With their silly costumes and their high-concept pokes at pop culture, Devo might appear nothing more than a big goof.
But behind the group’s antics, there’s a principle: de-evolution, the theory that mankind is moving backward, getting dumber and more infantile as the years go by. So what does that say about the hundreds of rabid fans who sold out the Riviera Friday night, all gathered to catch Devo long after its heyday and, one must assume, after several more years of de-evolution has taken its toll?
Society’s collective regressive state could be why the band affectionately calls its supporters “spuds” — likening its fans to an army of potato heads. Then again, such unlikely compliments may simply be another facet of Devo’s surrealist streak. Though nominally punk, Devo excelled at putting the pieces together differently than its peers, and the band’s set at the Riviera felt as fresh and novel as ever.
Standards of strangeness apparently haven’t changed that much over the past two decades.
Devo took the stage in bright yellow jumpsuits and its trademark upside-down red flower pot hats, looking like a nerdy hazmat team. Lurching into such frenetic classics as “Girl U Want,” “Uncontrollable Urge” and their deconstructionist robot rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,” the group inspired a wave of spastic dancing, even though much of the crowd matched the group in the gray hair and paunch department.
Devo’s not harboring any illusions of a comeback, though. The set consisted of songs largely from its 1978 debut “Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!” (the title’s a call-and-response exchange from the manic track “Jocko Homo”), plus several great subsequent hits and near-hits such as “Freedom of Choice,” “Whip It” and “Gates of Steel.” In fact, beat for beat, right down to the tearaway costumes that revealed even sillier tight black outfits, the night was virtually identical to the show-stealing set Devo played at Lollapalooza back in ’97.
Given the amount of fun Devo seemed to be having, the group could be forgiven for its strictly retro performance. This wasn’t nostalgia at work. It was a declaration of pride, a place and time for Devo and its devoted fans to demonstrate that, no, the band’s brief reign was not a dream. Sure, it was over in a blink, lasting not much longer than an hour, and singer Mark Mothersbaugh’s nightmarish masked and muumuu-clad appearance as the bizarre, baby-faced Booji Boy to sing “Beautiful World” felt like concert padding, especially as it stretched into a largely incomprehensible political rant. But when the lights came up, the hundreds of spuds were still there, cheering for more Devo.
