Recombo DNA

Kevin C. Smith

Description

Devo may have become synonymous with the crass commercialism of 80s new wave, but many of their guiding principles are firmly rooted in the idealism of the 60s. Taking a wilfully non-traditional approach to the surprisingly conservative world of rock music, they sought inspiration instead from Dada and Pop art to comic books and homemade electronics, in the process crossing paths with everything from late 60s psychedelia to punk, krautrock to new wave.

Recombo DNA is the first book to evaluate in the proper context the innovations and accomplishments of this truly groundbreaking band. Opening with the transformative effects of the May 4 1970 shootings at Kent State University—the aftershocks of which are felt throughout the book—author Kevin C. Smith traces the sounds and ideas that Devo absorbed and in turn brought to prominence as unlikely rock stars, dropping in along the way on studio sessions with Brian Eno, post-apocalyptic filmmaking with Neil Young, and a Jamaican odyssey with Richard Branson. For anyone who has ever wondered where ‘the band who fell to earth’ came from, here is the answer.

Sujets

• Styles
• Genres
• Rock
• Music

Informations

• Publié par: Jawbone Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908279408
• Langue: English

Extrait

Recombo DNA
The Story Of Devo, or How The 60s Became The 80s
Kevin C. Smith
A Jawbone Book
Published in the UK and the USA by
Jawbone Press
2a Union Court,
20–22 Union Road,
London SW4 6JP,
England
www.jawbonepress.com
Volume copyright © 2013 Outline Press Ltd. Text copyright © Kevin C. Smith. All rights reserved. No part of this book covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or copied in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews where the source should be made clear. For more information contact the publishers.

For Joey

CONTENTS
Introduction
Prologue: 1969
Part 1: Strange Pursuit, or Life In The Rubber City (1970–75)
Chapter 1: 1970–71
Chapter 2: 1972–73
Chapter 3: 1974
Chapter 4: 1975
Part 2: The Beginning Was The End (1976–78)
Chapter 5: 1976
Chapter 6: January–June 1977
Chapter 7: July–December 1977
Part 3: Wiggly World (1978–79)
Chapter 8: January–May 1978
Chapter 9: June–December 1978
Chapter 10: 1979
Epilogue: The 80s
Appendices
Illustrations
Bibliography
Discography
Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION
Devo are a band who created their own mythology. While all bands of the rock era engage in this practice to some degree, Devo did so more blatantly and obviously—and with a lot more fun—than most, and could be said to have elevated the entire exercise to an art form in and of itself. While most bands would consider anything other than their music as an afterthought, Devo, in fact, reversed this process. Music was the last of the components of their overall worldview to fall into place. With a band so engaged in every aspect of their presentation—from music to short films and videos to writing to merchandising to their physical appearance and even the alternate cast of characters who figure into this world as well—it is virtually impossible to chronicle a comprehensive biography. Instead, this book focuses on one aspect of Devo’s fascinating history. It explains how they went from being “free love, pot smoking hippie[s]” to a successful and slyly subversive multimedia entity who had not only renounced their former ideology but did everything in their power to dismantle it all within the span of a decade. In doing so they pointed the way for a host of others to follow in their footsteps—the overwhelming majority of whom were not aware of (or did not understand) the band’s initial impetus.
No matter how the press spun the story of rock music in the years immediately after their appearance, Devo have never been evaluated in their proper context, be it musical or social. This book is an attempt to trace the ideas, as well as the sounds, that Devo absorbed and in turn brought to prominence as unlikely rock stars in the late 70s and early 80s. Their idiosyncratic philosophy might not have always been consistent or even coherent (to those paying enough attention to notice) but it served as a deep well of inspiration across a variety of mediums, and a source of fascination for their more dedicated fans.
Devo’s innovations and accomplishments tend to be minimized in hindsight by the fact that they were so widely adopted as standard practice by most of the rock community within the space of a decade. Only by examining the band in relation to their peers can they be regarded as truly groundbreaking. They are also a sort of musical Zelig, crossing paths with a wide swath of musical genres from late 60s post-psychedelia, krautrock, punk rock, post-punk, and new wave without ever truly being a part of any of them.
While most rock biographies are content to simply document a band’s or musician’s history, few actually dig deeper to find their sources of inspiration and establish a continuity with other musicians’ work. In Devo’s case, however, many—if not most—of their influences were drawn from outside the realm of popular music. In an attempt to trace these inspirations we are led down a rabbit hole that takes in academic poetry, B-grade horror movies, performance art, obscure religious tracts, and political action. Though Devo meticulously crafted their image—consistently appearing in matching outfits and rarely being seen in ordinary street clothes, much like, in their own words, “a thinking man’s Kiss”—they were not averse to engaging in press interviews. The clues to the genesis of their ideas are scattered throughout these dialogues, which span the time of the band’s first releases in the late 70s to the present. This book, meanwhile, spans the years 1970 to 1979. Even though Devo did not perform regularly until the mid 70s, they managed to do a surprising amount of work in other media during the years prior to that. I believe all of this material—writing, visual art, performance art—is all of a piece with the band’s music, and should all be considered under the umbrella of Devo. Indeed, much of this material would later resurface in different configurations and in different media. And although many of those ideas would find fruition in the corporate, conservative 80s, their seeds were planted in the radical underground of the 60s.
PROLOGUE 1969
The Cuyahoga River is an 85-mile stretch of shallow water that, with its tributaries, crisscrosses Northeast Ohio from Akron to Cleveland. The native Iroquois tribes gave the river its name, which means ‘crooked river.’ Connecticut lawyer and former Revolutionary War soldier General Moses Cleaveland arrived in 1796 to survey the land and founded the city that would be named after him. Settlement in the newly established city was slow. In the year of its founding, Cleveland’s population numbered four; by the following year, it had only increased to fifteen. By 1800 it had dwindled to seven, on account of “the insalubrity of the locality.” 1 Cleaveland himself was not among those counted in the census, having returned to Connecticut within six months of landing the expedition in Ohio.
In the intervening years the Cuyahoga River would come to be called many things besides the crooked river. By the late 19th century, Cleveland was discharging its untreated wastewater directly into the river, prompting Mayor Rensselaer R. Herrick to describe it, in 1880, as “a sewer that runs through the heart of the city.” Despite his admonition, by 1897 Cleveland would still be pumping 50 million gallons of raw sewage into Lake Erie—into which the Cuyahoga feeds—every day. With the city’s manufacturing boom in the late 1800s, the river became not just a sewer but a toxic dump. Factories, including numerous steel mills, discarded their refuse into the river with little to no regulation, resulting in a dangerous mix of floating oil and debris. The river would first catch fire in 1868 and then again in 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1941, 1948, and 1952. The November 1952 fire burned for three days and caused $1.5 million of damage.
A Kent State University symposium convened in November 1968 found that “large quantities of black heavy oil floating in slicks, sometimes several inches thick are observed frequently. Debris and trash are commonly caught up in these slicks forming an unsightly floating mess. … Animal life does not exist. … The color changes from gray-brown to rusty brown as the river proceeds downstream. Transparency is less than 0.5 feet in this reach. This entire reach is grossly polluted.” 2 Some of the waste floating in the river was fat and grease from slaughterhouses and rendering plants conveniently situated along the river, as well as acids used in steel mills or dyes from paint plants and the raw or partially treated sewage from the Cleveland–Akron area. But this wasn’t all that wound up in the river. As someone involved in the river clean-up noted: “When spring floods would come, picnic benches, screen doors and automobile tires would come down and mix in with the industrial waste. … The industrial got blamed, but it was like the old Pogo comic strip said: we have met the enemy—and it is us.” 3
Seven months later, on June 22 1969, the river caught fire again. The 30-minute fire caused $50,000 in damage. It was not the worst the river had seen, but it did generate the most press, with Time magazine noting: “No Visible Life. Some river! Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than flows. ‘Anyone who falls into the Cuyahoga does not drown,’ Cleveland’s citizens joke grimly. ‘He decays.’ The Federal Water Pollution Control Administration dryly noted: ‘The lower Cuyahoga has no visible life, not even low forms such as leeches and sludge worms that usually thrive on wastes.’ It is also—literally—a fire hazard. A few weeks ago, the oil-slicked river burst into flames and burned with such intensity that two railroad bridges spanning it were nearly destroyed. ‘What a terrible reflection on our city,’ said Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes sadly.” 4
The event spurred an interest in environmentalism and helped prompt the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency in 1972, as well as the passage of the Clean Water Act that same year. (The ‘crying Indian,’ Iron Eyes Cody, would become a familiar face in ‘Keep America Beautiful’ Public Service Announcements on television.) Institutional change is notoriously slow, however, and as the beginnings of reform slowly wended their way through legislation, late night talk show hosts including Johnny Carson made Cleveland the butt of their jokes, with Northeast Ohio having developed a reputation as one of the most polluted parts of the country.
PART 1 STRANGE PURSUIT, or LIFE IN THE RUBBER CITY (1970–75)
CHAPTER 1 1970–71
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
William Butler Yeats
At the beginning of 1970, Jerry Cas