A straight shot west out of Boston on I-90 will carry you, in two hours or less, to Western Massachusetts, where the country still looks like it did twenty or even 40 years ago: college towns, I-91 tracing the same lazy ladder from Springfield up through Holyoke and Northampton, Amherst and Deerfield. Out there it's taken for granted that the houses will be drafty, the winters uniformly long, and that, on any given trip to the local supermarket, one might spot Thurston or Lou or Kim or J, on-and-off locals for more than twenty years. {audio}http://www.archive.org/download/DinosaurJrDrawings/07Drawerings_64kb.mp3{/audio} ... Drawerings Read More ...
By way of decrying a society that left its citizens unbearably restrained, Edith Wharton describes how in New York in the 1870s, women would order dresses from their Paris dressmakers and then leave them in tissue paper at least two years before wearing them in public; the thought of showing them "in advance of the fashion" was unforgivably vulgar. Social life has changed, but cultural life seems just as restricted now – even Animal Collective are held back by trends that seem a couple of years old (and that they helped to invent). When I think back on 2009, I’ll first remember how our impoverished aesthetic generation repeatedly scraped the resin from the cultural trash barrel. Every second person is wearing neon leggings, and the ones who aren’t rock a ‘70s aesthetic, with high-waisted jeans and moccasins. Christmas sweaters are getting impossible to find at the thrift store. Ska revival. Garage rock revival. It never ends. Read More ...
For just over 10 years, London's Guapo has been working in the world of avant and progressive rock. The band's past is a bit hard to track with its numerous lineup changes and guest musicians. The most recent change in roster was the resignation of Matthew Thompson, the founding member of Guapo, which occurred just before the release of 2005's Black Oni. The departure of Thompson has left Guapo with percussionist David Smith and multi-instrumentalist Daniel O'Sullivan. Though O'Sullivan is by no means a founding member of the band, but he was essential in honing the sound on Guapo's last two LPs: Five Suns and Black Oni. These two albums have been pivotal in building Guapo's following of fans, so it's hard not to credit O'Sullivan as an asset to the band.... {audio}http://www.neurotrecordings.com/artists/guapo/audio/Guapo-The%20Selenotrope.mp3 {/audio} ... The Selenotrope Read More ...
Basic Atari Teenage Riot iPhone app philosophy by Alec Empire + London gig+ 4CD, 1DVD free download
The free iPhone app features all ATR albums and songs, all videos, a photo archive, bio, news updates and also a ‘Riotsounds Produce Riots’ audioplayer. This audio player includes all the sounds/WAV files that ATR used at the May 1st 1999 demonstration (very low sub basses, square waves, noise sounds which trigger hysteria and panic within the audience) & would make them available to every political activisit out there. The idea being that you can hook up your iPhone to a speaker system if there is a rally: Apple/iTunes is arguing that they still need to investigate further, because it is legally a grey area and ATR has been indexed in Germany before (censored). Read More ...
The Swans - THIS IS NOT A REUNION - Message From Gira + free discography download (20 CDs)
Michael Gira's re-activated Swans will be undertaking their first U.S. performances in 13 years, celebrating the Fall release of the first new Swans album since Soundtracks For The Blind (1997). The album was recorded by Jason LeFarge at Seizure's Palace in Brooklyn and is currently be remixed by Gira with Bryce Goggin (Antony & The Johnsons, Akron/Family) at Trout Recordings. Read More ...
The Ex are one of those rare bands that, despite being around for 25 years, have neither gone soft nor stagnated. The 23 tracks on this album all date from their first decade of existence (1980-1990), and if you compare it with recent milestones like Starter Alternator and Turn, you’ll see that while many of the Ex’s virtues are long standing, much has changed. The Ex grew out of Amsterdam’s once-fertile squatters’ subculture, and have always been politically conscious; Singles. Period. includes screeds that oppose American cultural hegemony, Dutch apathy, and eugenics. Their most recent album Turn likewise includes protests against globalization, consumerism, and cultural erosion, but its lyrics are quite nuanced and in touch with the grey areas of the issues when compared with the black and white prescription of 1981’s “Weapons For El Salvador”: .............. {audio}http://www.theex.nl/mp3/The%20Ex%20-%20Trash.mp3{/audio} ... Trash Read More ...
Dirty HC Punk explosion - Bristol scene Rise up + Disorder 9 free CDs
From The Cortinas to Lunatic Fringe and Disorder, Bristol had a huge Punk scene that has influenced, affected and stimulated a vast range of artists that operate in the city. Many of these artists produce music that wouldn’t necessarily suggest a Punk heritage but scratch beneath the surface of a lot of the major players in the Bristol milieu and you will find a fondness for the times of `spikey barnets’, limited musical ability, a `F*** You’ attitude and disrespect for the music industry and its poseur hierarchy. Read More ...
A live album can be many things: a candid snapshot, a footnote to a scene, or even just a thrifty alternative to studio time. Antlers, a collection of live Bastro recordings from 1991, is the rarest kind of live album: it illuminates a side of the band that, in turn, casts their previous work in a new light as well.“1991 has been called the year that punk broke. Some of it broke into the mainstream, but some broke into more irregular shards.” David Grubbs’s observation, from the liner notes to Antlers, could also describe the varied musical paths that led from his former band Squirrel Bait to the disparate ’90s groups he and his ex-bandmates went on to found: Slint, Palace Brothers, King Kong, Bitch Magnet, the For Carnation, Tortoise, and of course, Bastro. Read More ...
Japan’s Annual Penis Festival – Celebrates Fertility
KOMAKI, Japan — It's springtime in Japan and that means one thing. Actually, two things. Penis festivals and vagina festivals. It may sound like a sophomoric gag. But these are folk rites going back at least 1,500 years, into Japan's agricultural past. They're held to ensure a good harvest and promote baby-making. Maybe they should hold more such festivals. Japan has one of the world's lowest birthrates (1.37 children per woman), which experts blame on stagnant incomes and changing gender relations. Read More ...
Black-lip Rattail ............ These sorts of rattails feed in the muddy seafloor by gliding along head down and tail up, powered by gentle undulations of a long fin under the tail. The triangular head has sensory cells underneath that help detect animals buried in the mud or sand. The common name comes from the black edges around the mouth. Read More ...
All world secret underground bases build for space travelers
The following material comes from people who know the Dulce (underground) base exists. They are people who worked in the labs; abductees taken to the base; people who assisted in the construction; intelligence personal (NSA,CIA,FBI ... ect.) and UFO / inner-earth researchers. This information is meant for those who are seriously interested in the dulce base. for your own protection be advised to “use caution” while investigating this complex.Does a strange world exist beneath our feet? Strange legends have persisted for centuries about the mysterious cavern world and the equally strange beings who inhabit it. More UFOlogists have considered the possibility that UFOs may be emanating from subterranean bases, that UFO aliens have constructed these bases to carry out various missions involving Earth or humans. Read More ...
"I forgot to remember to forget," Elvis Presley sang in 1955. I know that it was 1955 because I just Googled the title and clicked on the link to the Wikipedia entry for the song. How cool is that? Not long ago, I would have had to actually remember that Elvis recorded the song as part of his monumental Sun Records sessions that year. Then I would have had to flip through a set of histories of blues and country that sit on the shelf behind me. It might have taken five minutes to do what I did in five seconds. I almost don't need my own memory any more. That strikes many of us as a good thing: the costs low, the benefits high. We can be much more efficient and comprehensive now that a teeming collection of documents sits just a few keystrokes away. Read More ...
These days, with all the pundits preaching doom and the impending collapse of society into some kind of Mad Max style wasteland, it's easy for us to imagine that the economy is as unhealthy as it's ever been. But any historian would give you a hard backhanded smack for even saying that out loud. History is full of economic idiocy, and here are five economic collapses that make 2010 feel like the Renaissance. Read More ...
Island of Ghosts: Hashima Island - Japan’s rotting metropolis
Hashima, an island located in Nagasaki Bay, is better known as Warship Island (Gunkanshima). The island was inhabited until the end of the 19th century, when it was discovered that the ground below it held tons of coal. The island soon became a center of a major mining complex owned by Mitsubishi Corporation. As the complex expanded, rock brought out of the shafts was used to artificially expand the island. Seawalls created in this expansion turned Hashima into the monstrous looking Gunkanshima; its artificial appearance makes it looks more like a battleship than an island. Read More ...
Dreamachine - stroboscopic flicker device enter you to a hypnagogic state - try it right here in your browser
The dreamachine (or dream machine) is a stroboscopic flicker device that produces visual stimuli. Artist Brion Gysin and William Burroughs's "systems adviser" Ian Sommerville created the dreamachine after reading William Grey Walter's book, The Living Brain. In its original form, a dreamachine is made from a cylinder with slits cut in the sides. The cylinder is placed on a record turntable and rotated at 78 or 45 revolutions per minute. A light bulb is suspended in the center of the cylinder and the rotation speed allows the light to come out from the holes at a constant frequency of between 8 and 13 pulses per second. This frequency range corresponds to alpha waves, electrical oscillations normally present in the human brain while relaxing. Read More ...
The Peyote Way Church of God - believe that the Holy Sacrament Peyote can lead an individual toward a more spiritual life
The Peyote Way Church of God is a non-sectarian, multicultural, experiential, Peyotist organization located in southeastern Arizona, in the remote Aravaipa wilderness. It is not affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Native American Church, or any other religious organizations, though we do accept people from all faiths. Church membership is open to all races. We encourage individuals to create their own rituals as they become acquainted with the great mystery. We believe that the Holy Sacrament Peyote, when taken according to our sacramental procedure and combined with a holistic lifestyle (see Word of Wisdom), can lead an individual toward a more spiritual life. Peyote is currently listed as a controlled substance and its religious use is protected by Federal law only for Native American members of the Native American Church. Read More ...
The Marijuana Conspiracy - The Real Reason Hemp is Illegal
MARIJUANA is DANGEROUS. Pot is NOT harmful to the human body or mind. Marijuana does NOT pose a threat to the general public. Marijuana is very much a danger to the oil companies, alcohol, tobacco industries and a large number of chemical corporations. Various big businesses, with plenty of dollars and influence, have suppressed the truth from the people. The truth is if marijuana was utilized for its vast array of commercial products, it would create an industrial atomic bomb! Entrepreneurs have not been educated on the product potential of pot. The super rich have conspired to spread misinformation about an extremely versatile plant that, if used properly, would ruin their companies. Read More ...
Learn How to Pronounce the Iceland Volcano Eyjafjallajokull and remember; When He Erupted In 1821, it lasted 2 years
The last time Eyjafjallajökull erupted, it lasted 2 years stretching from 1821-1823. It also erupted in 920 and 1612. Eyjafjallajökull's eruption usually precedes an eruption for another Icelandic volcano called Katla, as it did in 1823. Katla's eruptions are usually more violent than Eyjafjallajökul's. Due to the second activity on Eyjafjallajökull volcano since April 14, there are thousands of flights have been cancelled not only in Europe but also some flights from Asia, America and other continents. More over, it was also reportedly more than ten thousands of air travelers still stranded after a plume of ash cloud spreading across thousands of miles. No need to repeat the same news in every single post, actually there’s an interesting thing from the Iceland volcano’s name Eyjafjallajokull. Pronunciation is so difficult for some of us. Even, many people still don’t know what’s the right pronunciation of Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Did you know that? Read More ...
The Drivers Of Tropical Deforestation Are Changing
A shift from poverty-driven to industry-driven deforestation threatens the world's tropical forests but offers new opportunities for conservation, according to an article coauthored by William Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. "New Strategies for Conserving Tropical Forests" will be featured in the September issue of the leading journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution. Rhett Butler of Mongabay.com, a leading tropical-forest Web site, and Laurance argue that the sharp increase in deforestation by big corporations provides environmental lobby groups with clear, identifiable targets that can be pressured to be more responsive to environmental concerns. Read More ...
The CIA and the Nazis - Declassified archives document ties between CIA and Nazis - Where Is Hitler?!
The US national archives released some 27,000 pages of secret records documenting the CIA’s Cold War relations with former German Nazi Party members and officials. The files reveal numerous cases of German Nazis, some clearly guilty of war crimes, receiving funds, weapons and employment from the CIA. They also demonstrate that US intelligence agencies deliberately refrained from disclosing information about the whereabouts of Adolf Eichmann in order to protect Washington’s allies in the post-war West German government headed by Christian Democratic leader Konrad Adenauer. Eichmann, who had sent millions to their deaths while coordinating the Nazis’ “final solution” campaign to exterminate European Jewry, went into hiding in Buenos Aires after the fall of the Third Reich. Read More ...
A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution. They call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains. East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilization. And under our feet, according to archeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot—the exact spot—where humans began that ascent. Read More ...
The international community has come out in force to condemn and declare war on the Somali fishermen pirates, while discreetly protecting the illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fleets from around the world that have been poaching and dumping toxic waste in Somali waters since the fall of the Somali government eighteen years ago. In 1991, when the government of Somalia collapsed, foreign interests seized the opportunity to begin looting the country’s food supply and using the country’s unguarded waters as a dumping ground for nuclear and other toxic waste. Read More ...
Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use. There are one billion squatters globally, that is, about one in every six people on the planet. Yet, according to Kesia Reeve, "squatting is largely absent from policy and academic debate and is rarely conceptualized, as a problem, as a symptom, or as a social or housing movement. In many countries, squatting is in itself a crime; in others, it is only seen as a civil conflict between the owner and the occupants. "Squatters are usually portrayed as worthless scroungers hell-bent on disrupting society." Property law and the state have traditionally favored the property owner. However, in many cases where squatters had de facto ownership, laws have been changed to legitimize their status. Read More ...
9/11 has inspired a myriad of memorials who are scattered all across America. Some of them are of questionable taste, others contain strange occult symbolism while others simply piss people off. Here’s the five most offensive. Read More ...
The World's First Commercial Brain-Computer Interface + history of BCI
A brain–computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain–machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a brain and an external device. BCIs are often aimed at assisting, augmenting or repairing human cognitive or sensory-motor functions. Research on BCIs began in the 1970s at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) under a grant from the National Science Foundation, followed by a contract from DARPA. The papers published after this research also mark the first appearance of the expression brain–computer interface in scientific literature. Read More ...
Seven theories of everything that pretend to describe the fundamental nature of the universe
We still don't have a theory that describes the fundamental nature of the universe, but there are plenty of candidates.
The "theory of everything" is one of the most cherished dreams of science. If it is ever discovered, it will describe the workings of the universe at the most fundamental level and thus encompass our entire understanding of nature. It would also answer such enduring puzzles as what dark matter is, the reason time flows in only one direction and how gravity works. Small wonder that Stephen Hawking famously said that such a theory would be "the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God". But theologians needn't lose too much sleep just yet. Despite decades of effort, progress has been slow. Rather than one or two rival theories whose merits can be judged against the evidence, there is a profusion of candidates and precious few clues as to which (if any) might turn out to be correct. Read More ...
The Secrets of Coral Castle and pyramids EXPLAINED by Leedskalnin's Magnetic Current theory
Coral Castle doesn't look much like a castle, but that hasn't discouraged generations of tourists from wanting to see it. That's because it was built by one man, Ed Leedskalnin, a Latvian immigrant who single-handedly and mysteriously excavated, carved, and erected over 2.2 million pounds of coral rock to build this place, even though he stood only five feet tall and weighed a mere 100 pounds. Ed was as secretive as he was misguided. He never told anyone how he carved and set into place the walls, gates, monoliths, and moon crescents that make up much of his Castle. Some of these blocks weigh as much as 30 tons. Ed often worked at night, by lantern light, so that no one could see him. He used only tools that he fashioned himself from wrecks in an auto junkyard. Read More ...
The T2K Experiment - From Tokai To Kamioka - Where is the anti-matter?
From the beginning of 2010, the T2K experiment will fire a beam of muon-neutrinos from Tokai on Japan's east coast, 300km accross the country to a detector at Kamioka. It hopes to investigate the phenomenon of "neutrino oscillations" by looking for "muon neutrinos" oscillating into "electron neutrinos". A million pound detector has been built at the University of Warwick as part of a vital experiment to investigate fundamental particles - neutrinos. Read More ...
The giant ALICE detector is already underway at CERN, and researchers are scrambling to add an electromagnetic calorimeter to capture jet-quenching, the newest way to look inside the quark-gluon plasma — the hot, dense state of matter that filled the earliest universe, which the Large Hadron Collider will soon recreate by slamming lead nuclei into one another. CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is known mainly as the accelerator that will soon begin searching for the Higgs particle, and other new physics, in proton collisions at unprecedented energies — up to 14 TeV (14 trillion electron volts) at the center of mass — and with unprecedented beam intensities. But the same machine will also collide massive nuclei, specifically lead ions, to energies never achieved before in the laboratory. Read More ...
Vadim Chernobrov & Russian secrets experiments with time machines
A disturbing story in the March, 2005. 1 issue of Pravda suggests that the U. S. Government is working on the discovery of a mysterious point over the South Pole that may be a passageway backward in time. According to the article, some American and British scientists working in Antarctica on January 27, 1995, noticed a spinning gray fog in the sky over the pole. U. S. physicist Mariann McLein said at first they believed it to be some kind of sandstorm. But after a while they noticed that the fog did not change its form and did not move so they decided to investigate. Read More ...
If you're trying to buy happiness, you'd be better off putting your money toward a tropical island get-away than a new computer, a new study suggests. The results show that people's satisfaction with their life-experience purchases — anything from seeing a movie to going on a vacation — tends to start out high and go up over time. On the other hand, although they might be initially happy with that shiny new iPhone or the latest in fashion, their satisfaction with these items wanes with time. The findings, based on eight separate studies, agree with previous research showing that experience-related buys lead to more happiness for the consumer. But the current work provides some insight into why. Read More ...
It's not just a good idea, it's the law: 186,287 miles per second. The fact that sound waves travel at a finite speed--roughly 330 meters per second--has been known since ancient times. It's obvious, really, when you stand back a ways and observe the falling of a tree or the clapping of a pair of hands, and the sound arrives noticeably later than the sight itself. The fact that light waves also travel at finite speed is much harder to notice, because that speed is almost a million times faster. But by the end of the Renaissance, astronomers--viewing events much more distant than a few hundred meters--had begun to suspect the truth. Read More ...
It was nearly the end of WWII. At that same time, scientist Viktor Schauberger worked on a secret project. Johannes Kepler, whose ideas Schauberger followed, had knowledge of the secret teachings of Pythagoras that had been adopted and kept secret. It was the knowledge of Implosion (in this case the utilization of the potential of the inner worlds in the outer world). Hitler knew - as did the Thule and Vril people - that the divine principle was always constructive. A technology however that is based on explosion and therefore is destructive runs against the divine principle. Thus they wanted to create a technology based on Implosion. Read More ...
The Size Of Our World or How Insignificant the Earth Really Is in the Universe
Compared to you and me, the Earth is really big. But compared to Jupiter and the Sun, the Earth is pretty tiny. There are many ways we can measure the size of the Earth. Let's look at how big the Earth is, and then compare it to other objects in the Solar System. The diameter of the Earth is 12,742 km. In other words, if you dug a hole down into the Earth, passed through the center of the Earth, and came out the other side, you would have dug a hole 12,742 km deep (on average). That's about 4 times longer than the diameter of the Moon. Read More ...
Strange Images from Space - Photos&videos of the Bizarre in Our Universe
Some weird and unusual objects are floating around in the cosmos. Space is always serving up something new, unusual, and unexpected. Here are images and explanations of obejcts that have amazed and delighted astronomers. Read More ...
Mysterious Radio Waves from Unknown Object in M82 Galaxy
There is something strange is lurking in the galactic neighborhood. An unknown object in galaxy M82 12 million light-years away has started sending out radio waves, and the emission does not look like anything seen anywhere in the universe before except perhaps by Ford Prefect. M82 is starburst galaxy five times as bright as the Milky Way and one hundred times as bright as our galaxy's center. "We don't know what it is," says co-discoverer Tom Muxlow of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics near Macclesfield, UK. But its apparent sideways velocity is four times the speed of light. This "superluminal" motion occurs usually in high-speed jets of material bursting out by black holes. Read More ...
Unsettled Mechanism of Supernova Detonation Gets a New Twist
Type Ia supernovae, often used to calibrate cosmological measurements, may arise from merging white dwarfs, after all
When stellar cataclysms known as type Ia supernovae flare up far across the universe, their brightness and consistency allow astronomers to use them as so-called standard candles to measure cosmological distances. Just over a decade ago, two teams used the supernovae to show that the universe is accelerating in its expansion due to the influence of dark energy, a shocking discovery that thrust type Ia supernovae into the astrophysical limelight. But how exactly did these cosmic mileposts come to be? Read More ...
Black Prince, alien space probe, orbits Earth watching humans
Alexander Kazantsev, a Soviet author of sci-fi books, once said that a mysterious “unaccounted” satellite called Black Prince was spinning around Earth. The writer believed the object might be an alien probe, a messenger from extraterrestrial civilizations. Some people including scientists paid attention to the writer’s hypothesis.U.S. astrophysicist Ronald Bracewell was the first to take the hypothesis seriously. In 1960, he published a study to back his conclusions with data of practical radio engineering. Read More ...
Secret Robotic Space Plane Launched By US Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) has launched a secret space plane into orbit, carried in the nose of an Atlas 5 rocket. The USAF is not calling the X-37B a weapon or anything else, and the classified mission was broadcast live, but only for several minutes into the flight. The plane, built by Boeing, was originally part of a NASA programme but was later abandoned and turned over to a secretive USAF unit. There are no details on how much it costs or when it is coming back to earth, but when it does return the unmanned craft will land itself, using the onboard autopilot. Read More ...
Hubble telescope captures image of mysterious x-shaped object in space
Is that a smashed comet or an X-Wing fighter? Scientists are offering up their own theories as to what created the striking star-inspired image, which was captured by NASA's Hubble telescope in January. "Two small and previously unknown asteroids recently collided, creating a shower of debris that is being swept back into a tail from the collision site by the pressure of sunlight," said principal investigator David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles. Read More ...
All Radio music can download from "free music albums"
Homeinterview Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are STILL DEVO!
Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are STILL DEVO!
DEVO at Olympic
It’s easy to forget today just what a revelation DEVO’s first album was when it came out. For a lot of people in those days, seeing the band on Saturday Night Live on October 14th 1978 (Fred Willard was the host!) was akin to the previous generation seeing The Beatles live on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. DEVO’s appearance probably launched a thousand bands that night. It literally gave me a reason to live. The soul-less imitation of “rock and roll” we were force fed in the Ohio suburbs in those days was pretty much Muzak with a beat. Then along came DEVO and nothing was ever the same again.
In 1980 they even cracked the mainstream with their top ten hit Whip It. But just a few short years later their career took several wrong turns, including co-writing a song with would-be Reagan-assassin John Hinkley Jr. and signing with a label they likened to the Titanic the way every band on it sank without a trace. In 1995, though, a funny thing happened. Girl U Want, an obscure album track from the same LP that had produced Whip It was featured in the movie Tank Girl and all of a sudden the kids wanted to know about DEVO. The band once again donned their trademark yellow industrial waste clean-up suits (originally purchased at the MF Murdock Janitorial Supply Company in Akron, Ohio) and showed them what de-evolution was all about. For the past 14 years DEVO have been playing shows consisting mainly of their earliest material.
But now something new is on the horizon. Their first and third albums are at long last available in re-mastered versions and DEVO is on the road promoting these with a series of two-night stands across America playing the first LP in its entirety on the first night and the third LP the following evening. But what’s even more exciting DEVO is recording their first album of new material since 1990’s Smooth Noodle Maps. The results are set to come out some time next year with an even more extensive tour.
The new wave band, who have recently been working on new material produced by Santigold, will play at the Whistler Medals Plaza venue on February 22, with the performance set to be broadcast on NBC. Speaking about the gig, bandmember Jerry Casale said he was "really excited to have the opportunity to let everyone know that De-evolution is real!"
Singer Mark Mothersbaugh, writing under his alias Booji Boy Oxo, hinted that fans could expect to hear new material from the band at the gig. "Now, more than ever before, it is time to disobey the mob and think for ourselves," he explained, adding that the band are aiming "to remind people that biology is destiny, and De-evolution is real! We are back with inspirational tomes of truth and neuro-simpatico sonic nuggets for the entire world, not just our species!"
DEVO's performance is part of the Whistler Victory Ceremonies Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site
Interview
There was a peculiar notion going around my high school in the white bread and meatloaf suburb of Akron, Ohio where I grew up that said that bands like DEVO were “wimp rock.” But seeing DEVO at the Music Box Theater in Hollywood where I had the privilege of sitting in on the final rehearsal for their current tour gave the lie to that. Even with several members of the band having passed sixty years old and the rest closing in quick, DEVO rocks like no other band on Planet Earth. I spoke to DEVO’s front man and fellow Akron-ite Mark Mothersbaugh about all this stuff and about getting spit on by John Lennon.
Brad Warner: I’m about ten years younger than you and I grew up near Akron in Wadsworth, Ohio… Mark Mothersbaugh: Oh! Where are you now? BW: Right now I’m in St. Paul. But I live in Santa Monica. MM: You made it out at least! BW: Seeing you guys on Saturday Night Live in 1978 was a big deal for me. I’d already started playing guitar at the time. But I thought rock music was over. I thought I was working in a dead art form. And DEVO was something that was cool again. It really meant a lot to me. MM: Well thank you.
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site BW: So I’m pretty excited that you guys are doing a tour and you’re reissuing the first album and Freedom of Choice. Is that right? MM: Affirmative. They’ll probably reissue more of the catalogue. Those are just two that are linked up with some shows we’re gonna do. BW: That’s cool. That first album I actually wore out. It got to where the record sounded like shit because I’d played it so many times. So what’s different about this new version? Is it re-mastered? MM: Now that it’s almost absurd to put out records, they have some little extras that come with it. I think even the regular one’s gonna be yellow vinyl and red vinyl. They’re very high quality vinyl compared to what they used to make records out of in the old days. So they’re definitely collector’s discs. And the packages are enhanced. On some of them you can get different versions of it, DVD footage and stuff like that. (NOTE: The CD reissue of the first album contains a bonus live recording of the entire album played at London’s HMV Forum in May, 2009. The CD reissue of Freedom of Choice adds the contents of the DEVO-Live EP originally released in 1980 shortly after the LP. You can also order an Ultra Devo-luxe edition from their website that contains both re-mastered CDs, plus 2 bonus DVDs and a colored vinyl single.)
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site BW: Sounds great. So why are you doing this now? MM: I think for DEVO we’ve decided that we’re shocked that no one came along to take our place. So we have to go back out there and start talking about de-evolution again and remind people what’s really wrong on planet Earth. So early next year there will be new music coming out. But for the uninitiated and those who were somewhere else when it happened we’re putting out some of the essential listening material to help bring them up to speed. And we’re doing shows to accompany the releases in a number of cities around the US. We’re literally doing album one on the first night starting on side one track one of the vinyl. Almost like you’re hearing live vinyl. We’ll play through the first side of the album and we’ll flip over and play the second side of the album. BW: Cool!
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site MM: And the next night we do the same thing with Freedom of Choice. If you would’ve asked me a year ago if that sounds like I good idea I would’ve said that doesn’t sound like a great live show. What changed my mind was last May we played All Tomorrow’s Parties in London at the Forum and we did album one. I just thought, we never put them in this order and that vinyl was supposed to be act one and act two of a listening experience. It doesn’t have the same build as a live show. It’s something different. BW: Right. MM: I thought this is gonna have weird energy to it. But it was really great! It’s not a new concept. All Tomorrow’s Parties started a long time ago. And a lot of people are doing their albums live. BW: Yeah, I saw Brian Wilson do Pet Sounds live. MM: There’s a lot of people doing that. Now I finally understand it. I had never thought about it. But once I heard us do it I could think of a couple dozen bands I’d love to hear do their first album live. It made me think of when DEVO played Inland Invasion a few years ago. And Billy Idol came out and he played "White Wedding" and "Rebel Yell" and everybody was going crazy. Then he said, “Now here’s my new album!” And everybody’s kinda like… the wind went out of the sails. And the audience was kind of polite. Then after about 40 minutes of that he played "Dancing With Myself" and everybody went crazy again.
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site BW: That’s gotta be a weird experience, though. Cuz for you or for him it’s like this is what you did 20 years ago and it must not seem that relevant. But if the audience is into it… MM: Yeah. But there are some things about doing that that are interesting. We play every year, though. The last 13 years we’ve done festivals, a lot of European and Asian shows, Australian shows, and a lot in the US. We played Lalapalooza a few times back like ten years ago. We’d do like three weeks a year, four weeks a year at the most and then that was it. BW: And this time you’re putting it back together. MM: Yeah. But there is an element where you’re going, I remember the first time we put on these yellow suits. I proudly felt like I was a McDonald’s cheeseburger in that yellow plastic box. And now 30 or 35 years later, I still feel like a McDonald’s cheeseburger. But now maybe it’s like a double patty cheeseburger! BW: I was gonna ask you about that. Cuz it kind of surprised me. I was living in Japan in 1996 and I read about you guys putting on the yellow suits again and that was the last thing I ever expected to see DEVO do. But on the other hand it sort of made sense. Cuz you guys were never anti-commercial as such. You were trying to do it your own way. MM: In defense of that, there aren’t any other bands that come to mind that all wear plastic yellow suits unless they’re DEVO tribute bands. BW: That’s true! MM: Everybody wears blue jeans. That’s the uniform of the last 50 years. People wear it and they don’t even know they’re wearing a uniform, but they are. That is the uniform. I think our yellow suits, when people call ‘em a uniform it makes me smile. Because at least ours was creative. We created it ourselves as opposed to just buying into Levi’s ads. DEVO wasn’t really about being sexy. We weren’t really anti-style. But style meant something totally different to us. BW: Sure. That’s pretty evident. MM: We wanted to look like a machine. We wanted to look like a team. At the time it was like Kenny Rogers… BW: I remember! God, that was awful. Talk about denim uniforms! MM: Or it was like Elton John and his band, or Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. We wanted to look like parts of a machine on stage. We were more influenced by Agit Prop from Germany and Europe in the late 20s and 30s and Bauhaus, geometric shapes and the Italian Futurists and the Russian Suprematists. We were interested in pure art. And the yellow suits always felt to us like we were art. We thought we were in some ways much less commercial than anybody else because of that. BW: Yeah. It’s funny that it became commercial. That’s interesting to me. You did "Whip It" and all of a sudden everybody was into it. But there was always that problem of did the mass audience really get it. Or did it even matter if they got it? There was that whole thing about "Whip It" being taken as sexual innuendo and all that.
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site MM: It’s only fitting that that would be the song that was most remembered in the United States and had the most airwave success. But that’s OK. People by nature don’t come to art or music to get educated or to get vitamins. They’re there cuz they’re trying to escape from the world. But DEVO managed to sneak in some vitamin-enriched information as a side feature and that was kinda good. Some people probably never got it and never would get it. But there were always those kids out there who wanted to know what it means. You might’ve been a fan of some band like that when you were a kid. Where you look at the album cover for every bit of information you can get. You’re looking for every clue. The posturing in the photographs, the type that’s picked for the title of the band and the album. All that stuff is really important to you at a certain age. It was to us too. We designed our own album covers and designed our own merchandise and costumes and stage shows. We totally understood the importance of all the areas of the aesthetic. It wasn’t just about sonic music or just trying to get on the radio. It was a lot bigger. BW: The most brilliant piece of DEVO merchandise I saw at that shop Wacko in Los Feliz, the DEVO doll with the interchangeable heads. MM: The company that did those, I wasn’t really into the style that they were doing the artwork in. I had plenty of arguments about it. But the big blow was that they weren’t doing a set of five. Because that’s what DEVO is. It’s a set of five guys. We went around in circles. And finally I said, we’re allowed to have accessories, right? They said, yeah. So I said I want it to have five heads so pole can change the heads on the dolls. A true DEVO fan would take the hit and buy five of them. BW: Talking about other bands, I’m sure you must know Polysics from Japan. MM: Yeah. We played with the last time we were over there. BW: What do you think of them? They’re so DEVO. MM: They are! And they do some of our stuff better than we do it. It kind of freaks me out. And their fans love it. I don’t know what their fans think of DEVO. They’re so into Polysics maybe they don’t even know. And they’re a great band live. BW: Oh yeah. I like them a lot. One other thing I wanted to ask you about because I’m from Akron. You guys did a show at the Akron Civic Theater last November in support of the Obama campaign. How was that to go back there? I know Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders was there and The Black Keys played too. MM: That was appropriately unpleasant and also had a lot of pleasant moments too. Of course there were members of my family who were really upset that DEVO was supporting Obama, which I could not believe. I said, you guys are in the most most depressed butt fucked part of the country. Why would you be against getting rid of blood-suckers? They could not see it.
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site BW: I know. I never understood how Ohio people could support the very forces that were oppressing them. MM: But it works. On the other hand we played at a place we hadn’t played in, in 30 years. It was almost 30 years to the day of the last time we played at the Akron Civic Thetare. And we wrote a lot of our early songs in less than a mile radius from that building. So it was kind of interesting to be back there. And Chrissy, who was kind of freaky on the phone before then, when we got to the show she was a total pro. It was really pleasant to work with her. And The Black Keys, I’ve always liked them. It was my wife’s idea. She said why don’t we do something for Obama. She was worried because Ohio was a swing state in the last two votes before that and had gone Republican at the last minute. So we went back there to say, come on exert your freedom of choice. And I think that that’s what won Obama the campaign, the DEVO concert. BW: It probably was. MM: Well if you want to be honest about it, probably not. But it was kinda nice to play there. The energy was really good. Everybody was really great. Akron-ites were excited that we were playing there again. BW: Yeah, you were rejected there at the time and then you come back and everybody thinks it’s great. MM: That’s fairly common. Bands have to leave their hometowns to get discovered. Especially if you’re doing original material. There was no appreciation at all for that back in the Seventies. We would lie and say we were a Top Forty band so we could get a gig. We’d be up there going, “Here’s another song by Aerosmith. It’s called… Jocko Homo!” At that point there’d be some out of work factory guy who was bummed out anyway, some Vietnam vet who came back and the factories are all closed he doesn’t know what he’s gonna do with his life. He’d slam his beer down and go, “That’s it! You callin’ me a monkey you mother fucker?” We’d once again get paid to quit, beat up, chased out or a combination of the three. BW: That’s amazing. Cuz I’m friends with a guy I think you know, Rod Firestone from the Rubber City Rebels. MM: Oh yeah! God, that’s a name from the past! We spent a lot of time with Rod during the formative years. He was instrumental in DEVO having a home base in Akron cuz he had a club that he opened and he allowed DEVO to play there. Then, of course, we ended up bringing Pere Ubu down there too. That was like the cultural island in an otherwise really dark, culture-less factory town. BW: He always likes telling stories about The Crypt (a bar that originally catered to workers at the nearby Goodyear factory which Rod Firestone and his band-mate Buzz Clic transformed into Akron’s first punk rock club). MM: It was a cool club. I was the soundman for a while for his band.
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site BW: Yeah, he told me you were the soundman for the Rubber City Rebels! They still play a few times a year. I met them when they did a tour of Japan. I was reading about you in David Giffels’ book about DEVO. Do you like that book, or is that a touchy subject? MM: We weren’t part of it. We weren’t interviewed for it. It’s got a lot of misinformation in it. My feeling about that is, whatever. There was this one guy who was tangentially connected to us for a while who got involved. And it’s definitely the story of DEVO from the point of view of this guy who didn’t get to be part of the band. BW: The story I wanted to ask you about from that book isn’t one of those stories. It’s in there about John Lennon coming up to you… MM: That’s true. BW: I wanted to hear that story. MM: When we started going to New York we turned into a phenomenon. Which was pretty cool. Every time we whether it was CBGBs or Max’s Kansas City after the first show that we played it was a mob scene. It was always packed. In New York at the time it was customary for people that were celebrities to be able to call Max’s or CBGB’s or the other clubs and say, this is Mick Jagger and I’d like to bring Charlie Watts and Keith Richards to the DEVO show tonight and Bianca my wife and a couple friends. And they’d go, OK and put them on the guest list. But then they’d charge that against DEVO’s part of the take. BW: (laughs) That’s awful! MM: So every night we played in New York we’d have people like Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, all the filmmakers, all the actresses, all the people in bands. There’d be Frank Zappa’s band or whoever was in town. Brian Eno, Robert Fripp. They all showed up on our guest list. But that just meant we’d have to beg for gas money to drive back in our Econoline that held all the equipment and held the band. We didn’t have any place to stay. We’d have to crash inside the van. BW: That’s like a twelve-hour drive back to Akron from New York. I’ve done that.
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site MM: Something like that. I don’t remember how long it was back to Akron. But I remember one night we were sitting outside of Max’s and we’d just played a set. I was waiting for everybody to leave so I could go in and finish unloading our equipment and drive back to Akron. I was in the passenger seat. And I looked around and it’s John Lennon and Ian Hunter from Mott the Hoople. They’re really drunk and they come out and John Lennon stuck his head in the car. And he got up about six inches from my face and started singing “Uncontrollable Urge” really loud. He obviously understood that the “yeah yeah yeah” part was a permutation of what he’d done. And the opening of the song, I don’t know if you ever paid attention, but it goes like dah-dah-duh-DAH, dah-dah-duh-DAH. BW: Oh yeah! Like "I Want to Hold Your Hand"! MM: Yeah. I took it right off "I Want to Hold Your Hand". Then the “yeah yeah yeahs” come in. So he knew it was a mutation of him. And he sang it for me right there with alcohol stinking spittle right into my face. I was in shock and about as high as you can get for the rest of the night. I couldn’t believe it. BW: That’s amazing. MM: And him and Ian, they just kinda put their arms around each other and started wobbling down the street singing the song all the way down Park Avenue or whatever street that was. BW: I’m really looking forward to the tour and the new album. What’s the new stuff like?
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site MM: It sounds like DEVO, that’s for sure. Some of it sounds like it’s early, some of it sounds like the third or fourth album. And some of it is like the later stuff with more electronics. But lyrically it’s the same as what we always did. If it has anything to do with love it’s usually kind of absurdist. Other than that, without lecturing, we talk about the issue of de-evolution and things falling apart. BW: Are you bringing the guitars back then? MM: Yeah there’s some really good guitar stuff. One of the things I insisted Bob 1 (lead guitarist and Mark’s younger brother) do was I told him he had to play a lead that outdoes Smart Patrol. I told him this has got to be his new signature solo. So we’ll see if other people think of it that way. BW: I’m looking forward to it and to the tour. Good luck! MM: And thank you, SuicideGirls! Interview By Brad Warner ( http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com/ )---
It’s easy to forget today just what a revelation DEVO’s first album was when it came out. For a lot of people in those days, seeing the band on Saturday Night Live on October 14th 1978 (Fred Willard was the host!) was akin to the previous generation seeing The Beatles live on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. DEVO’s appearance probably launched a thousand bands that night. It literally gave me a reason to live. The soul-less imitation of “rock and roll” we were force fed in the Ohio suburbs in those days was pretty much Muzak with a beat. Then along came DEVO and nothing was ever the same again.
