Devo - Q: Are We Not Men
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Free Music Notes for Q: Are We Not Men
Free Music Review: Look What The Rubber City Exported
Hit: 5 Stars
A band that dressed like spacemen, moved like robots and had a painting of pro golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez gracing the cover of its first full-length album. No wonder Devo had to escape northeast Ohio to find their musical niche in London during the "Year of Punk (1978)."
The album actually was the band's second release, as producer Brian Eno worked with Devo on a 12-inch EP that covered much of the same quirky frontier, but had what I feel is a far-surperior rendition of Jocko Homo.
And if Devo would have stayed based in Akron and gigging throughout northeast Ohio, the name would have probably been used for a junk shop band members could have opened up. It seemed that folks cleared out their attics and basements to pelt the band with a variety of unique objects as they attempted to rip through sets of original material. Space Junk, indeed!
The album remains a classic nearly 30 years, with each song delivering a perspective on society that is literally out of this world. The cover of The Rolling Stones' classic (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction comes as close as any group has to one-upping Mick and the boys.
The lost love in Come Back Jonee, with truly punk perspectives on life - Too Much Paranoias, Uncontrollable Urge - and a twisted ode to a person with Down syndrome - Mongoloid - even made the unruly fans in concert's past hail Devo when they returned to Akron to promote the album.
Devo was truly the rubber city rebels.
Free Music Review: fun, intense, and infectious
Hit: 5 Stars
This is quite simply one of the best albums you'll ever hear. It makes you laugh. It makes you think. It makes you dance like a spaz. It's got everything from punk-influenced rockers (Uncontrollable Urge, Too Much Paranoias) to herky-jerky New Wave insanity (Sloppy, Satisfaction), and it's even got a straight up 1950s death-pop number (Come Back Jonee), which seems like it could be the brother of "Leader of the Pack."
In addition, this album has two of Devo's best known songs- "Jocko Homo," which is essentially the band's manifesto, and "Mongoloid," a hilariously depressing song about a mentally handicapped man who fits in so well with society that nobody is aware of his condition.
All of these tracks, and the rest that I didn't name, are ones that you'll want to play over and over again. You'll probably drive your friends crazy quoting them and singing them. This is the kind of music that transcends entertainment and becomes a lifestyle.
If you're even slightly curious about Devo, buy this CD immediately. Then buy "Duty Now for the Future," "Freedom of Choice," "New Traditionalists," and "Oh No! It's Devo!"
After you've let those 5 albums sink in, buy their latest album called "Something for Everybody" and be amazed that they can still sound so vital 30 years later.
The only downside to taking the Devo plunge is that you will never be the same afterward... but that's not really such a bad thing is it?
Free Music Review: Simplistic, Spastic, Perfect and Brilliant
Hit: 5 Stars
The mere fact that, 25 years on, "Q: Are We Not Men" still sounds fresher and more ground breaking than anything the new millennium has yet to offer should tell you already just how essential this CD is. Be that as it may, the Men From Akron had a vision about the future of rock and a very twisted view about entertaining people. They came up with their delightfully automatonic stage show, complete with modified instruments and heavy on the keyboards, the goofy yellow uniforms and most importantly, the highly ironic worldview that, no matter how hard you tried, the world was going to hell in reverse gear.The DEVO world jerked like a factory line machine, and twitched like carbonated hormones inbred with misfired Chuck Berry licks. How else could their version of "Satisfaction" have ever been born if not for white guy frustration in an increasingly machinated world? To wit: "Mongoloid" is a man who is no different than the men who "wore a hat, had a job, and he brought home the bacon." The heroine of "Come Back Jonee" grieves for the boyfriend who wanted to become a rock legend but "ran head on into a semi, the guitar's all that's left now."
...No matter how you view this, it is still a perfect merger of discontent, vision, and Brian Eno's skillful coloring of Devo's earlier hardcore leanings. The visual sense that DEVO embodied helped turn the spudboys into stars, but with "Q: Are We Not Men?" however, DEVO crafted a musical statement for the ages.
Free Music Review: An utter masterpiece
Hit: 5 Stars
This is the greatest Devo album and one of the watershed albums of punk and new wave. These songs are perfect examples of using a bland facade and thus concealing a manic tempest underneath. What's the message? Destroy your parents and resist assimilation at every turn because time has slowed down and reversed. We are doomed to lives infinitely more empty than any others in human history simply because culture has filled every hole in our head with pablum... a process that is pleasurable if you embrace it completely.Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of energy in the songs that cover the gamut of neurotic symptoms -- the delicious rockabilly nerd-punk of "Come Back Jonee" or the compulsive twitching of "Uncontrollable Urge" (one of my favorite first tracks of all time). Excellent songwriting; Eno let them go and contributed only the smallest touches-- the subtle drum treatments and synth on "Mongoloid", for instance. The guitars are great and energetic: I christened the unique guitar style "jerkabilly". "Satisfaction" exhibits it most characteristically.
This is a great album in every respect. Concept album doesn't describe it at all. It is an organic and complete chronicle of the particular idiocy and alienation of our times. Get the "Devo Hardcore" on Rykodisk too-- it's great for comparison.
Free Music Review: I must repeat...
Hit: 5 Stars
Devo... my first favorite band. I wasn't particularly interested in music when I was a little kid, but in the late 70s I had taken to staying up late on Saturday nights to catch Mr. Bill, whom everyone at school was talking about at the time, on SNL. This was how I first came to experience Devo, performing live on that show. They hooked me right off the bat with their jerky robotic movements (what 9 year old doesn't love robots and pretend to be them?) and cool uniforms they wore on stage (yellow suits/black t shirts and shorts w/ red knee & elbow pads), more so than the actual music. But I did like their style and I never forgot about them. I remember when Whip It became a Top 10 hit song and thinking "Hey, that's the band I saw on TV once." A few years later when I was finally able to buy my first records, I bought all of Devo's albums (I think Oh No It's Devo had just been released), and they were THE ONLY records I listened to for some time. I loved them all, and still do... but now with the benefit of age, hindsight, and god-like wisdom, I see that Are We Not Men and their 2nd album, Duty Now For The Future, are leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of their catalog. Unfortunately Duty Now was never widely released on CD and is tough to find. But if you want some great early 'new wave' that more than stands the test of time, this is the ticket.