Dead End Drive-In: Now Showing – Devo
Written by Gaz E
Sunday, 08 June 2014 04:00
Devo – ‘The Complete Truth About De-Evolution’ (MVDvisual/Wienerworld)
After losing two members in the past year – Alan Myers in June of last year, Bob Casale in February of this – Devo probably couldn’t have chosen a finer time to have a career retrospective DVD released. And ‘The Complete Truth About De-Evolution’ is an essential purchase for anyone who has ever shown even a passing interest in this iconic collective, an eye-opener to others who might have let this “post-modernist protest band” pass them by.
As explained on the great commentary track that features band members Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald V. Casale “Devo was a concept, a video reality before it was a working band.” This new DVD, extensive in content and impressive in almost all areas, picks away at the band’s archive and resurrects footage either never-before-seen or seemingly long-lost.
No fewer than twenty music videos make up the main feature here, the new wave audio-visual concept band breaking rules and pushing boundaries with each and every one: from the twisted Americana of ‘Come Back Jonee’, the recycled animation of ‘The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprise’, the skewed take on ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, to the Barbie and Ken and worms interface that is ‘Love Without Anger’.
Those videos, pre-dating popular music television and presented in a quality that will drag your pop culture memory banks back at least a few decades, offer proof of Devo’s genius and definite ahead-of-its-time status.
The seventy minute running time that features the twenty videos – nineteen different songs and one remix, of ‘Post-Post Modern Man’ – would provide some sort of value for money if they were the only things forever stained onto this digital versatile disc: however, they are not.
No, the video score is complimented by the inclusion of comprehensive extras that push this DVD into the ‘must-have’ basket.
The aforementioned commentary track is so good and informative that watching the twenty videos in their entirety all over again as soon as they end is a given. But things don’t cease there: there’s an interview with director Chuck Statler, a short film (‘Mongoloid’) by Bruce Connor, and performance footage that includes clips from Sundance in 1996 and incredible black and white film of the band’s very first live show.
The best two extras, for me at least, are footage of the band performing as warm-up act Dove (The Band of Love) – Dove being “a dada response to the Reagan era” – and an advertisement for Pioneer laserdisc players, a ‘new’ format that the members, you’d feel, fully endorsed. It’s dated, archaic almost, yet utterly wonderful in its campy, kitsch manner.
We are Devo. D-E-V-O. And this DVD is G-R-E-A-T.
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To pick up your copy of ‘Devo: The Complete Truth About De-Evolution on DVD’ – CLICK HERE
