The Palladium (NYC)
Above: Devo flyer with an important message on the cover from General Boy, 1980
This show was unique, fantastic and crazy. These guys were pioneers of the rock video concept, but (at least earlier on) their own videos were too subversive and objectionable to be shown by MTV or other big media outlets. During the performance, images of the band playing on video were synchronized with the live performance onstage in an advanced way, for its day (Gerald Casale, in the interview noted below, mentions how they used a click track to keep everything in sync). There is a lot of interesting video material that coordinates with the music and creates humor and various effects.
Toward the end of the show Mark Mothersbaugh ran through the audience and climbed up a rope ladder - without a safety net - into the balcony area, all the while singing into his wireless mic.
There is a video online that shows the main set from this same tour. Its not great quality but interesting to check out. The more important thing is the broader collection of their music videos that was on vhs (We’re All Devo), with classic versions of many songs and a cameo appearance by Timothy Leary. Beginning with its opening sketch with Rod and Donut Rooter, the song Worried Man on that tape remains an all-time classic, and as relevant as ever. You know, it really does take a worried man.
Its been interesting to check out Mothersbaugh’s other work over the years since Devo, and to hear him and Casale discuss various topics in interviews. One I recommend is the Casale interview from 1995, an Oral History of Devo, where among many other things he explains that “De-evolution refuted the idea of linear progress, that people just keep getting better and better and better and more evolved toward some outside idea of perfection… we saw the opposite… ” (or what, at left is referred to as “a major attack of corkscrews in the brain”).