Published on Jun 29, 2000
The trouble with most one hit wonders is that you don’t know it
at the time. You hear this great new song on the radio, run out and
buy the album, only to discover that the rest of it is either
uninteresting or just more rewrites of the successful song, you
never listen to the album in its entirety again, and the owner of
the used record store you eventually try to sell it to laughs and
says “we’ve already got 17 of these that have been sitting in the
store for months.”
Devo is not one of those cases. They are, in fact, that variety
of one hit wonder along with The Tubes, Thomas Dolby, and Midnight
Oil, to name a few, whose “hit” wasn’t a bad song per se, but a
vastly watered down example of what their music was all about. True
Devo fans, of course, think that “Whip It” was perhaps the worst
thing that happened to them – after breaking into the top five in
the summer of 1980, it can be argued that the rest of Devo’s
musical output consisted largely of attempts to break into the top
five again. And while that’s not completely true, the real essence
of the innovative and experimental Devo died with the onset of the
’80s. The essential recordings of this oft-misunderstood Akron Ohio
outfit can be found on
Hardcore Devo volumes 1 and 2, both fascinating compilations
of their days as an independent Akron phenomenon,
Q: Are We Not Men, A: We Are Devo, their groundbreaking 1978
major label debut, and finally, their darkest, most overlooked, and
most complex album, 1979’s
Duty Now For The Future, which, Booji boys and girls, is
today’s topic of discussion.
While
Q: Are We Not Men? contained some disturbing thoughts, the
music itself was mostly upbeat. Not so with
Duty Now For The Future, the cover of which portrays a magic
square of animations of the band superimposed over bar codes,
immediately capturing the degeneration-of-society-into-machines
aesthetic that was the signature of early Devo. We’re hit with the
quick instrumental “Devo Corporate Anthem,” a one minute
quasi-patriotic march on a futuristic (well, ’70s faux-futuristic)
synthesizer. Side one continues with the frenetic punk rocker
“Clockout,” the loopy “Wiggly World,” and another instrumental,
“Timing X,” which features some wickedly tight playing, nearly
forcing us to take Devo seriously as a band.
Then you get to “Blockhead,” which appears to be a disco anthem
for a robot, and a perfect musical arrangement for one – a verse in
a danceable 11/8, an insistent-and-simple wah-wah guitar, and a
sing-along chorus – “Squared off / Eight corners / 90 degree angle
/ step straight ahead / snake eyes / blockhead!” The first side
closes with the distantly-spooky “Swelling Itching Brain,” in which
Devo has a “painful yellow headache.”
Side two contains more full-fledged songs than side one.
“Triumph Of The Will” is a love story for the de-evolutionized
future, with more of the plodding rhythm that the corporate anthem
introduced. “The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprise” is about as happy
as the album gets – but vocalist Bob Mothersbaugh sings it with
such a unique detachedness that it still fits in quite well. The
verses with nothing but a distorted guitar and a bass drum in this
song are one of the earliest examples of this I can think of.
Surprisingly, one of the centerpieces of the album turns out to
be a well-placed cover of Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man.” Well,
it’s not completely a cover – the verses have a different melody
and mostly different (and less sincere) words, such as “But after
the day has passed / I don’t get up off my ass”. And a James
Bond-like instrumental coda is added for effect. It’s a brilliant
rewrite of a song that deserved, but didn’t get, this kind of
overstatement in the first place.
“Secret Agent Man” sends the final section of the album into
overdrive. The Devo classic “Smart Patrol / Mr. DNA” comes right
afterwards and still sounds exciting and unique. Motherbsaugh’s
delivery is equal parts apocalyptic and ridiculous ; he repeats
“I’m tired of the soup de jour / I wanna end this prophylactic tour
/ ‘Fraid nobody around here understands my potato / Guess I’m a
spud boy looking for that real tomato” until the cows come home.
No, it makes little if any sense, but that’s vintage, abstract new
wave for you, take it or leave it. The manic “Red Eye” closes out
the album with the catchiest guitar hook Devo ever created (yes,
better than “Whip It”) and a prophetic statement of life on the go
that would become synonymous with the decade that was upon us at
the time.
One can imagine the surprise that Devo fans must have
expereienced back in 1979 upon first hearing the dark and
impersonal musings of some of these songs. For better or worse,
this record must have influenced much of the eerie side of ’80s
synth-pop. And although a better case can be made for
Q: Are We Not Men? as Devo’s definitive statement,
Duty Now For The Future is the record that contains the
band’s best actual music, and is the strongest case against Devo as
a mere novelty act. All lovers of classic new wave should own them
both.