Devo on The Colbert Report

What a pleasant surprise to find Devo visiting Comedy Central's Colbert Report, promoting their new album "Something for Everybody". Watch the seminal new wavers them explain to Colbert how they've been "proven right" about De-evolution.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Devo
www.colbertnation.com

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Devo - Fresh
www.colbertnation.com

Devo singer Mark Mothersbaugh is looking remarkably slimmed down from how he was appearing just a few years ago, and I salute him. Imagine all the spuds that went uneaten to drop that weight.

I further appreciate that much like when I saw them in 2008 Devo may be older, but they sure are still creepy! Just check out that video running behind them as they play, a woman's crotch, her panties burst into tears, then there is a puppy, then there is a kitten, ow, ow, my head!

Good luck aging new wavers from Ohio. Thank you for continuing to freak me out.

The Buzzcocks at the Paradise, Boston

It was at some point during "Autonomy" that I realized the last time I saw The Buzzcocks was about 15 years ago at a venue in New York, where I saw the last of the shoegazers - Adorable - opening up for the punk legends.

That same night, I somehow ended up scoring an invite to an after party held in a very New York loft where one could mingle with both of the bands in question. I was with my friend Gretchen, who was hip, arty, and never lost her cool, but that was the night I saw her facade crack for the first and only time. Come to find out The Buzzcocks had played an important part in her young life and she was a gigantic fan. Merely sharing the same room with Pete Shelley was inducing a near nauseous state in her. Watching him from across the room we trembled as we carefully planned something "smart" to say to the seminal vocalist. 15 minutes later, we skittered over to him. "I love your pants" Gretchen said, indicating a smart looking pair of red plaid bondage numbers he was sporting. "Oh thank you!" he cheerfully replied. "My Mum bought them for me!" Knowing the conversation was not going to yield a better nugget than that, we nodded, giggled, and nervously and ran away, spending the rest of the summer recounting our 10 seconds with the legend.

Tonight there were no bondage pants, and Shelley is looking significantly older, more like your portly, balding, Uncle Alan whose main interests are comfy chairs, tea, and biscuits. The sound in the club is mostly terrible, but this can't repress the glee that arises from watching drummer Danny Farrant in action. A tumble of scrawny limbs pounding furiously he is the showpiece of the set. As promised the band's first two albums are played in order, but it's far more exciting when they get to the "all hits" encore.







Drummer Porn:

Prince - Now A Bible-Tapper

An atmospheric piece about Prince has hit the current New Yorker which is entirely worth reading if not just to read the description of him as "a small fifty-year-old man in yoga pants wearing platform flip-flops" and talking about how as a Jehovah's Witness he goes door to door spreading the good word. Years ago I remember seeing an MTV 'where are they now' special where Vanity of Vanity 6 talked about how she prayed for Prince's soul every day, well I guess that worked!

By the way, what with those religious stances, you can likely count Prince among the folks who voted against gay marriage in California. Way to kill a fanbase.

DEVO - Live, old, terrifying, and getting their potassium)

I don't know if you remember DEVO back in the day. I certainly recall as a youth watching their film, I believe titled "We're all DEVO" on MTV and finding it unnerving. Was it the messages about de-evoloution that were a bit too on the money or was it just my aversion to men in a rubber masks? Regardless, tonight, surely 20+ years after my first exposure to DEVO, I find them older, creakier, but just as unsettling as ever.

First, it's fair to note that the crowd is just as scary as the band. Wearing vintage power dome hats and yellow plastic suits, a guy even passes by my seat sporting a "Peek-A-Boo" tattoo on his arm featuring the two toned devils from the band's early 80's video. Man, these people are fierce!

After an uncomfortably lame set by The Tom Tom Club (who have added a hunky African-American model guy in an attempt to make us ignore the fact the rest of the band is just old, limp, and terrible) a video comes on that must have been shown before DEVO's New Traditionalists tour (how cool is that?), with General Boy (Mothersbaugh's father) telling us all the truth about de-evolution. Shortly thereafter, DEVO themselves appear on stage in their trademark yellow suits, kicking off the night with "That's Good".

How do I sum up the rest of the show, save to give you a laundry list of what happened? The band allowed their set to rest pretty much on work before 1983 and eventually stripped down from yellow suits to the vintage black shorts and kneepads look (forgot about that one). Nary a single was left unplayed, making the man sitting behind me screaming "Girrrrrl Uuuuu Waaaaaant!" so very, very happy. Singer Mark Mothersbaugh now has a pot belly but technically has not become less attractive than he was as an unattractive 20 year old. Best of all however was the encore in which Mothersbaugh donned the Booji Boy outfit and sang "Beautiful World" in Booji voice. At the end of this song, he unzipped the front of a long smock he was wearing and from inside produced handfuls of hi-bounce balls which he threw at the stage to the beat of "For You!" which then bounced away into the audience. Then, in the most distressing moment of the night, reached into his smock again and produced a good dozen or so bananas, which he one by one threw at the audience. Then he left the stage.

That would make number of concerts I've been assaulted by bananas thrown by a man over 50 wearing a rubber mask: exactly one.

Below - The band plays Uncontrollable Urge