Gig Review: Devo at the ICC, Sydney

Live review: DEVO, International Convention Centre, Sydney, Sunday, November 26 2023

By CORIN SHEARSTON

FOR a 50-year old group who have based their eccentric career around spreading the word of social de-evolution, DEVO have gone through much evolution themselves.

The band’s primordial stirrings occurred in the garages and basements of Akron, Ohio around 1973, seven years before they reached their commercial peak with their third album’s hit single “Whip It” in 1980.

The first seven years of DEVO are some of their most fascinating. This is when they first formed their belief of the gradual regression of humanity’s intellect and free will over time – i.e. ‘de-evolution’ – due to advances in consumer-based technology and the rapid corporatisation of the music industry, amidst the stifling status quo of suburban seventies America.

The horror of the massacre in 1970 at Ohio’s Kent State University, where DEVO’s lead singer-keyboardist-guitarist Mark Mothersbaugh was enrolled, further spurred the group’s young Mothersbaugh and Casale brothers into action, before finding human drum machine, Alan Myers, in 1976. In the midst of the Vietnam War, this collective cultural atmosphere went on to fuel DEVO’s deep vein of caustic critique and satirical wit, while they began to incorporate more music into their radically subversive art project, which grew through film, audio, costumes, choreography, masks and graphics.

Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale remain as three of DEVO’s original members, with Bob and Casale handling guitar-vocal and bass-synth-vocal duties, respectively.

Fast-forward eight albums and 45 years and DEVO have now permanently imprinted themselves upon contemporary pop culture by touring the world and selling well over a million albums. Since 1978, DEVO have also kept redefining the boundaries of American music videos and album cover designs with their bold creative output.

Despite the ongoing respect they receive for being a truly groundbreaking cultural phenomenon – oft categorised as new wave or art rock/punk – the group are still best known for the catchiness of “Whip It” (incorrectly perceived as being about BDSM). Some also know them for their flower pot-like red ‘energy dome’ hats, which are actually supposed to resemble ancient Ziggurat pyramids, with man at the bottom. Therefore, it’s no secret that DEVO have often been derided as a novelty act. Many years ago, the late Leonard Cohen remarked: “it’s nice to see an act whose audience can’t relate to them”.

Now that it’s time for DEVO to hang up their hats after their Farewell Tour. A sense of showbiz-distancing was evident during their fun-filled show in Sydney but a two-way transmission of joy between audience-and-performer was much more noticeable. While much of their audience were, naturally, geeky spectacled caucasians in their middle years, attendees of all ages were present. Even The Wiggles’ Murray Cook was spotted to be in attendance, as a fellow witness of DEVO’s first return to Australia in almost 10 years inside the cavernous bowels of The International Convention Centre.

Taking to the stage around 8pm, after a vintage introductory clip and a new message, both from Big Entertainment’s Rod Rooter (their fictitious former manager), DEVO took to the stage in branded black suits to perform “Don’t Shoot (I’m A Man)”. This was the only song on the setlist recorded after 1982, released on 2010’s Something For Everybody – their most recent studio album after a gap of 20 years.

After enjoying the only ‘modern’ DEVO song, albeit 13 years old, we were thrown back to one of the group’s most synth-heavy eras with “Peek-a-Boo!”, a single from 1982’s Oh, No! It’s DEVO, complete with on-screen projections displaying shots from the original music video. These digitally-animated projections occurred for around half of the concert’s 1.5 hour runtime, displaying DEVO’s multimedia-based ethos to the eighth degree. After a funky “Going Under”, from the underrated New Traditionalists album of 1981, half the crowd instantly rose to its feet to dance upon hearing Bob’s jerky, recognisable intro riff of “Girl U Want”, the opening track from Freedom Of Choice.

Through constituting 30 percent of the group’s setlist, it’s clear that Freedom Of Choice is arguably DEVO’s most popular album. Alluding to the meaning of the title, Gerald Casale stated, “Freedom of choice, use it or lose it”. As the only member of DEVO to speak to us, Casale also remarked, “Maybe Australia is less de-evolved than America”. The group then launched into “Whip It”, with its fast disco hi-hat groove provided by Jeff Friedl (A Perfect Circle, Eagles Of Death Metal). Friedl kept the group tightly in sync alongside their newest guitarist, Josh Hager, who had his robot moves down pat. There were still some trademark wobbly moments during their zany cover of “Satisfaction”, (complete with the fuzzy robotic twang of a guitar-based invention from M. Mothersbaugh) and the transition in the middle of ‘Gut Feeling/(Slap Your Mammy)’, two tracks present on their debut album from 1978, released after DEVO’s seminal ‘hardcore’ years of 1974-1976.

Bob got his moment in the spotlight when soloing on “Smart Patrol/Mr DNA”, another two-part track from the late seventies, complete with Mark’s lyrics about shoving poles in holes and being “just a spudboy, looking for a real tomato”. While some notes were noticeably fudged, Bob balanced his cool, near-mechanical stage presence with passionate guitar work, garnering subtle looks of brotherly admiration from Mark. Bob also sang lead vocals on their cover of “Secret Agent Man”, after Casale sang on “Planet Earth”. Mark, in turn, contorted his bespectacled, grey-haired face into wild looks of glee at times, similar to that of a mad scientist, when joyously attacking a cluster of vintage synthesisers that he went to work on with Hager. Casale backed the pair on another, smaller set of keys. DEVO’s tight choreography reached a highpoint during “Uncontrollable Urge”, which required the four non-seated members of DEVO to jump rhythmically together in a colourful clump at the front of the stage. Interestingly, the five members’ instruments were set up in a parallel line across the stage, with Friedl’s kit being at the far-left as opposed to at the back. With the near 360-degree in-wall speaker array embedded into the giant curvatures of the venue, instrument placement didn’t have any noticeable effect on the band’s overall sound, and we were treated to a fully immersive audiovisual night out.

After the bulk of the set, mainly consisting of music from DEVO’s high-flying 1978-1980 period, a treat for longtime fans was offered when their most notable fictitious character, Booji [‘boogie’] Boy, son of General Boy, was eventually cheered onto the stage after a false introduction and rapturous applause, to lend his high-falsetto vocals to the entirety of “Beautiful World” – a track from New Traditionalists, with a dark lyrical twist. Shortly beforehand, old DEVO cuts like their debut single, “Mongoloid” and “Jocko Homo” drew many cheers, before some of us rose in a salute for the pre-recorded ‘DEVO Corporate Anthem’.

After describing how our beautiful world is for us, but not for DEVO, a motivational moment occurred when Booji started pointing out at us to tell us how we were special individuals. Booji then reached into a bulging oversized bumbag to throw a multitude of brightly coloured bouncing balls into the audience, to the surprise of the venue’s staff. Earlier in the show, a few red energy domes were thrown to us during one of DEVO’s four costume changes, before Mark ripped off some flimsy sleeves and legs from his bandmates yellow jump-suits to reveal their high socks, kneepads, shorts and black DEVO t-shirts look. These tattered garments also came sailing down into the hands of certain lucky fans, while others went crazy in their clamouring for the pieces. One extraordinary woman even ran the length of the front of the stage in an attempt to snatch a tattered yellow piece from the hands of one man, before the scuffle was broken up by security. Alluding to his seventies punk credentials, which were honed at cramped, sweaty clubs in the US, Mark even left the short stage to walk up and among the crowd, in the old stunt of offering his microphone to the nearest punters for participative lyrical completion.

Before waving us goodbye from inside his striped Booji Boy pyjamas and oversized rubber mask, Mark happened to trip and fall over one of the fold-back speakers at the front of the stage, before Casale attempted to salvage his embarrassment by proclaiming that “he meant to do that”. Fortunately, his fall didn’t look overly painful, which is a good thing for a world-touring performing dynamo who happens to be 73. As American astronomer Carl Sagan told us, in the second of three video bits in the show, Earth may occupy one trillionth of a billionth of a grain of cosmic sand, but we’re lucky enough to be happening to share this world of ours with DEVO. On a warm spring night in Sydney, to be precise.

I doubt we’ll ever get to see them again.