Disco de Devo: “Devo Live: The Mongoloid Years”

Imagine if you will, sitting in your comfortable suburban home with a soda, when suddenly a giant spaceship lands in your front room and four men wearing panty hose over their heads jump out and commence to beat the sh** out of you with rusty synthesizers and lobotomized guitars. They then proceed to take turns getting it on with your girlfriend and raiding your fridge. Now imagine the musical equivalent of this scene and you will have the last twenty five minutes of the Mongoloid years, one of the most amazing albums of all time. Keeping with the de evolution concept, this album begins with a fairly tame, although high energy set at Max's Kansas City circa 1977 and devolves through a rougher 1975 set, finally arriving at deevolution ground zero, the post industrial, radioactive sludge that is Devo's first gig, Akron, 1974. From the moment the band takes the stage, it's obvious that they have come to ruin lives. Within fifteen minutes the audience is howling for their blood, and the set ends prematurely when the promoters shut off the power. Mass tension ensues, and in the far background you can hear promises of violence. And all this perpetrated by four inauspicious looking little nerds. Annoying? Yes. Offensive? Yes. Incredibly dissonant? Indeed. But for anyone who might have forgotten, this record will remind you of what punk was originally all about: Pi**ing people off. I can't make up my mind whether this is high art or some cosmic joke, but it's sodding brilliant.

If your looking for something like whip-it, don't look here. This album will either excite or enrage you. The best part is the concert from 1975, it's like a beautiful train wreck. Hearing the band do an angry version of "Jocko Homo" was the best part and having the audience of stoned hippies almost turn on them was another golden moment.

Worth the price of admission. Three live shows for the price of one, all of them remarkable. In typical Devo fashion, the album starts with the later show (1977 if I recall correctly) and moves backwards toward their more confrontational, primitive and punky days. Quality-wise, it's a mixed bag, but it's all well worth listening to, even if only to hear early Devo in their element. At the end of the album is one of their earliest shows, opening for Sun Ra. Let's just say that I don't think anybody was still there when Sun Ra was ready to perform; Devo gleefully clear the house with what must have seemed at the time to be bizarre alien noise, along with a healthy dose of insulting the audience. In true mongoloid fashion, the audience responds with threats of violence. If the spud fits...

When you thought you were safe from Devo, they fire off this compliation of early live shows. They were a ferocious unsigned live act. This CD shows the development of their songs and concepts. They perform all A list material with an in your face attitude. The tune Beulah was meant to annoy and provoke the audience, which they follow up with a long medly of Jocko Homo/I Need A Chick. They provoke and then follow up with a statement of purpose/Manifesto. These guys had guts!