Chapo Trap House - UNLOCKED 637 - De-evolution is Real feat. Jerry Casale (6/16/22)

Episode Date: June 17, 2022

Will and Chris talk to DEVO’s Jerry Casale about all things de-evolution, including state violence, punk rock, media, advertising, record industry hacks, Ohio, freaking out your audience, and whether or not humanity can escape de-evolution, or if we’re doomed to repeat until we fail. Check out the new vinyl release of Jerry’s solo LP: https://www.geraldvcasale.com/products/12-inch-lp-gatefold-red-vinyl?variant=42652243525819 And the video for the I’m Gonna Pay You Back single mentioned in the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kv2UMoynOw

Jerry Casale is a founding member and the basest of punk and new wave legends, Devo. Devo started at Kent State University in the early 1970s. Jerry and his friend Bob Lewis had been working on various art projects involving de-evolution, the idea that human evolution has peaked and is now receding. After meeting keyboardist Mark Mothersbaugh, the group transitioned their projects from performance art to rock music. And Devo, the de-evolutionary band, was born. The band ground out a batch of original songs and developed a confrontational live show in Akron, then with the help of some of their early fans, like David Bowie and Iggy Pop, signed with Warner Brothers Records.

And with their 1980 platinum-selling single, Whippet, became nationally known. Over the course of nearly 50 years, nine studio albums, a mountain of B-sides, rarities, demos, and live releases, Devo has spread the gospel of de-evolution to the masses. Today, we're talking to Jerry about all of this and more. And I'm just going to lay my cards on the table and say that I think Devo is one of the, if not the, great American rock bands. And that de-evolution is an essential pillar of Chapo mindset. Nobody else rocks as hard while also so clearly or cleverly channeling the American consumer-subject neurotic id as it rages through pop culture, advertising, media, whatever.

So I'm very proud to bring this interview for subscribers today, and I'm probably going to make it public tomorrow, since, hey, it'll be my long-delayed wedding day, and it's my gift to all the listeners and devotees out there. So strap in spuds for the truth about de-evolution. Greetings, everybody. It's Will here for Chapo. Now, normally on the show, you might know me as Mr. Interviews, but today I am ceding that title to my good colleague Chris Wade, aka Mr. Music, to bring you this very special guest. So, Chris, why don't you kick things off, introduce our guest, and get us rolling today.

Hey, everybody. We are here with Jerry Casale. He is the bassist and founding member of the legendary rock band Devo. And let's just get right into it. Jerry, it's wonderful to have you on the show. Thanks for stopping by. I'll just start by saying Will and I caught the Devo show at Pier 17 in New York the other week. Oh, great. And it was sick. The current version of the band with Josh Fries and Josh Hagger sounds amazing.

You guys look great. How does it feel to get back out in front of people after the last few years? Well, you know, I can only speak for myself. That's what I love. That's what I did. That's what I spent all my creative and physical energy doing. And so I like doing what I do. And I was very happy to finally play a real show, which Pier 17 was, you know, at night with our lights and our sound design, the way it is, and with an encore and full show in the dark.

You know, if it was up to me, we'd be doing 20 of those. So, yeah. Well, Jerry, thank you for the show. It was incredible. We had so much fun at Pier 17 seeing you guys. It was an absolute blast. So thank you so much for that. It was a great crowd. I really liked that crowd. So my first and, you know, overarching question for this interview is, how does it feel to be so right about everything for so long?

Yeah. Not good. I mean, we didn't really, we didn't really want this to turn out this way. You know, it was, we were, we were striking, you know, in the beginning, a kind of strident, smart ass pose. Not that we didn't believe in these ideas. We absolutely did. It was a driving force, you know, it was like a class project, right? Like, hey, the evolution is a real thing. And so let that be your guiding force in the, in the material you write.

So, you know, it's, it's like any kind of inspiration. And, and it was supposed to be like a satirical warning, like canaries in a coal mine, not really a handbook for what was going to happen. Could you explain the evolution for the uninitiated in our audience? Well, it's kind of like acknowledging entropy, second law of thermodynamics. We didn't see this, this kind of propaganda promise of linear progress, of, you know, of unending improvement. What we saw rather was, in fact, the implosion of consciousness.

We were seeing things going, rolling backwards, falling apart, caving in, entropy, shrinking, going down. And we really saw evidence of it, you know, then. And it's now just exponentially ramped up. Now we're in it. It's not a theory anymore. Well, then let's go back to the beginning and what you were kind of seeing when Divo first began. Of course, starting with Kent State, May 4th, 1970. You were on campus for the massacre.

And I believe you knew people personally who lost their lives that day. And this has always seemed and, you know, what you've said, at least for you as the spiritual and psychological starting point of Divo. Can you talk a little bit about how that moment defined and influenced what you were trying to do with Divo? Yeah, you know, ever since The Matrix, I refer to it as the red pill moment. Of course, yes. You know, I think until then I was probably unconsciously still like a liberal,

live and let live student as intellectual as I was. And as hard as my course loads were in the, quote, honors college, I was still, you know, a normal guy and believed that definitely in American exceptionalism to a degree and that there were bad apples trying to destroy our wonderful democracy, a democratic rule of law, but that it could be fixed, you know, that you could do something about it. And slowly but surely, once the killings happened and once I was in the middle of that, you know, I was a member of Students for a Democratic Society and I was consciously protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War that day into Cambodia

without an act of Congress. And so a lot of my friends and I were aware enough of how the Constitution works to know that this was a, you know, an attack on the Constitution by the Nixon administration. And I was closer to the guard than the students who were shot and killed. I think they shot over our heads because they were the same age as us, many of them. And they were just looking at us. They had gas masks on. We didn't. And they could see who they were going to shoot at and they knew they had live ammo and we didn't.

So I think that they kind of like hedged their bets a little bit. And so two of the four students killed were Allison Krauss and Jeffrey Miller. And I happened to know them because my, I had a scholarship. That's the only way I went to school because I, you know, I grew up blue-collar. I didn't have any money. So I had to get a scholarship to go to college. And part of my scholarship was to have to work for the Honors College during the summer. What did I do? I met the incoming students who were going to be part of the Honors College program.

And I set their curriculum with them and, you know, got them oriented and had them meet the professors and all that kind of stuff. And so two of those students that were in my little course load were Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krauss. And we remained friends. They were very cool. It's so bizarre that they get killed, you know, within 20 feet of me behind me. Just on like a kind of personal note, my mom was actually attended Kent State and was on campus the day of the massacre. And so that's always been part of my family story as well. And, you know, when I was first getting into Devo, when I was younger, you know, just kind of knowing them as knowing you guys as, you know, kind of legendary new wave band. And I found out that that was part of your origin story as well. It very much clicked and resonated with me as, you know, something that I had always heard is a trauma that she went through in her family.

Although not nearly as close as you. Yeah. It was trauma. And then in the aftermath of it, you watched, you know, when they say history is in the purview of those who write it, that's what you saw as lies. Complete alternate facts, complete fabrication. There were people that said more, you know, the masses of Americans said more students should have been shot, killed. That's how they were felt. And the way the media presented it is that the students were threatening the guard, you know. I mean, the local papers that night stated that the students were armed. And so there were militias running around the town. Like, you know, nasty right wing hillbilly militias in regular sedans, you know, Chevy Biscayne's unmarked cars with shotguns out the window. And the National Guard and helicopters, you know, believe me, we didn't need to be told to stay inside. We were afraid to do anything, so pie. And there was a curfew for like a week. And so at seven o'clock, you had to be indoors.

Anybody on the street could be arrested. There were constant helicopter patrols by the National Guard and Jeep patrols, you know, man carriers. It was very nasty. But you watched the national media and the local media flip it upside down and just present a completely fabricated, biased picture of what was going on. And in terms of that being like your your red pill moment, like, you know, not just not just the the murder of your of your classmates by the National Guard, the way the media murder, they got it up or the fact that they got away with it. I mean, obviously, like, that's pretty profound. And like, did that curdle what was once a kind of idealistic liberalism for you? Right. That's, you realize that there is an alternate history. It's true, you know, that America, the brand was just propaganda, and that America, the reality were, you know, imperialistic fuckheads and completely duplicitous. And, and then it always been that way. I mean, you know, what, we started by massacring indigenous people, you know, genocide. And then, you know, look what we did to all the people of color in our country forever. And, and then look what we did around the world. And look what the CIA did. And you start realizing everything you thought is a big lie. And so you start to see it clearly. And, and then you realize, oh, okay, it's rotten to the core. It's, you know, isn't a few bad apples.

Well, along those lines, you know, I've heard you describe Akron in the 70s as a house of pain, not the band you were referring to. So, beyond just like the brutality of the Kent State Massacre, were you also then during that time keyed into, you know, I guess I'd call it like the economic devolution, the eco-devo of the, you know, the beginning of deindustrialization, and especially in an area like Akron, rubber city. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, then you were in like some kind of structural decline, you know, the beginning of the end of capital. Oh, yeah, we watched it was visible. You know, you watched it happen. And then you watched the exit of all the rubber companies. And you realized, oh, I kind of missed that disgusting green sulfur in the air and the smell. It was sad. It was very depressing, very sad. So then just continuing on those early days, you know, you're, you're in Akron, you're in the Northeast Ohio area, and you and Mark and the two Bobs are together and, you know, hardcore Devo fans will know the mountains of B sides and rarities from that era. It sounds like you've generated basically more than the first two albums of material before you even stepped foot into a studio. Could you just kind of describe like that creative period, how you guys were generating material, you know, what the story the early songs tell? Yeah, well, I mean, we, you know, we were basically in a tiny bubble, we were surrounded by, you know, working class, white people that were right wing, anti intellectual, you know, kind of evangelical, full of the white grievance that you saw Trump stoke the fires of.

And, you know, we had nowhere to go except to relate to each other, because, you know, we were like refugees. And, and, and we thought very similarly, and we had to entertain ourselves, we had to do what we were doing as a kind of, you know, an anecdote to what we were surrounded by. So we, you know, in a couple of basements, and several garages over a period of three years, we had about 45 songs, you know, that, that all came about because we were collaborating and experimenting. And Steve Oh was a an art collective and an experimental and so we would just do whatever we thought of. And, you know, when when there was something that all of us resonated with and we would develop that, but it was just from a place of Tableau Rosa. We didn't want to sound like anything on the radio and we didn't want to be like any other band. We wanted to be us. We were looking for self expression, purely. And it was always a multi idea idea. And like, you know, in addition to sounding different than anything of the era, like is like the content of like intellectually what you were trying to express like did you feel like that that also like that wasn't on the radio that wasn't sort of counterculture or popular culture, this kind of dark sarcasm the sarcastic warning that you were talking about earlier. Did you feel that that was lacking from the popular culture of the day?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you know, we were surrounded by stuff like, you know, 20 Orlando in dawn, you know, I mean, that's what was going on. Either that or like fog hat or, you know, some stadium acts with the, you know, terrible music, you know, and with with platform shoes and and skin tight pants and, you know, hair bands. Yeah, I was listening to you on another interview where you described an early gig where you had to open for a hair metal band called clown. Yeah. And then of course, the irony that, you know, you later would be a divo later would be thought of by some as clowns. Yes, hopefully evil clowns. So, you know, you're generating all this material and you're feeling like you're in this bubble, you know, as you said, like refugees. And it seems like a big feature of early divo interacting with the public playing shows is this like confrontation. These shows themselves are confrontational. You know, I'd love to hear you, you know, speak about that energy and what it was like interacting with, you know, I guess today we'd call them normies. But also maybe if you could describe, just because it's a great story, the the Halloween 75 show, the opening for Sun Ra.

That was a high point. That's where, you know, I was always honing my skills as, you know, this, this undercover guy would pretend to be the band's manager. I, I, I lied to get that gig. I said we were a cover band. Yeah. And this guy in Cleveland, Bill Kavanaugh, who had a recording studio, he helped us. He helped us with that, you know, that live. And so here we are at the big annual Halloween party for, you know, Cleveland's top FM station. So these people are insiders that think they are very hip and very cool. And they have, you know, it's a costume party. So these kind of, you know, radio jocks and their privileged friends are all dressed in full Halloween costume. All the cliches, you know, Frankenstein, the werewolf, you know, and, and of course, it was a monster mash. The girls are always, you know, what they went right for was they dressed like prostitutes, right? So, so you've got monsters and prostitutes and they're all doing nitrous oxide. They're going upstairs in this hall that they rented where the offices are, you know, and all, all the cool people are doing nitrous oxide.

And so we're opening for Sun Ra. And we come out in our original, we had these blue fireman work outfits that were jumpsuits with clear plastic masks and blue plastic hard hats. And they just see that right away and they're like, what the fuck, you know, this is a costume party, man. This is not cool. You know, yeah. And, you know, we want to, we want to Dracula. We want to Dracula and the mummy get these construction workers out of here. You know, and I think we opened with like my woman subhuman, you know, and, and it's just this bizarre, you know, it's like on the par with Captain Beefheart, you know, his early stuff. And, and they're just, they're staring and they're just, they're in shock and they're frozen at first. They don't even know what to do. And then I go, here's one by bad company. And then we do, you know, keep naming these bands. And so they were getting really pissed off. So we go right to Jaco Homo. And that did it. You know, Jaco Homo is the A bomb. And so Mark starts, you know, coming down off the stage with the microphone going, are we not men?

And then, you know, this one guy dressed like Frankenstein just grabs him and goes, you guys are fucking assholes. Are we not men? Are we not men? Are we not men? Are we not men? Are we not a man? He yells into the mic and rips it out of Mark's hand, you know, then Mark jumps back on stage and grabs another mic and keeps it up. And they start throwing, you know, beer bottles at us and, and charging the stage and we, we had to leave. You know, our roadies tried to run interference for us. And so the set was over in about 20 minutes with, you know, physical threats. So we, we went out the back way and we went to our van and we changed back into our street clothes. And we went over to Captain Frank's, this terrible seafood place on the, on the water there at Lake Erie. It was featured in Stranger Than Paradise.

Okay. On the Jim Jarmusch movie? Yeah, Jim Jarmusch movie where they walk out under the pier at Captain Frank's and they stare at a frozen Lake Erie for a while and they're just staring around at it. And then they, they kind of nod and go, okay, and they get back in the car and leave, you know, and everything, everything at Captain Frank's is just deep fried, you know. Yeah, sure. But of course, we're all pumped up that, that we got this reaction because what we were doing was performance art. There wasn't a terminology for it like that. Nobody had labeled it that. And, but that's what we did. That was going to be my follow up question. Would you consider that, did you consider that a good show at that time? Yeah, see, we were all pumped up and, you know, doing the, our version of high fiving each other and, you know, talking about it and recounting it instantly, you know.

And because we thought, this is great, you know, because we hated them as much as they hated us. If we can get those kind of people to do that, we should do more of this. You know, we should do it more. Yeah, just speaking on, on that thing you were saying that you had to, you know, do some light subterfuge. A lot of the, again, this early history of Divo seems like infused with you doing a lot of, you know, for lack of better word, lying, you know, posing as a manager, sending fake letters of introduction. Yeah. You know, as you actually secured record deals and started making music, did you have a sense that, like, your success was kind of a bit of a scam that you were perpetuating on the pop culture that you like to, you know, satirize? Yeah. I mean, we didn't have a choice. That's what you had to do. It was either that or nothing. And what we were doing, if we were fooling anybody, it was for a good purpose. We didn't have a malign motive to do it.

We were, we thought that the Divo voice was necessary in the marketplace. Well, actually, speaking of the marketplace, I was just, I was curious. I mean, one of the things that like I've covered sort of always associated with the Divo style is this kind of aping and anticipation of like the aggression of advertising slogans and marketing speak. And I was just wondering, like, you know, like, so like intellectually, like, how did you guys respond to like the changing in like the styles of advertising, like I said, like in the 70s, like coming out of deindustrialization? Like, did you notice the sort of the ways advertising had basically absorbed the counterculture and was now like reflecting it back in this very kind of like slick, hyper-aggressive manner? Definitely. Individually, Mark and I and our collaborator in film Chuck Stattler and my poet friend Bob Lewis that I started all the theories with, we were very observant of what the hell was going on. And we would, you know, we would monitor everything going on on television and in print, like critics, like students, and we would analyze what they were doing and go, oh, we can use these techniques, the same techniques they're using, we can subvert this. This is this is the effective way to go because the old school, you know, rebellion is obsolete, you know, what you have to do is go inside and use their communication techniques to put out your message. And that's exactly what we were doing on purpose.

And especially with the videos, that's what I was doing. We were even watching the way fast food commercials were cut on television. Yes. Really. And I started cutting the video. I mean, I just like I just like in terms of your your your music, I mean, like the best example of this in my head is your guys cover of satisfaction. Yeah. And, you know, I got to I got to credit our good friend and co host, Matt Christmas, who regards it as the best cover of all time, because it just like it sounds exactly like the shift that happened in the culture where you take a song that's originally about, you know, like sexual satisfaction via advertising and marketing, but it sounds sort of like liberatory and its energy. And then your guys cover of it, you turn it into this like robotic dirge. It like yeah, it's like, it's a it sounds like you know, what advertising did to, like the hope of the like counterculture of the 60s and 70s is just baby baby baby baby baby.

Yeah. Yeah, I know what you're saying. Jagger was talking about that he couldn't get no satisfaction, but the song was very blues satisfying sex and it sounds like a man who has gotten satisfied. Absolutely, whereas Devo sounds like exactly what it would be like not to have satisfaction. For real. You know. I got back later next week, cause you see I'm on a loser's feet, but I can't get it to know. Cause I know, I know.

And, yeah, and that once again, just like I was talking about with performance art and there not being a label for it, what I love about our cover of Satisfaction is that we deconstructed the song. And deconstruction was nothing yet being talked about in the art world. But that's exactly what that version is. If you needed an example of deconstruction, it would be Devo's satisfaction. And you can look, look, you can hear the parts, you know, and put it back together and see how it's deconstructed. Just following on this line of, you know, monitoring this switch, this, you know, the evolution of advertising, you know, the early parts of Devo is very like a satirical celebrity culture.

And I'm even thinking about, you know, the cover of Are We Not Men where you make this kind of amalgamation of all these, I believe like golfers or something into a version of like a perfect man who ends up looking horrifying. Yeah, yeah. A mutant. Yeah, exactly. A common DNA mutant. Yeah, exactly. It was a combination of Chichi Rodriguez, the famous golfer, and three American presidents.

Okay. You remember which ones? Yeah. Jimmy Carter, LBJ, Kennedy. Sounds about right. So, you know, we were having fun. What can I say? You know, because that was behind it all is just creative fun.

But so then by like, you know, by the time Whippet breaks in the, you know, early 80s, then you guys find yourself in the position of being kind of actual celebrities yourselves. Yeah. And I was just, you know, wondering like how that affected how you then approached the material and, you know, the stage show and how you would, you know, you would fully become inside the machine at that point and how that kind of affected your perspective of how you were doing the project of Devo. Well, that's, yeah, that's when you're really tested. That's when you really find out who you are.

You know, I mean, since for me, at least I can, you know, only talk for me since it was all from the beginning, very thought out and very conscious what the goal was, what we were trying to do, which was, like any artist, be really good at what you wanted to say, right? When Whippet finally happened and now you've had the ears of the insiders, right? Now, I thought this is great because now we'll have more opportunities. Now we can do bigger things because we can get funding and we can get interest, right? From the real players, you know, the gatekeepers will open the gates and it didn't work that way. It didn't work that way at all.

Yeah, I was watching a clip of you guys on American Bandstand, I think, around that time. You know, this is, you know, right after Whippet and, you know, you, again, as you're saying, you're hoping that the gates are open and, you know, Dick Clark is great, you know, in his own way, a gatekeeper of American musical society at that time comes over and he's basically doing a kind of, gee whiz, what is this? Some kind of a joke from the future type thing. And he says, I read all your interviews and it seems like you guys never give a straight answer. Do you ever tell the truth and you just say kind of plaintively,

I think we're always telling the truth that no one listens. You know, I've read everything that's ever been written about you and there's never been one straight line ever written. Is it because you don't do interviews or you don't give straight answers? No, we do give straight answers but nobody believes them. I mean, usually people tell you what colors they like. No, your favorite ice cream and all of that. Yes, yes, I remember those interviews. You know, did you have that sense when you were at that point that you were like, yes, now we're giving the message

but nobody's hearing it? Yeah, I saw what happened. It's horrid. It's, you know, you're being trivialized and you're in the soup and you're being like put through the meat grinder. There's a new documentary on George Carlin on HBO. It's in two parts, each part's like almost two hours long. And you watch it happen. You, in that documentary, the same thing that happened to Divo happens to Carlin and he starts to appear on these variety shows

and he's completely like beside himself and he's being destroyed by these goons. You know, yeah. You mostly just want like, do a funny clip and then promote the next album type thing. Yeah, exactly. Your most recent show, you had a video, or the show we saw, you had a maybe a new addition to the video package. At least it wasn't there when I saw also say you guys at Riot Fest last September. Yeah, the senior assistant version of Rod Rooter. Yeah, exactly.

And you play the original clip of this satirical video you did. Right. Yes, in the 70s of you meeting the record exec and him kind of giving you the business and now you have the update of the same guy. You know, I just, could you speak to your experience in the record industry and like these, you having this project and having to deal with these guys who are like, no, it's just business. We're selling units. I never made up one line that Rod Rooter said in all of our interstitial videos that we shot back then starting in 1979. Anything he said was said to us or me by executives.

We got ideas. Here, relate to this. Devo dolls. Our boys down in merchandising didn't miss a trick. We even got your jumpsuits. We got them going into all the discount stores. I can forgive you guys for being artists, but I can't forgive you for being stupid. I'm not telling you what to do.

I'm telling you what you're doing. You're begging for the barrel room. And all I would do is remember it to go home and write it in my notebook. And it's fantastic. You can't make that stuff up. Yeah, that's stuff about you guys. I could get any number of pretty girls in here any day and you're just not the type of girl I'm looking for today. Yeah, my kind of girl, yeah.

My favorite part of the Rod video is that the updated, like when Rod now, Rod in the present day, there's a part where he's turned control of the record company over to his shithead son. And I was elbowing Chris so hard because I was like, man, these guys still have it dead to rights about who's in charge of our culture now. Because Rod's son is portrayed as this awful, hype-beast fitted hat. Tiktoker, yeah. Tiktok kid. Yeah, a white, privileged guy that pretends he's black.

Yeah, who got the record company from his father. Yeah, exactly. The way it really works. So yeah, we're talking about the videos and costumes, video, multimedia has always been an essential element of the Devo package. It's not just the music, it's a whole thing. And this might be a kind of reductive way to say this, but do you think it's necessary to wear a costume to be a great Rod fan? Or is what Devo wears even a costume? Well, everybody's wearing a costume even when they think they're not, right?

I mean, what about, you know, Pendleton plaid shirts and ripped jeans? That was a costume, you know? I mean, everything's a costume. What band didn't wear a costume? Right. So I want to talk a little bit about the idea of punk rock. And I've heard you say that rock and roll doesn't change the world, it just reflects and magnifies what's there. So, you know, punk comes along and you guys are kind of like lumped into this movement, which is a lot of different things there.

And it's kind of portrayed, advertised as this revolutionary overthrow of a kind of stodgy moment of corporate rock. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. How did you feel about Devo being thought of as, you know, in the same as there's like, you know, a class of 77 CBGB, you know, Ramon style bands? Yeah, it was just, it was a... Like an accident of timing, right? We're doing what we're doing at the same time this movement starts. And of course, the, you know, the business people that want to package and make money from that movement, label it.

And so there's punk and there's new wave and Devo's in there, right? And I suppose because of the energy of our music and the striteness and some somewhat anger, you know, there was some anger, but not like punk anger. You know, punk anger was nihilistic and anti-intellectual. In fact, a lot of punks were white nationalists. They were kind of racist. And Devo, you know, we were punk scientists. We embraced ideas, you know, we weren't anti-intellectual and we were mad about pretty substantive things. You know, our grievance wasn't because we were a whiter working class.

It was because of the wholesale injustice of the world, right? Of the hypocrisy, the duplicity. And so then we got lumped in a new wave at the same time. But well, that's all right, because at least we are what's new about new wave. We didn't sound like a 60s garage band. And we weren't wearing white shirts and black skinny ties. So we were at least original. So we were what was new about new wave.

And frankly, unless they can dismiss you or trivialize you, you don't have a chance. You know, somebody asked Bob Dylan back when, what do you think? How do you feel that most people don't understand your big hit like a Rolling Stone at all? And he goes, oh, I'm relieved. I'm glad, because if they did, I wouldn't be successful. I mean, did you feel that way a little bit about Whippet? Yeah, they thought it was about beating off and say don't mess it. And when I tried to explain what it was about, we just bummed them out.

You know, you pride yourself on like being original and different, you know, and also being, you know, somewhat a bit sarcastic. So smartasses, you might say. I'm wondering, like, were there any contemporaries of you guys, like any acts that when you first saw them, you were like, wait, we need to step up our game or inspired you or, you know, influenced you in any way? I think in terms of presentation, energy and pure musicianship, there were a lot of instances like that. All through, I can tell you from me, when I saw David Bowie's Diamond Dogs tour, I went home and hit under the covers. I was so embarrassed at where we were at compared to that. You know, I thought, oh my God, should we just quit or, you know, it was an alarm.

It was a, you know, three alarm fire emergency. Like, okay, folks, we're not even close to ready for prime time. We got to work. And that was the first one. That's a scary feeling in the time, but like looking back at it now, do you think it was a necessary one? Are you glad that David Bowie blew you away that badly? Oh yeah, it was a call to action. It was, it's like, oh, who do you think you are?

Did you see what that guy did? If you think you're an artist, you better get, you better get serious now. And I did get serious. That was 1975, 74, and right at the end. And that was a wake up call and it changed me. And then, I think, you know, when I saw the Damned and saw the Ramones in New York, like a year before we got there, I thought, oh my God, okay, these guys have taken what they do and they've taken it all the way and that's what it's about.

You have to do what you do and you have to take it far enough. When you think you've gone too far, you haven't even started. You really got to take it far enough and they did. And that's what's so funny and fascinating and interesting about the Ramones is that what they do is simple, but it's so conceptually pure, you know, which is, and conceptual purity is like also one of the great things about Divo. Absolutely. Their minimalism, their focus, basically they had one song, right?

Yeah. It mattered. It was just variations on a theme, but it was just the perfect presentation, the sound of the guitars, just the right amount of distortion, just the right amount of BPMs and just the hypnotic repetition of the rock and roll beat. It's incredible. We were, you know, we've been talking about punk and you mentioned earlier, you know, the kind of nihilism of punk that you think that you felt Divo was, you know,

opposed to or, you know, worked in different directions from it. You know, and you mentioned that there's a lot of anger. There's a lot of sarcasm in Divo's music. Do you think there's a lot of hope or any hope? Well, I suppose there was hope in the sense that there was a sense of humor behind it. And because there's a sense of humor, that betrays any pose you might be trying to act like there's no hope. You're definitely there's hope because you're bothering to do it.

Yeah. And I always, I always certainly thought of songs like, you know, Gates of Steel as a, you know, a call to action of, of... It was intense. Yeah. Yeah. There's a possibility of triumph over the conditions that we laid out. Correct.

You know? Correct. It's human nature. It's human nature. You can't help it. You can't help it. I will get back to that sentiment in just a second. But I'd like to talk for just a second about Ohio because as I mentioned before, I'm from

Ohio. I grew up in Cincinnati. Uh-huh. And Devo, you've always centered the coming from Akron. And, you know, I think on this show, we often come back to Ohio as kind of a semi-mythic place in America. Maybe ostensibly the most normal state, and that makes it the weirdest state. So, would you say that there's any, there's an essential Ohio-ness to Devo's music?

Absolutely. I think so. You know, Ohio is a real anomaly because it's not really the Midwest. It's not normal at all. It's a pressure cooker of insanity. I mean, you know how many serial killers came out of Ohio? I mean, but do you know how many exceptional people came out of Ohio? I mean, Ohio is a good place to be from if you could get out of there.

I agree. I agree, sir. And it's boot camp. It's boot camp. If you can survive the abuse and trauma that you go through in Ohio, get the hands of, quote, normal people, right? Yes. Of, like, just the repression and the censorship and the lack of respect.

And, you know, if you can do that, you're really strong. Now, nobody can crush you when you're from Ohio. I agree. So just to go back to that sentiment about human nature. You know, I guess when I first started listening to Devo, you know, I imagine the band's role as, you know, warriors kind of fighting against the evolution, warning about it. As you said, the canaries and the coal miner, coal miner earlier. And, you know, after, especially after seeing you guys a few times and kind of feeling the

communal energy of being in a Devo crowd, now I kind of think of Devo more as guides and, you know, protectors. They're shepherding us through the de-evolution. Yeah. And I've heard you describe Devo as being a bit like the house band on the Titanic. What do you think of that? Is our Devo fighting against or guiding through the de-evolution? No, I think that's what we became is the house band on the Titanic.

Because it's, you can't escape. We did say we're all Devo. We did not exclude ourselves from the quotient. And that's on purpose, realizing the terrible flaw of human nature. You know, you see where it goes. It's like fate. You can't escape this. You know, no matter how much you try, the dark side of human nature will sabotage any of the lofty ideals

and wonderful deeds that humans are capable. And you're seeing it now. You know, I think about, like, you know, other artists in the 20th century or the latter half of the 20th century that have attempted to communicate in their own way. This similar idea that we are devolving or that technology, marketing, advertising, psychology is all turning us into something other than human. You know, like whether it's like K.G. Ballard or William Burroughs or the films of David Cronenberg.

And the best of all of them, including you, it's like they're repelled by it. But like there is this like holding out this very real possibility and experience that losing your humanity is like distinctly pleasurable. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's your journey. Like you realize, oh, there's no choice. You're on the road, the train left the station. This is what's going to happen, you know. And that's what you see.

That is the flaw, the duality of human nature. It's what all the greatest minds kept telling everybody for centuries in literature and any other kind of art form. I mean, look at Jung talking about, you know, the shadow reality of humanity in the dark side, the duality of humanity. It's everything we like, every science fiction movie, every horror film deals with the same basic treatise. Yeah, and I think then for me, you know, that kind of thing that you touch on there

that we are all diva, that is to me, you know, the hope is that on one side you have the feral monkeys all fighting against each other, you know, as the one side of devolution. But then kind of, you know, if we can all embrace it and know that we are on this trip together, then we can at least start from working at, you know, a common ground to work off of and know that we are all diva, and then move from there perhaps together. And that's what self-aware people do,

and that's why they would have a sense of humor about, oh, nobody really knows what they're talking about, everybody's full of shit. And if you know that, there's certain things that you will not do. You know, you will not become a tyrant. You will not subscribe to authoritarianism because you shouldn't believe in anything or anybody. You're alienated. You're completely atomized, you know? Or aliens.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then I guess along those lines, you know, can we reverse the evolution? Or is it kind of like an only way out is through situation? Yeah, that's what it is. That's what it is. No, really, in the history of mankind is constantly the cycle of just scratching your way back to square one. That's where we are now. Well, I mean, you know, on our very last episode that we recorded of this show,

you know, we were talking a little bit about how there's a bit of a promise or desire to de-weird the world. And, you know, perhaps a little bit of the current president's last pitch during his presidential campaign was about, like, I will make it less weird, but you can't. Once it's weirded, the weirdness is the new level, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was just basically what he was doing, that poor old guy. Our choice, you know, our choices are ludicrous, right?

It's like, really? We live in a free society and here's who you have to choose. As president of the United States, you've got Donald Trump and you've got Joe Biden. It's like the difference between demented and dementia. Yeah, exactly, yeah. And then, hey, here you go, freedom of choice, people. Like, ludicrous, ludicrous choices, that's like Pepsi and Coke. Oh, they're both bad for you, but here, this one's cooler, packaging. And I think what he was doing, you know, Biden is, he was performing triage

because Trump laid waste to reason, to democratic rule of law, to decency. He was the thug bully on the playground that gets away with it. Because you go, look what he's doing. And he goes, yeah, what are you going to do about it? And everybody went, nothing, we can't do anything. Because we're all corrupted. The rule of law is useless, you know? And that's where we're at.

So, you know, Biden comes along in his triage. And that's all it's going to be, is four years of cleanup after the plane crashes on the runway. And then you're right back where he started from and probably even worse off. Wait till you see what's going to happen, folks. You ain't seen nothing yet. And that's the de-evolution, is that you can't get back to actual normal.

You can only get back, even if you try to do the triage, back to slightly worse, weirder, dumber than it was before. No, and, you know, they keep saying democracy was an experiment. And I guess it was because you can kiss this ass goodbye now. Yeah. Pumps, here is it. Fascism, here we come. 100% pure fascism, here we come.

And look what Putin's doing. Look at it. And look at the feckless west, the NATO in the United States. Wimp, impotent, corrupted by self-interest and by oil. They can't do anything. Well, this is where, of course, the thought of de-evolution takes us to the very dark and seemingly intractable position that we all find ourselves in. But, you know, of course, to be there, it's got us as always a divo.

So I'd like to spend just maybe the last few minutes with some fun, lighter questions about the music. We love the songs. What's your favorite divo song to play? God, there's many. There's many. I mean, they seem very fun to play. Certainly, Uncontrollable Urge, Gates of Steel, Beautiful World.

But things like Satisfaction, Come Back Johnny, Shrivel Up. Yes. I love playing those songs. You mentioned a lot of songs off the first album, and I'm not just, you know, saying this to gas you up, but for the sake of the listeners, I think divo may be more associated with the synth-heavy 80s stuff, which, of course, also rocks. But I just think it can't be understated how tremendous and anthemic

the rock part of divo is, especially on some of those earlier songs. And I think seeing the band and seeing guys play live and really just cook together really drives home that point. And those songs came from playing live and playing in garages and basements over and over, hundreds of hours. And no machines, you know, we were the machine. Yeah. When machines took over, that's when divo became devolved.

Yes. I mean, yeah. But, you know, in classic divo style, you leaned into it. You know, I was just reading about, I think it was your 82 tour, really innovating of, like, syncing all the songs up to the visual effects to make a cohesive, very pioneering system. I mean, do you want to explain how that tour worked a little bit? Because now every festival act works the exact same way.

I know. It's funny. We were doing that when nobody did it. And we had to use really, really crude film technology. And the way that worked is there was a 35-millimeter sound dubber, like they would use in a theater, in a movie theater, and that had the sequencer lines on it that we were playing to. And those sequencer lines were taken from the final mix

that we shot the video of the song to. So now, if we put video elements up on the screen that have been cut to those sequencer lines, it came from the actual take and mix of the song. So when we're playing live to those clicks, everything on screen behind us is synced. That's the only way you could do it then. There was no easy, cheap video technology, you know,

with timecode and 30 frames a second. It was gears. It was gears. And the dubber was connected to the film projector. And the film projector was a special, expensive, rear projection film projector because we didn't have that much space in the venues we were playing for a throw longer than about 20 feet,

but it had to be a big image. I can't imagine you or whoever your tour manager was at the time trying to explain this system to the venues. You were trying to book for the tour, and then just being like, usually we just throw some pyro up and, you know, call it a day. We'd always be gone. How much wall, how much distance from that curtain

to the brick wall behind, you know. Like get rid of that curtain. I've heard you news a few times about potentially having a whole new divo, like a kind of Star Trek the next generation, but like a whole new cast of divo for next generation. You know, it's something you kind of did with divo, div 2.0, which is a whole other hilarious story

that I don't know if we have time to get into right now. It might be another podcast. Yeah, exactly. That's an hour's worth. Yes. I highly recommend people looking into it because the stories are very funny. But my question is,

is that something that so attracts you, a divo the next generation? It does me, yeah, personally, yes. How would you imagine that happening? Would you be like casting someone or, you know, dubbing a new group? Is there anything out there that you see really carrying on the sensibilities, aesthetics, the... I don't, I don't. I wish, I don't.

But I think there are plenty of musically inclined young people that would want to do that, that would work with us. You know, they wouldn't be puppets, wouldn't be like that. But we would definitely write and show them things and watch them get good at doing it. And I would direct this, the visuals for the stage show and the video. I mean, the world always needs a divo.

Will, do you have anything else that you'd like to ask? No, I mean, I think Chris, I think you've covered everything. I just want to say, Jerry, thanks for the show the other week and thanks for all the music. It was really like a religious experience for me seeing you guys live for the first time after, you know, imbibing so deeply in the... Having sucked so deeply from the de-evolution cup

to experience it in physical reality was something else entirely. So thank you very much. Well, thank you for all the great questions and insights. You guys are heartening, you know, it gives me hope. Because you guys are smart guys. Well, I think we here on the show like to think that we are a little divo, although it's obviously a huge mantle

to pick up. And we are, of course, whether we like to or want to be or not, are all divo. But before we let you go, is there anything that you would like to plug? I understand that there is a sick new red vinyl pressing of your solo LP out now. Yeah, yeah. And it's actually quite nice.

I think that vinyl sounds really good. I really am happy about the song that I did. I'm going to pay you back and the video that you can see on YouTube. The video is really cool. I think that that looks like nothing I'd really seen before, like the animation style is really interesting. And yeah, and wouldn't you expect that from me? I worked with...

I mean, I worked with a great guy, Davey Force. Davey Force, he's a CG wizard. And he uses these new artificial intelligence programs that extrapolate between live action and animation. And it's exactly what I wanted. I wanted a realm. I wanted a reality dimension that wasn't live action. It was more like the Marvel universe or something.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, one could imagine like a whole, you know, animated live action to animated, you know, series or something composed like that. I'm going to do a new one using the same technique. I'm going to do a new one. A song that I recorded called The Invisible Man. And it will follow from the end of that video

where the spaceship blows up to the next video, The Invisible Man. I mean, not to keep you too long or nerd out too much, but is that from the same sessions as the I'm going to pay you back single? Because I thought that song, you know, from your solo stuff, it sounds really interesting, kind of like a gang of four-ish element to it, like that harsh, like rock funk to it.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it did come from that period, The Invisible Man. Yeah. Nice. Well, we'll link the red LP in here. And I mean, the only thing I can say to our listeners, I don't think that you guys have any dates coming up, but if Divo plays live, do everything you can to go see them

because it is, as Will says, a religious experience. Well, you'll have to lobby Mark Motherspaw. Yes. You're preaching to the converted here. Yeah. Tweet at Mark. I don't know if he checks Twitter. Send letters to Mutato Musica or wherever his office is.

Yeah. Yeah. Don't harass him live because I certainly heard that he had enough trouble with that TikTok influencer house near his home. But Jerry, thank you so much for stopping by and talking to us. This has been a delight.

Hopefully, he'll talk to you more soon. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jerry. In the past, this information has been suppressed, but now it can be told. Every man, woman, and mutant on this planet shall know the truth about the evolution. The dead were all defaults.