to live in the Mountain Time Zone, fear not: six prominent museums have already booked the show after its time in Denver.
 
DEVO, “Post Post-Modern Man”:

 
“WB Mobile Art Spew Gallery featuring Mark Mothersbaugh”:

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Devo performing live on TV in 1978: Secret teachings of the SubGenius
DEVO and Jermaine Jackson team up for Halloween with ‘Let Me Tickle Your Fancy’

Posted by Martin Schneider
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02.06.2014
12:24 pm
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John Lydon almost joined Devo in 1978? Well, I’ll be.
10.10.2013
11:25 am
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Mark Mothersbaugh by Brad Elterman.
 
It’s hard for me to imagine anyone but Mark Mothersbaugh doing the lead vocals for Devo, but did you know that for about ten minutes in 1978 there was a real possibility of John Lydon taking over the singing duties for Devo? (Actually, that’s not quite accurate—he was still known as Johnny Rotten then; there was no such thing as Public Image Ltd yet.)

The story comes from Mothersbaugh, who’s told it many times—if interviewers ask him about it, he’s just as happy to tell it all over again. I first encountered it in Marc Spitz and Brendan Mullen’s We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk:
 

Richard Branson called me up in Akron in the winter of 1978 and said, “Hey, you wanna come down to Jamaica?” And I looked out the window and said to myself, “Well, it’s snowing about thirty inches here. Sure, I’ll come down to Jamaica.” So he flew Bob Casale and I down there to meet him and Ken Berry. We were all just sitting around in the Kingston Holiday Inn and he brought out this big stash of pot and Branson is rolling these gigantic joints on a newspaper and we’re used to being in Akron where you get enough to make a paper-thin joint. We were talking to him about playing Mabuhay Gardens the night after the Sex Pistols’ last show at Winterland and how we were staying over at Search and Destroy magazine, we were using Search and Destroys for mattresses. And we talked about how the Sex Pistols came over to the office, Sid and Nancy, and we were hanging out. And Branson said, “What do you think of them?” And we said, “They were all nice guys. You know. It was fun meeting them. It’s too bad that they broke up.” And Branson said, “I’ll tell you why you’re here. Johnny Rotten is down here at the hotel. He’s in the next room, and there are reporters downstairs from the New Musical Express, Sounds, and Melody Maker. I’d like to go down to the beach right now, if you’re into this, because Johnny Rotten wants to join your band … and I want to announce to them that Johnny Rotten is the new lead singer for Devo.” And I’m going, “Oh my God, I’m really high right now.” Regrettably, I didn’t just go, “Yeah, sounds great. Send him to Akron. He can do it for a week or two, just for the hell of it.” It was a weird time for us.

 
The Mothersbaugh-Lydon connection doesn’t stop there, though. Apparently Mothersbaugh was instrumental in guiding Lydon in the eventual direction of PiL. In some versions of the story, Mothersbaugh goes on to explain that, since they were all high and all, he and Casale were laughing manaically, and in between bouts of laughter proposed to Branson that they help Lydon figure out his next combo instead: “We just started laughing at them until tears were coming out of our eyes and we were choking, and we’re like, ‘It’s not you, Richard. We’re not laughing at you. We love Johnny Rotten. That’s great. But what if we just help him start a band.’” 

There may be something to this. Many have noted the complete tonal switch that existed between the Sex Pistols and PiL, and the more austere critique/adoption of the corporate ethos does seem right out of Akron, as it were.
 
Public Image Ltd.
 
In Apocalypse Jukebox: The End of the World in American Popular Music, Edward Whitelock relates an anecdote from Jade Dellinger and David Giffels’ We Are Devo!: Are We Not Men?,
 

The story concerns a conversation between Mothersbaugh and Johnny Rotten, shortly after the breakup of the Sex Pistols. Mothersbaugh “suggested that Rotten lose the safety pins and shredded shirts and adopt a corporate approach, that screwing with convention was edgier than spitting at it. Perhaps in response, Rotten dropped his stage name and John Lydon formed Public Image Ltd., defining the post-punk aesthetic in the process.” Exactly how much “credit” Mothersbaugh should get for PiL is beside the point, which is that overorthodox thinking had already become second nature for Mothersbaugh and Casale.

 
To me the whole thing is fascinating—Lydon’s early interest in Devo, Branson’s insatiable drive to make something happen, Mothersbaugh’s half-conscious (and probably correct) rejection of the idea.

Would the world never have heard of Jah Wobble? Would Lydon really have participated in the soundtrack to Dr. Detroit?

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Devo: Something For Everybody!
DEVO light switch plate made of LEGO pieces

Posted by Martin Schneider
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10.10.2013
11:25 am
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