Sculpture Magazine

Promoters actually asked us to traverse the big water and visit. I guess rock critics couldn't kill us so we were invited back to the party after all these years.

We think you know the answer to this question before you ask it. Deevolution is real. We tried to warn everyone. Now the world is DEVO. If someone in 1980 had let you see the future in 2007 would you have believed it? Things are devolving at an exponential rate. Humans are a blight on the planet and they are subconsciously doing things to become extinct since no other species can help regulate us. In the case of Fundamentalists (all types, not just Muslim) they are CONSCIOUSLY going about ringing in Armeggedon.

That's easy. We are going to completely do what we did. No one else looks, sounds, or acts like DEVO on stage. We will subject a new generation to the experience. The fact that grown men will do this is very surreal and downright scary.

Booji Boy does not age, as you know. He is as old as the mountains but as yet unborn. His thoughts these days on the state of culture and politics are a little more Yoda-like since nothing is funny now that we are AT WAR according to our Jocko Homo president and his cadre of henchmen. General Boy is braving the ravages of time and prepared to launch that big campaign in the sky if need be.

We don't. We hear they exist but it's hard to find. A Jimi Hendrix for today's cultural context would not get banner space on I-tunes. We live in a Corporate Feudal State. Artists conform readily, standing in line high hopin' on the scrotum for a song licensing deal in the latest commercial. It's one of the only avenues left for getting revenue from creative music content. There is no music business as such and record companies are imploding. They don't even have the vision or the savvy in most cases to find, sign and promote new, exciting stuff. They wait for it to happen and then glom on if they can.

American Idol is a great case study in examples of devolution. This is what talent has been reduced to in the Vox Populi: Morons who sing standards and hit as many notes as they can. If this was how artists were selected in the past the history of rock and pop as we know it would not exist. Bob Dylan would have been booted off the show by Simon Cowl because "he couldn't sing".

We prevailed against all odds and actually injected substance and humor into pop culture using music that went beyond style. DEVO is iconic. It becomes a descriptive term, noun, verb, and adjective synonymous with outsider positions and hard to label originality.

Yes, we had made 5 short music based films before the advent of MTV. They needed our clips in the beginning because they had nothing for programming. That soon turned inside out and their play lists became tied to Top 40 radio. The "musicvideo" as it became known quickly devolved into low budget commercials presided over by a host of gatekeepers that had no business inserting themselves in the creative process. MTV was the snake that ate it's tail. And, yes U-tube killed MTV 2.

Yes, we see that and we are heartened by it. We like what we did and the special energy it had so it's easy to like it again. It's a sort of vindication that we did something right to hear it coming from new bands.

The idea was so ridiculous on the surface that we were intrigued by it. To re-purpose DEVO songs and videos for a 4 to 8 year old audience and be sent through the Disney Taliban meat-grinder was surreal and potentially subversive. They chose the songs and then were appalled later when they realized they had never paid attention to the lyrics. "Hey, you can't say “But not for me" in Beautiful World. Take it out or say "foe me too!". "You can't say "freedom from choice is what you want" in Freedom of Choice. What's wrong with you guys?" It was hilarious. Irony is always the first casualty of corporate media honchos.

Mark of course primarily composes film scores. He is finishing Mama's Boy now. He also creates limited edition fine art prints and ahs a traveling exhibition in the US and Europe. I continue to direct TV commercials and I'm attached to direct a feature film from a script by Steve Pink. It's called RB2000, a dark comedy based on a true story I optioned about some 20-something friends who obtain a jet pack like the one flown in Thunderball. They think it will make them rich but their dream devolves into betrayal, kidnapping and murder.

If it was up to me it certainly would. The world needs new DEVO missives now more than ever. Getting Mark on board is the elusive key.

I wish more people thought that way. We were never trendy in the first place if you think about it so our work didn't date itself the same way style-based bands from the '80s with their new wave hair and skinny ties did. Radio people believed we weren't really writing "songs". They thought our sound was too radical. Now of course music went our way and the beats, compositions, lyrics and sounds we introduced are mainstream. We were definitely pioneers who got scalped.