I remember it as vividly as if it were yesterday. I was 9 years old, and my younger sister and I were watching TV at one of my dad’s friend’s house—which was memorable in itself, since my parents didn’t have a television, so this was automatically an occasion for celebration, to be filed away as an Important Childhood Memory regardless—when Devo came on, singing the "Devo Corporate Anthem." They were so incredibly different than anything we had ever seen before. I looked over at my dad, grinning to see what he, who Knew Everything About Music, thought of the band, and saw the most horror-stricken look on his face. It was as though he had seen the end of his world right there, a world peopled by musicians like Leonard Skynner and Neil Young and Pat Metheny and the Doobie Brothers, and Devo embodied the cataclysmic, simultaneous death of all those nice people and their ideals.
Twenty years later, I tell Devo co-founder (and prominent film score composer) Mark Mothersbaugh about that day, and he laughs. "You know," he says, "These days, I’ll bet your dad would be more than happy to have his daughters listen to Devo. There are a lot scarier bands out there today. We were really pretty innocent."
And really, on this DVD—which incidentally, is from the same year that I was first introduced to Devo myself--they look it. Even though the four-piece from Akron was in the mid-20’s when this was recorded, they all look like they’re about 18, down to the scrawny little arms and ill-fitting clothes, which look as though the purchaser expected the band to go through one last growing spurt before being truly grown-up. This show was recorded around the time that Devo first "made it" with "Whip It"—on tour for their album, "Freedom of Choice"--and right before they began to "go downhill" as a band.
