Joel Gion of Brian Jonestown Massacre posted these images on his Instagram. Coincidence or... something else?

Well, David Bowie did help Brian Eno produce Devo's "Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!" (1978). But apparently illustrator Joe Heiner based the cover art on a photo of golfer Juan "Chi-Chi" Rodríguez mixed with an image Mark Mothersbaugh had "procured from a local newspaper that morphed the faces of U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford."

Still, the resemblance here is striking.

More on the cover art at Wikipedia. Read the rest

In a recent Rolling Stone interview, DEVO's Mark Mothersbaugh talks about the second time he and the band met The Rolling Stones:

In the book, you had a great story about meeting Mick Jagger, and he listened to your “Satisfaction” and he said he loved it because his manager told him to say that. Did you ever run into him again?

Mothersbaugh: Oh, my God, yeah. About three years later, we were recording at the Power Station and they were remixing old songs downstairs. And this old guy with a big, fat sweater and gray hair came upstairs and said, “Would someone here play synthesizer on a song for my band?” And I look at him and it was Charlie Watts. So I went downstairs and there was more marijuana than I’d ever seen in my life. Everybody got super stoned. And there was a vocoder that we’d borrowed from Bob Moog to use on the album. I didn’t have a microphone with a quarter-inch jack for it, so I got Mick to put a set of headphones on sideway so one of the earpieces was over his mouth. He sang into it while I played notes on a keyboard into the vocoder.

Read the rest: Devo on How ‘Whip It’ Changed Their Lives, Meeting the Rolling Stones

Hey! DEVO's got a new two-in-one book, "Unmasked" and "The Brand." Read one, flip it over to read the other.

Previously: The real meaning behind DEVO's Energy Dome helmets Read the rest

They're not dog bowls or flower pots, though DEVO's iconic red plastic vacuum-formed helmets, their "Energy Domes," have been mistaken for such things.

On the fan-site DEVO-OBSESSO, DEVO's co-founder and bass player Gerald ("Jerry") Casale explains their original intent (outside links mine):

It was designed according to ancient ziggurat mound proportions used in votive worship. Like the mounds it collects energy and recirculates it. In this case the Dome collects the Orgone energy that escapes from the crown of the human head and pushes it back into the Medulla Oblongata for increased mental energy. It's very important that you use the foam insert (which is included with every Dome when purchased from ClubDevo.com), or better yet, get a plastic hardhat liner, adjust it to your head size and affix it with duct tape or Super Glue to the inside of the Dome. This allows the Dome to "float" just above the cranium and thus do its job. Unfortunately, sans foam insert or hardhat liner, the recirculation of energy WILL NOT occur.

Mark Mothersbaugh, the band's co-founder, lead singer and keyboardist, shared with Fecal Face in 2008:

We did the red energy dome, which was useful besides being an icon— it was a useful icon. You probably know this very well, but your orgone energy goes out the top of your head...and it dissipates out the top, but if you wear an energy dome it recycles that energy. It comes back down and showers back down on you and, among other things, you remain manly, shall we say, for maybe another 150 years of your life, probably.

Read the rest

DEVO headlined Burger Boogaloo this past weekend in Oakland. John Waters introduced them to the stage in an epic nearly four-minute-long speech that attacked Trump and celebrated the band:

...Originally from Ohio, why-oh-why-oh-Ohio, they started their careers like I did: pissed off. And they had a real reason to be nuts, their fellow friends were killed at Kent State University by the police. So they started a De-Evolution that we're still feeling. They challenged illegitimate authority, they said, and so should YOU. It's worse now than it ever was. Trump is a feckless prick. A shithole of a president. An orange anus, as Rosie McDonnell called him. Who kidnaps children. Tosses paper towels to hurricane victims. It's so dumb he stares at the eclipse with that stupid wife who's a clueless dresser who no drag queen would ever imitate. What better band to protest his stupidity and first-degree asshole-ism than our boys tonight from outer space. But our political situation is not science fiction, it's real. Before New Wave, ahead of Industrial, "alternative" way before the word was coined, this band was no media invention, it was a grassroots movement that everyone here has embraced. David Bowie loved them, Iggy loved them. I loved them. One of the bandmates even told me once that I was in a titty bar with them doing coke. I thought, "What was *I* doing in a titty bar?" I was under DEVO's spell, that's it. And tonight even more so, with my friend Freddy Armisen playing the drums.

Read the rest

Tickets just went on sale for Burger Boogaloo, Total Trash Productions' annual rockin' two-day music festival. This year's lineup is impressive with DEVO headlining on day one and The Damned on day two. John Waters serves as the fest's host for its fourth consecutive year.

The show takes place June 30 and July 1 at Oakland's Mosswood Park. Ticket prices range from $99 to $269.

If you go, be sure to check out Francis Lau on Saturday. He's a young musician from the 3 O’Clock Rock kids' music program.

Read the rest

The good people at Oakland's excellent Contact Records record shop are selling these delightful Devo "Energy Dome" adapters to play your New Wave 45s in style. Locally 3D-printed by Jeremy Solterbeck, they're just a few bucks each and big fun for vinyl geeks.

ENERGY DOME 45 ADAPTERS IN OUR SHOP NOW!!! #devo #whipit #contactrecords #vinyligclub #energydome #45adapters #goldenenergy

A video posted by Contact Record Shop (@contact_records) on Nov 16, 2016 at 1:19pm PST

Read the rest

Enjoy the psychotronic grandeur of the first DEVO short film, "In The Beginning Was The End: The Truth About De-Evolution," from 1976. Directed by Chuck Statler, the video took the first prize at the 1977 Ann Arbor Film Festival. Two key bits of background, via Wikipedia:

• Devo has claimed, occasionally, that the film contains subliminal messages, which allowed it to win at Ann Arbor.

• The ping-pong paddles shown in the Secret Agent Man segment have images of Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao Zedong on them.

Read the rest

Mark Mothersbaugh, best known as frontman of pioneering new wave band DEVO, opens up to Museum of Contemporary Art Denver director Adam Lerner about his work as a visual artist.

I've featured Remo Camerota's work and books on Boing Boing many times. He's a talented artist and designer with a love for robot art. His latest project is an iOS application that lets you design DEVO-inspired robot art and play music using unreleased DEVO sounds. They are seeking $15,000 on Kickstarter.

DEVOBOTS Read the rest

Official DEVO Documentary: 5-minute Preview from DEVOfilm on Vimeo.

I get many requests every day from people asking me to post about their Kickstarter project. I'm sometimes tempted to filter all email with "kickstarter" in it. But then I get something like Jeff Winner's Kickstarter for a Devo documentary and I realize that I can't do that. This documentary (which has reached its funding goal) about one of my favorite bands looks amazing. Read the rest