99% Invisible - 328- Devolutionary Design

Episode Date: November 7, 2018

It’s hard to overstate just how important record album art was to music in the days before people downloaded everything. Visuals were a key part of one's experience with a record or tape or CD. The design of the album cover created a first impression of what was to come. Album art was certainly important to reporter Sean Cole, one particular album by one particular band: Devo. This is the story of Devo’s first record and the fight over the arresting image of a flashy, handsome golf legend on the cover. Plus, Katie Mingle gets the backstory of the Langley Schools Music Project LP, a haunting and uplifting outsider artist masterpiece. Devolutionary Design

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. It's hard to overstate just how important record album art was to music before we downloaded everything. Our experience with a record or CD used to be visual. The design of the record cover was your first impression of what was to come. I would stare at the fonts on the cover and pour over the liner notes the first time I put an album on, it was original. I'm not saying that era music was better, it wasn't, it was just different. The art on the records tried to encapsulate

the essence of a band, and then that essence was transferred to you because you were a fan, and it became part of your identity too. At least that's what it felt like. Album art was certainly important to my friend and reporter, Sean Cole, one certain album and one certain band in particular. Roman were you ever a Divo fan?

I was a more of a Divo appreciator, I don't think I was really a fan. Like I listened to unlike the songs I heard, I remember Whip It when I was a kid, I remember they were. You were not a Divo team. No, it was not a Divo team. I remember the red hats and I have a particular memory of them doing a cover of I can't get no satisfaction by the rolling stones on starting at live when these yellow hazmat suits. You know, like they were really weird.

Yes, weird. Yes. So this story is about that divot album, the one that they were promoting on that Sarnight Live performance you saw. More specifically, it's about the album art of that record. Because the story of the image that ultimately ended up on the cover of that record is this crazy rabbit hole that I fell down. But before we get there, I just need to cover some things about Divo that you might not know. Do you know where the name comes from?

I do not. So, a lot of people think of diva as this really silly, you know, nutty e-band and jumping around, but they were actually very serious and had a very considered philosophy. And that was that the human race is in a state of de-evolution, hence divo. So their songs are all, you know, other than Whip It, like their songs are mostly about corporate control and blind conformity, and they were actually visual artists before they wrote any songs.

This was in the early 70s in Akron, Ohio. So I talked with one of the founders of Devo, Jerry Kasale, who says like back then, they were mostly trying to figure out what de-evolutionary art would look like. You know, because we were very enamored and put off at the same time by pop culture, like the lowest end of like ad graphics, terrible TV commercials. We were kind of drawn to Kitch, and occasionally they would go out shopping for Kitch. So we're walking through the Kmart.

Nope, it was the predecessor to Kmart. It was click. And this is Mark Mothersburg, he's another member of the band. This is probably the point to mention that this was more than four decades ago and not everybody's memory is too clear. So the independent of what department store they are in. They are in a department store. They are in a department store. We were looking for supplies.

We were collaborating on a visual art piece together and walking through the sports section. And there's these six practice golf balls in a clear plastic pouch sealed shut at the top with a cardboard display head. Took a new picture of this, it's like that display head with the hole in it that hangs on a hook. Yes, I can picture it. Kind of like the rocks with bags of generic candy at the gas station, like a clear bag full of candy and it just says gummy bears at the top. Alright, so on that display head is an illustration of the smiling face of Chichi Rodriguez.

And who was Chichi Rodriguez? Chichi Rodriguez is one of the most famous golfers in history. He was like, I don't know what Chichi Rodriguez was like. He was like the Elvis of golfer. So he was just like a big show, man. I saw it and I just loved it. It was a picture of him in front of a golf ball. So his head's kind of haloed by a big golf ball.

Kind of imitating something that I'd already been printing, which was human heads in front of the moon, and it made us laugh. We chuckle. We have to have that. And of course golf was almost symbolically like the most lame kind of, you know, bourgeois pursuit that you could have,

especially at that time, unless your parents were rich, you didn't get to go golfing. If we ever imagined ourselves on a golf course, it was probably as a caddy. And how boring it looked then on TV and then announcing, but the one guy who stood out was Chi Chi because he didn't fit with the rest of the golfers at all. He wore these loud pants and bright shirts and he had this famous hat that only he wore which had a specific hat band and you know, the Panama hat.

Straw Panama kind of hat, yeah. So did they buy those golf balls? They bought the golf balls. Mark used the Chi Chi image in a manifesto he was writing about being a quote unquote, Spud Boy in the rubber town of Akron. But other than that, nothing really happened with it

until we were already putting out our self-produced single, Be Stiff. Oh, I like that song. It's, this is my favorite one. So it's like this kind of jockey anthem, celebrating literal stiffness, like uptightness, talking about televangelist, politicians, and how stiff they are. Somehow, and I don't really remember the moment, but we had the idea of putting chichi on that cover.

And so they used that picture of chichi on the cover of the 45 of the single. And it was like this commentary on commercialism and our obsession with selling. And in this case, selling plastic golf balls It was like this commentary on commercialism and our obsession with selling. In this case, selling plastic golf balls and the Americana of the golfer. So B-Step comes out in 1978 and there's still not famous. They're in the Subscure Art Rock Band.

But then about four months later, Devo gets their big break. Warner Brothers signed the band to their first full-length album. And that, according to Jerry, is where the real D evolution began. We've laid that whole thing out and working up to this moment, and then comes the real Devo twist that only a corporation could provide. In other words, what we're talking about, we become part of. So there are about to be on top 40 radio and broadcasts on the TV screens of Middle America. What was that first record called? It's a long title. It's called Question. Are we? Question? Are we not men? Answer, we are Devo. And this is their first major label album.

This is their first, yeah, I know exactly right. So Mark and Jerry and the other members of the band, they're like, well, that picture of Chi Chi worked so well on the single, let's just stick with it. You know, it's kind of our brand now. Let's just put that on the cover of the full length record. And this is like a picture of Chishi Rodriguez. The original picture from that thing they bought at Kmart, they just took that, lifted it directly and put it onto their album and they're going to

put that now on a major label album. Okay. So they head to California, you know, movie, montage, theme music here, Beverly Hill Belays, whatever. And they go to Warner Brothers HQ and this is like the process back then. And maybe now I don't know, but like they're heading from department to department and Warner Brothers, you know, dealing with all of the new album things that need to happen. We're told to go see, I think Rick Serini was his name and he seemed to be an okay guy. He's in the art department. Yeah, he's the head of the art department.

I was creative director at Warner Bros. Records. He seemed to like what we were up to. The one band that I appreciated the most was Devo. I love the fact that they just never took anything very seriously. Do you remember that first meeting with them? I'm not alone. Do I remember to have a polaroid of it. We show him the image. He chuckles.

I thought it was clip art. Yeah. Chi Chi does look a lot like clip art. And I guess I never asked. I only found out that it was him sometime later. Well, I guess what did it, I guess what did he vote for you? Obserty. I guess what did it, I guess what did it evoke for you? Absurdity.

I mean, you have to think about what was going on back in the day. Artwork, you know, on album covers had rules attached to it. Most of the albums were delivered to little mom pop music stores all around the country. Right. And there'd be some kid who would come in at four o'clock after school. And his job was to open up the box of records from Warner Brothers or Columbia or whatnot and then rack them. Right? So the one thing that they told all of us in the art department is don't screw that up. A rock band has to look like a rock band, a country western has to look

like country western. They'd better have cowboy hats on. Otherwise, they get misracked. And then if people can't find them in the rack of the genre they're interested in, they don't buy it. But in Devo's case, the music was so unusual that it could have something completely absurd on the cover and make perfect sense. So even though it makes no sense that a picture of a flamboyant golfer stolen from a package of golf balls, yes, is the mascot of Devo. It does make perfect sense because that's who Devo is.

It was just like pick something impossible and Rick is just psyched. Like he loves working, he loves working on this, loves working on this with them. It's like doing all the little design things and giving them the font with the double bold and all the stuff and getting everything ready. He laid it all out, spec the colors. You know, did the whole series thing where they give you a transparency that's a mockup, right?

And we approve it. And then about two days later, we get this call and it's a big crisis. The call was from the vice president of Business Affairs for Warner Brothers. David Burman, who was a guy that you would cast in a movie about the music business? As the villain or as the hero? Well, it just depends on your point of view. It was very smart, very good at what he did and played a hard ball.

And the first communication is, I'm a golfer and I'm a fan of golf and I know Chi Chi Rodriguez. I've met Chi Chi Rodriguez. You cannot use Chi Chi Rodriguez. That is completely and totally false. This is David Burman. I told you not everybody's memory is crystal clear regarding this story. Not only have I never, I have never seen Cheachy Rodriguez, other than on television. I'm not going to make fun of a friend of mine.

I've never met him. I've never spoken to him. I'm not going to get this company sued. That part is accurate, says David Berman, about maybe being sued. Yes, he did play hardball, but he says his objection was purely a legal one. Purely. In California law, it's crystal clear. You can't use somebody's name or likeness for commercial purposes without their permission. He had nothing to do with my being a golfer other than because I was, I knew that it was

clearly Cheechy R. R R. Vegas, but it wasn't the fact that he was likeable. It could have been Rory Sabatini and I would have done the same thing. Wait, who is Rory Sabatini? He's a golfer. But nobody likes Rory Sabatini. Why does nobody like Rory Sabatini? I don't know. Also, Rory Sabatini was born in 1976 and would have been two years old when this diva record came out.

But anyway, this all came as a real blow to the band. We're dumbfounded and crestfallen. We don't know what to do. And but of course, we're stubborn. We're not giving up. So they're like, let's just write Chi Chi a letter and ask his permission. But in the meantime, the corporate gears are rolling

and money has been paid and, you know, Warner Bros. is expecting a product. So, Divos, like, let's come up with a plan B, and they had this idea that actually involves another piece of D evolutionary art. There's an artist rendering of what the last four presidents would have looked like had you combined them. So Ford, Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy, all of their faces, mashed together. Mark Mothers' Bud just had this picture lying around.

And it was this hideous, bizarre face that had John Kennedy's hairline and it had Lyndon Johnson's ears and Richard Nixon's nose. So the band brings that image to the Warner Brothers Art Department. On an idea that why couldn't we just mutate Chi Chi's face? So that it isn't Chi Chi anymore. So what did they end up doing to Chi Chi's face?

So they basically, like, it was like building a Mr. Potato Head toy, like they grafted Johnson's ears and Nixon's nose on the cheeky's head and reverse the mouth. I should actually, I should say that David Berman who was in business affairs at the time, he doesn't remember the image being altered. So I sent him the original cheeky image from the golf balls and the potato head collage just so he could compare them.

Look me at it today. I wonder why I proved it because to me it still looks like Gigi, but obviously I must have. And here's Jerry Cassali. About three weeks later, a letter comes back from Gigi's representatives. No. Saying, yes, Gigi thinks it's fine to use that image. He just wants 50 records at Christmas time to give out to his friends and family. He wanted to say to his friends and family, like, look, I'm on a record. Right. He liked that.

And this is Mark Mother's Ball. And so at that point, it's like, we couldn't go back. They'd already printed the cover. So now we had this mutilated potato face for an album cover. And it didn't really look like the handsome Chi Chi anymore. So I'm sure he was quite surprised when he got a box of him in the mail. All our efforts were in fact in earnest. But what it looked like in the end is that Devo had mainly tricked Chi Chi Rodriguezai Riegas and put out something that made him look hideous.

It was a mess. Now, they did send Chichi a couple thousand dollars also as well as the records. It wasn't a total loss for him, but then they just, they never heard from him again. Wow. So they never got his take on the album art, or even the songs on the album or anything like that? Which is my reigning question in all of this. I really want to know if Chi Chi ever listened to that record

and what he thought of it. Yeah, that would be the big question. Well, why don't you interview Chi Chi Rodriguez? Hello. Hello, Chi Chi Rodriguez. Yeah, who's this? It's Sean Cole. He reached T.C. at a country club, naturally. In West Palm Beach, Florida, he's in his early 80s now,

still handsome, still plays golf, not professionally. Does a lot of philanthropic work through his foundation and an annual charity event. It's really an honor to talk to you. It's my honor to talk to you, Johnny. It's Sean, but that's okay. Oh, he sounds like the best, Johnny. I love him. He's so sweet. I love him. Chichi says he remembers getting this letter, and he says he did give out those records to his friends and family. Did you notice when you got the record that it didn't quite look like you that much? Well, it looked like me. I look at the process. It looked like me a little bit, at least they had looked like me.

But he didn't know anything about them messing with his face, and he had no idea that they were worried he was going to sue them. Sue them? Well, anybody that worried about somebody suing them, that means that they're so crooked that they sue people and they think that people are going to sue them. Well anybody that worried about somebody soon, that means that they're so crooked that they sue people And they think that people have a sue them. I thought it was this young people trying to make a career out of it And I could help them and that's it because I like I like to do something good every day of my life And I want to leave the the earth better than I found it. So even young sort of avant-garde punk musicians you want to help. Yeah.

Did you listen to that record? Yeah, I listened to it one time just once. I put her away. You didn't like it. No, I didn't like it. I like Traction Atre and Nath King Cole and Dave Martin, who was my favorite, you know. Because music is not supposed to rally up. Music is something to bring you down.

So the most important question answered. He did not like it. Right, and like, but as I was talking to him, I was like, well, there's like a kind of greater question here, which is like, like what did he think about his face or a mutated version thereof, being on the cover of this apocalyptic weirdo art rock bands first record, like did that make sense to him. And it did, in a way, because because Chichi knows he's Chichi. He knows how much he stands out and how

it outlandish he is. None of that is lost on him. And in fact, he said it's purposeful. Golf is show business and when you're on stage, you got to give the people a show. And that's what the people came out and gave the people a good time. So that is the similarity between you and Devo? Yes. So in a way, it really makes sense that they used you on the cover of their record. I think they were geniuses.

And it takes a genius to recognize another. Hahaha. Hahaha. Hahaha. Hahaha. Wow, you guys sound almost diabolical there. Hahaha. Yes. Me and Chi Chi, the bottom of Ovalcano. Hahaha.

Planning the evolution of the human race. The evolution of the human race, exactly. One could argue that, again, Jerry Cassali, what we were put through by David Berman, actually achieved something here better than just using a found image. So what you're saying is corporate interference plus the faces of four American presidents who prosecuted the Vietnam War, and it's aftermath, and this wonderfully dandy-ish golf legend, all of those together. Yeah, it's more Devo than the original Chichi image in a way. That's what I'm saying.

It's Devo in action. Like, you need an example of what we're talking about? Here it is. So this whole story takes place at the beginning of Debo's career. And they go on to play for decades, it's extremely famous. They were just nominated to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Do they think about Chi Chi as part of their origin story?

You know, Mark Mothersbach actually sort of raised that when we were talking. I really, I don't think anybody ever tried to measure how much that album cover had in the success of Divo, but it could possibly have been the tipping stone that just like changed everything and gave us a chance to have a public career. So just in case, thank you, Chi Chi.

Hey, Roman. Yeah. Stories not over. There's one more diabolical divot twist, a year's Dirk Asali. I have to say that now that I'm a senior citizen, I completely changed my attitude about the game of golf. You did not, really? Yeah, I like it now.

I really, it's changed so much from those days and who got to play it and how it's played. I mean, those guys really are athletes. I never thought I would hear a member of D'Avo say that. I mean, those guys really are athletes. I never thought I would hear a member of Devo say that. I know. Oh, here's a, here's a doubly hideous secret on folding right now. I really like professional football. A version of this piece originally aired on the NPR Sports Show only a game, special thanks to Gary Wallach who conceived of the story and Hugh Brown, who helped Sean Cole with the research.

Around the time Divo was putting out there for singles in the mid-1970s, a music teacher in Canada was making his own DIY records with a bunch of his elementary school students, and the result was a haunting and uplifting outsider or masterpiece. That story. After this. In Canada, in the 1970s, a music teacher named Hans Finger recorded 60 of his elementary school students singing in a gymnasium.

He pressed a few vinyl records of those recordings and handed them out to parents. The Langley School Music Project was little known until a record collector named Brian Linde found one of those albums in a thrift store in the year 2000. Linde shared it with some people and eventually bar none records gave it a proper release. The records cover featured a collage of black and white pictures of the students singing, strumming guitars, playing drums, and clapping along. The album was called Innocence and Despair. The rediscovered recordings were a hit. Salon music critic Stephen Heiden wrote, the gloomy title in a sense and despair is no lie. The echoing, yelping renditions of this feel-good music

gives off a powerfully aching melancholy. It's the sound of youth frozen on tape as it fades inexorably away. Here's the music teacher from the Langley School Music Project Hans Finger talking to Katie Mingle in 2010. Before I was teaching in Langley, I played in a heavy metal band. It never occurred to me to be a teacher. I was a really good student myself and the kids were okay, but I wasn't

all that gushy about them, to be honest with you. I knew nothing about kids' music. I knew nothing about teaching. I knew nothing about kids' music. I knew nothing about teaching. I knew nothing about anything. You know, I had hair, I had attitude. I weighed 98 pounds. Off I went to Langley and I started teaching. I was hippy-dippy. I had really no philosophy at all about teaching.

I can't really say I thought about it a lot. I had a lot of ideas about music, but certainly not about teaching. You know, for me, I mean, I've been playing in bands since I was like 11 or 12 years old, and it wasn't like anyone he taught us. It wasn't even like anybody said, oh this is the way you do it or that's the way you do it. We just sort of did it and I've been doing music like that since I was a little kid. So when I went into teaching music it never occurred to me that I was going to teach anybody how to read notes or that

I was going to teach anybody how to pass a test. to teach anybody how to pass a test. The only thing I ever tried to teach children is really, it's just to fall in love with making music. That was always my goal. I just thought songs I knew, and I was very into David Bowie in those days. I was very into Iggy Pop. I was into Phil's old Phil Spector Records, Brian Wilson, and it wasn't until much later that I realized that songs were thematic. You know, I had gotten a teaching job originally because I was with my girlfriend and she was

having a baby and I needed a day job. And by the time I got this job, we were breaking up. And I think that in the back of my mind, you know, I was feeling like a little bit lost. Contrary to what people think, a lot of kids aren't that happy. They all have troubles, they've got problems at home, they can feel lonely, they can feel isolated, and the music can conjure up that feeling into them. Now whether or not they completely

literally understand the words, I'm not sure if she's that so important. I don't think Sheila, when she was singing Desperado, really knew what a lot of those references were about, but she certainly captured the feeling of the song. Desperado, why don't you bring to your senses, Give it a drawing thing to us So long now We're a hard one But I know that you got your reasons This thing's at our place the ear, the hurt you so how.

When I heard other school choirs and things, we sounded so different and so weird, you know, that I thought, oh well, we can't be any good. I mean, listen to all those people. They really know how to sing. So I never thought of it in terms of it was special because it was good. I also thought of it in terms of if it was special because it was good. I also thought of it in terms of if it was special because it was different. Oftentimes I would have 16, 90 kids in my class, and there'd be all over the place because there was no room and we'd have instruments.

We had no equipment, so I brought in all the equipment from my band, which were huge martial amplifiers and bass guitars and all kinds of things. The kids of course really liked that. So there wasn't much room, and kids were practically on top of one another, and I just sort of arranged them according to height. And that was it. I always felt like with my music teaching, that I always wasn't outside of music teaching that I always was an outsider music teacher.

You know, I mean, I never really participated in a lot of the music teaching events and all that kind of stuff. I was always like a little island unto myself. You know, people always use this term like thinking outside the box and all that, but I think for me, I didn't even know there was a box, you know? I mean, it does have the sort of children of the corn, yeah. Yeah, it does have that feeling. Well, I think we were kind of like a little cult, you know. So it became kind of a kind of an underground hit in New York. Tony Visconti, who was David Bowie's producer, had heard it.

And I think he thought it was a new wave band from New Jersey. And he couldn't quite believe it was a bunch of little kids from some farm country in Canada. You've been a major great. And the papers want to know who should you be. Yeah, I have students that still do music to this day. They're always in touch with me. I jammed with some of them once in a while. I felt that the whole success of this was a really vindicating kind of experience. It made me feel really like, wow, I can't do something. So it was great. I mean, you know, I'd always taught my students in a really positive way.

And then when somebody suddenly is positive about what you're doing like that, it gives you a great feeling. You're mine, you're small, and you're mine, you're tall, I like your mind. You're so good to me, I'm coming for you. You take my hand and give you one, this hand and I give it in a bedroom. You're so good to me. Our own Katie Mingle talked to Hans Finger of the Langley School music project in 2010 for the show Resound, produced by the Third Coast International Audio Festival. If you want to hear innovative documentaries from all over the world, you must subscribe to the Resound Podcast.

And here are some fun facts. I worked on Resound at Third Coast for three years, and during that time, I hired Delaney Hall as an intern in 2006. It was her first radio job. And then when I left, Delaney took over and she hired Katie Mingle, who eventually took over the show herself. Now, we don't work here. So if you like us, you'll take a resound.

99% Invisible was produced this week by Sean Cole, Emmett Fitzgerald, and Katie Mingle, mixed in tech production by Sharif Yusif, music by Sean Rial. This is the first time we've ever seen a new album of the year. It's a new album, and it's a new album. It's a new album, and it's a new album. It's a new album, and it's a new album. It's a new album, and it's a new album. It's a new album, and it's a new album. It's a new album. It's a new album. on Radio Row in beautiful downtown Oakland, California. 99% of visible is a member of Radio Topia from PRX, a fiercely independent collective of

the most innovative shows in all of podcasting. You can find them all at radiotopia.fm. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99PI org. Or on Instagram, Tumblr, and Reddit too. But if you're thinking, I need more 99PI in my life, we have old episodes and new articles about design every couple of days on our website. It's 99PI.O. From PRX.