Joe (out of the meringue and into the junta) Fernbacher, Creem, 9/88
It’s like...
It’s as if...
I’ve just been jumped by a crazed horde of nerdedelic hodads, stoned out on Jolt cola and chemically-treated Fruit Roll-Ups, all waving day-glo hardbound copies of Tammy Faye Bakker’s latest book, Secrets Of Make-Up And Shopping For God.
Damaged, sure. Deranged, many claim so. I find myself launched into a violent series of hallucinations (you remember them! they were popular back in the 60s) in which I’m Zamfir playing a sonic-wipeout version of “The End” on a set of monolithic Pan Pipes in the middle of the L.A. Coliseum while being summarily flagellated by a herd of Phoebe Cates lookalikes cooing out less-than-syncopated versions of “The Horst Wessel Song,” and “Whip It” all under the wraith-like eyes of Divine, Edie the Egg Lady and Booji Boy--the Luke, Darth and Yoda of the Ummagumma set--a scene of sonic Grand Guignol to be savored, to be sure!
What is?
Y’see along time ago a ? was put to me. You know the ?, we all do. My answer was, naturally, “We are Devo...” and ever since I’ve been an ardent devolutionary. Soundtracking every one of my insipid devolutionary acts--like the time I filled a fire extinguisher with insecticide and tried to creepy crawl a Stryper concert (you figure it out) or the night I got mind-sushi’d and hatched a plot to steal the liver-splotch on Gorbachev’s forehead thinking it was a minaturized Latvian country full of repressed rockers desiring my extensive collection of Ultimate Spinach bootlegs or the...never mind--were the original posers of that aforementioned question, Devo.
Long time faves, Devo were the first to explore the acid-burned psyches of a quickly emerging class of technocrats who’ve long since devolved into what we now call either Yuppies or Dinks. A band ahead of time itself, let alone the proverbial “it’s time.” A band delightfully munching on the exposed nerves of Jocko Homo In Decline. A band that since the advent of the age of Entertainment Tonight, MTV, the Home Shopping Network and Wine Coolers has been seemingly lost in the shuffle of the psycho-continental shelves.
Anyway, the spuds’ latest Devodisc is like, totally Devo. At first when Devotoons like “Baby Doll” and “Disco Dancer” and “Happy Guy” came on I lifted my leg and reduced myself to piss all over ’em, but after further ear scans the subtle delightfulness came through. Why? Because they speak to the haunted spectres that’ve been lurking around America’s danker corners since the 70s became the 80s...ex-punkers now waxing nostalgic over bands like the Adverts, Sex Pistols and Gen X; ex-disco zombies waxing nostalgic about pattern dancing, easy sex, paint cans and the eventual comeback of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever II; ex-junkies now primetime crack princes waxing nostalgic about the previous three minutes, and the ex-offenders of the great rock’n’roll dream planting thermal charges up the dark anal passages of Kevin Seals and Carol Held-a-man-lately-no-guess-not ONLY in their funked-up jellied-to-the-max brains...
All of this superbly revs up on side two of Totally Devo, which puts you in an aural microwave and sets the timer for infinity. Beginning with “The Shadow,” with wisps of the Strangeloves on ’ludes and spectres of generational-emotional-national GUILT cum frustration on through the romantically bittersweet croon of “I’d Cry If You Died,” which could easily be an anthem for celebrity breakups and on into “Agitated,” which speaks to the frustration of the here and now with surgical precision. It’s a dangerous devolutionary anthem growing like a weed in a neatly ordered garden, completely unchecked. Y’know order as chaos, chaos as order. Neet idea. Gits me hard!
Rounding out this pop album for the Cafe Flesh set is “Man Turned Inside Out,” an ode to that big sell-out ID monster waiting to pounce on us all. And “Sexi-Luv,” and absolutely stun-wild peep into the reasons for the multi-million dollar erotic film industry (the last truly underground cultural art form left in the USA today and it’s simply people fucking--does THAT tell you something?) and the new plagues. God, they sing about the nostalgia of love and it makes frightening sense. That ’un segues hotly into “Blow-Up,” a Devotoon about...ta-da...frustration. There’s that word again folks--denial, paranoia and the serious lack of good luvin’ in the real world these days.
I guess this is about the most frustrating album I’ve ever heard and somehow, having all of that frustration slapped across your face like a live, wet carp is either therapy leading to entropy or therapy leading to more incendiary acts of devolution like: enjoying (without cynicism) rock’n’roll! The time IS ripe to go Totally Devo because, as Lord Buckley might say, were he alive today and many wish he were, “The kicks warehouse is getting mighty thin up front, ya dig...! Nineteen hundred and leapin’ eighty-eight!”
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