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.

Unregistered Weapons and Road Rage in Jakarta

Friday morning in South Jakarta saw a confrontation between a motorist and a motor cyclist climax with the motorist brandishing a handgun. The car driver, Fadhil Satria, brandished an FN revolver with 12 bullets. The gun has been registered previously but has been unregistered since 11 September 2007.

Generally, gun owners have six months after a gun license expires to renew the license. If a license is not renewed then it is an obligation on the gun owners to hand in their weapons to police.

By all accounts the alleged bumper bash did not actually happen according to the Head of the South Jakarta Traffic division, Commander Pamudji, said there was no evidence that the vehicle and the motor cycle came to blows.

It is being reported that in May this year there were 7,798 guns registered but some 3,446 of these were with licenses that had expired. This is a case of laziness and arrogance in the extreme as the process for renewing a license is nothing more than filling in a form at the police station.

The National Police figures show that between January and March this year there were 479 crimes involving guns. This is an increase of almost 25% from the same period last year.

The increase in gun crime is alarming and the fact that road rage incidents are now including guns is also a scary development.

Road rage at any time has the potential to be dramatic and fatal but when guns are added into this mix then the potential for fatalities increases dramatically. Hopefully, these road rage incidents will not develop into other road related violence like car jackings.