Devo returns! Stifle that yawn and listen up!

CONTEST: Leave a comment with your favorite Devo song and a bit about why, and on Friday, July 30,  I’ll randomly select one person who will win a brand-new copy of Devo’s new CD, Something for Everyone.

So, I’m going to see Devo for the first time on Saturday. For most people, that qualifier — “first time” — wouldn’t be necessary. Not because they had seen the band before, but because it would be obvious that they hadn’t. It’s not like saying, “I’m going to see ‘Star Wars’ for the first time.” It’s akin to saying, “I’m going to check out some avant garde absurdist theater for the first time.” That’s something not everyone can say.

At one time, seeing Devo was probably exactly like seeing avant garde absurdist theater. In the band’s earliest days, it was as much a performance art act as it was a rock band. Its theories about “de-evolution,” its emphasis on the visual as much as the aural and the entire presentation, made the enterprise an extra-musical experience.

Back when that was the case, two of my close friends were obsessed with Devo. They had every limited-edition 7″ single, had read every magazine article and, of course, had their own energy domes (those are the flower-pot hats for the uninitiated). I listened as they espoused the tenets behind the band and played its music. Some of it was catchy, but I was (and remain) more a fan of guitars than synthesizers, so it largely passed me by.

By the time Devo had its hit with 1980′s “Whip It,” the wheels were starting to come off creatively. One could say that Devo itself was de-evolving, its music regressing toward the same sort of bland pap against which it stood in sharp relief a just a year or two before. By the time of the band’s last two albums before what was effectively a two-decade split, all traces of that which had made the band interesting — its ideology and orthodoxy — had been shed in the pursuit of music pedestrian enough to appeal to the masses. This, of course, failed. To succeed, Devo needed to be strange enough to catch the public’s attention and overwhelm its aversion to anything outside the norm. Watered down Devo was simply oddball, and thus, unappealing.

Fast forward 20 years, and Devo is back. I was vaguely aware of the band’s return, having seen information about the focus groups it was conducting to select the songs for its new album, the appropriately named Something for Everybody. But it wasn’t until the band scheduled the tour in support of the record — including a stop in Des Moines, my hometown — that the band and the new album really popped onto my radar. After some not-so-gentle nudging from those longtime fanboy friends, I decided I should go with them to see the band at least once in my life. I probably know more about Devo and its music than any other non-fan in the world, and figured I should go all the way and experience it live.

A funny thing happened on the way to buying that ticket. I listened to the new album a handful of times, then went back and listened to the rest of the band’s back catalog. What did I find? First, the indoctrination from my friends in my youth took hold more deeply than I realized. I knew most of these songs, even the deep album cuts, even though I only ever owned one Devo album in my life (1984′s subpar Shout). Even more to the point, I liked some of them… quite a few of them, actually. Listening led to reading, and with the context and completeness afforded by 20-30 years of hindsight, I was hovering somewhere between interested and fascinated.

It wasn’t until listening to some mid-period R.E.M. today that I fully understood why. I got into R.E.M. as soon as I heard the band, entranced by the mystery, edginess and catchiness of the music. I remain a rabid fan and apologist (for everything but Around the Sun), but am certainly more fervent about the early work than what came later. Beyond the relative quality of the music from those two eras, I can chalk it up to two things: The sense of mystery in the early work, but also the sense of urgency. Yes, it was fun to listen to Michael Stipe through headphones again and again and try to discern what he was singing. But it was also bracing to put on this music and feel — even if I couldn’t have articulated it at the time — that these four guys had to get these songs out. They didn’t necessarily have a message to get out (that came later, with sometimes deleterious affect), but they simply needed to play, like a jogger chomping at the bit to hit the road the first sunny day after a blizzard.

For Devo, regardless of whether you bought the whole “de-evolution” argument (or if the members of the band truly did, for that matter), they made you believe that they did and that they were compelled to spread the word. All of the trappings threatened to overshadow the music, but taken as a package, it was entertaining and enlightening, and a hell of a lot more interesting that nearly everything else happening in 1978-82. When they lost that sense of urgency (or, in the parlance of the band itself, the “uncontrollable urge”) to communicate, and allowed it to be replaced with the desire to create product, things went south quickly.

With Something for Everybody, they are still in product-creation mode rather than compelled-to communicate mode (the title being the first giveaway), but there is enough of the latter in the mix to leaven the former. What they predicted two or three decades ago has come true, as any look at celebrity culture will prove, and now they’re here not to say “I told you so,” but, “OK, what do we do now and how can we capitalize?”

The result is the band’s best record since 1982′s Oh No, It’s Devo! We didn’t know how much we missed Devo, or more to the point, how much we needed them. Now that they’re back, I for one am finally ready to pay attention.