Devo -- Whip it!

Devo are back and playing in the Horden Pavillion in Sydney on 1 August.

I am not going to say that Devo was one of my favourite bands at the time. But I do have to say that I remember 'Whip It" and still remember some of the lyrics. Is being able to remember the lyrics after some 20 years a sign of a good song or the bizarre workings of my mind?

I am sure that I probably new more about Devo at the time. I remember being at boarding school in Glenfield (this will tell you the school if you're interested) and weekend mornings were normally watching Rage (which I still watch albeit for a much shorter time on the Australia Network here in Jakarta) and grooving to the beats.

One of the founders of Devo, Mark Mothersbaugh, who I might add is legally blind and who is perhaps one of the original coke glasses boys (those thicker than the bottom of a coke bottle glasses that some school kids had to wear), has put together a group called Devo 2.0. The band is a group of kids that cover Devo songs. How cool is that?

Devo sort of disappeared although Mothersbaugh continued to work in advertising putting together jingles for some big brands. Now, this is something I did not know about Mothersbaugh and it shows a bloke with either a really wicked sense of humour or someone who is just plain scary. During this advertising career he was forever inserting subliminal messages into the advertisements he was making. I am guessing without the knowledge of the client.

One instance was putting a subliminal message into an advertisement about candy that said, "sugar is bad for you". Other subliminal messages included phrases like "question authority" and "toil is stupid".

According to Mothersbaugh the reason for the Devo reunion is, "I live in a country that should be ashamed of itself. I'm really angry at our current president. Humans are a toxic presence and we've overrun the planet. I think at our best, Devo's message was anti-stupidity, pro-ideas and pro-information." This, I am lead to believe, makes the Devo message as current today as it was way back when.

Then again, maybe the idea of seeing other bands from the 70's and 80's still being on tour or re-forming for a reunion tour and pulling in the crowds might have been a consideration as well.