Through Being Cool
Unpacking the oscillating discussion around Devo's latest tour and why all good things should eventually end.
I just got back from a long weekend in Asheville, North Carolina with my wife and mother-in-law, where we hiked to Appalachian waterfalls, saw a Tom Petty cover band at the Orange Peel, and toured a record pressing plant housed in an old newspaper building. Asheville is a great place to spend a couple days soaking up the beautiful views and sampling a few of the more than 50 breweries that call the city home — if you decide to visit, make sure to peruse the stacks at Harvest Records and stop by Chai Pani for dinner.
Asheville is also the home of Moog Music, Inc., a company that’s synonymous with some of the most famous analog synthesizers ever created (in Asheville, you can visit the brand’s factory and a small museum devoted to its late founder Robert Moog). This week’s edition of Attenuator is focused on a band that famously used a Minimoog synth in many of its recordings. Connect a patch cable to the subscribe button below and prepare to whip it good.
Enough Said
There’s been a lot of digital ink spilled about Devo’s ongoing farewell tour over the past week or so, and I’m here to pour a few more drops into the well. The end of the group’s time as a touring entity has been looming since 2019, when the organizers of the Desert Daze music festival decided to bill Devo’s headlining performance as “kicking off their farewell tour” — a claim that founding member Gerald Casale later disputed. But when tickets for Devo’s 50th anniversary tour went on sale earlier this year, some venues labeled the shows as part of “The Farewell Tour” without any initial pushback from Casale or the rest of the group.
Last weekend’s story in The Guardian featuring a few salient quotes from co-founders Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh provided confirmation that Devo is winding down as a touring act — the group just finished up a string up European dates and has a series of West Coast shows on the calendar in November, followed by an Australian festival in December. Presumably, Devo will play final shows on the East Coast and its birthplace in the Midwest before calling it quits for good.
Mothersbaugh seems characteristically unperturbed by the demise of Devo, which he has primarily treated as a side project (that occasionally demands his full attention) since earnestly embracing film, TV, and video game scoring in the early ‘90s. His preference for producing soundtracks (mostly) solo is understandable when you realize that he’s the kind of guy with a borderline compulsion to create with few restrictions — at one point he was producing between one and a dozen postcard-sized pieces of original art on a daily basis. Speaking to The Guardian, he compared the tribulations and limitations of performing with a group to a marriage involving four other people, stating “It’s tricky being in a band.”
Since Devo’s reunion in 1996 (just five years after its break-up), Casale has always appeared more invested in finding forward momentum for the group than Mothersbaugh, pushing the band to record its first new album in over two decades, 2010’s Something for Everybody. Along the way, he affirmed his dedication to the Devo catalog by becoming deeply involved in Disney’s dorky kid-fronted retooling of the group (dubbed Devo 2.0), sanitizing the lyrics to tracks like “Uncontrollable Urge” and “Beautiful World” as well as filming nine of the short-lived band’s music videos. More recently, he’s shilled very expensive bottles of Devo-themed vodka.
Casale never found the mainstream creative success outside of Devo that Mothersbaugh did, though he did direct some very ‘90s videos for bands like Hum and Silverchair. His only real stab at a post-Devo solo project was a band called Jihad Jerry & The Evildoers that released a single record in 2006 (nearly a decade before TMZ exposed Casale’s 9/11-themed wedding cake), sporting a cover depicting Casale in a purple turban and containing slickly-produced but ultimately forgettable quasi-new wave anthems with lyrics like, “What's a man supposed to do / When fantasies of sex come true?” He re-released the album for Record Store Day in 2021, though the record was credited to “DEVO's Gerald V. Casale” instead of his ill-fated alter ego.
Casale’s attachment to Devo and willingness to act as the group’s de facto spokesperson is understandable on many levels, not the least of which is that it allows him to carry on the legacy of his younger brother Robert Casale (a.k.a. “Bob 2”) who played with Devo until he passed away in 2014. Speaking to The Guardian, Casale described performing live as “part of Devo’s DNA,” before conceding that “we did as well as we could, for as long as we could.” In the same piece, Mothersbaugh wryly proposes that the band may reunite (again) in 2073, saying “We’ll play 100th anniversary Devo shows and then maybe retire.”
While a recent post from Devo’s Instagram account implores the internet to “STOP REFERRING TO THESE 50TH ANNIVERSARY DEVO SHOW DATES AS OUR "FAREWELL TOUR",” it feels like an attempt to manage expectations for the group’s forthcoming tour dates and downplay the corporate overtones of the “farewell tour” as a concept. Devo has been playing the hits for several decades, and the group’s taught, 75-minute set is heavy on its most memorable tracks, even if it’s not exactly “career-spanning.” It doesn’t sound like there’s a heightened sense of closure present in Devo’s latest performances, just the standard costume changes and a closing rendition of “Beautiful World.”
Devo’s current setlist is nearly identical to the one I saw the group perform in 2021 at Riot Fest, focusing on tracks from the group’s two best-selling albums (Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! and Freedom of Choice) and largely ignoring any material the group released after 1982. For the most part, it’s the stuff that even casual fans of Devo will recognize — the new wave melodies, red Energy Domes, and yellow hazmat suits that have inspired action figures, Doritos dip commercials, and a forthcoming documentary. Nobody really remembers the New Traditionalists V-necks or the brief switch to blue Energy Domes, anyway.
I’m not above embracing the outright nostalgia of a farewell tour, so I’ll probably shell out the cash to see Devo one last time (assuming the band comes to Chicago) with the same enthusiasm I felt for Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot performances and the Stereolab reunion. But I can also acknowledge that in an age of “unprecedented” reunions and album anniversary tours, there’s something powerful about being able to close the book on an era — while you still have the chance.
I’m reminded of Shabaka Hutchings’s decision to take an indefinite “hiatus” from performing on saxophone, which he announced earlier this year via an Instagram post that could have been mistaken for a Notes app apology. Considering the sheer number of videos he’s posted of himself playing the flute, the announcement wasn’t entirely out of left field. However, the perceived finality of a talented musician quitting an instrument that’s synonymous with their music made it difficult for some fans to grasp. It’s clear that Hutchings is ready for what’s next, and his decision to give up playing the sax is a dramatic but effective way to illustrate his commitment — or as he aptly puts it, “there are periods in one’s artistic life when sacrifice and dedication to a particular path is necessitated.”
For Devo, giving up on live performances is a more necessary sacrifice (none of us are getting any younger) that leaves the door open for other creative pursuits. Leaving touring behind offers a chance for the band’s remaining members to dedicate themselves to legacy-building, offering more time for preparing archival releases, filming documentaries, and cataloging anything else that’s left in the vaults (Devo feels like a great candidate for a “David Bowie Is”-style museum exhibition). As for whether you should refer to the Devo’s current run of dates as a “50th Anniversary Tour” or a “Farewell Tour?” You can exercise your freedom of choice.
A Fistful of Links
More than 100 days into the WGA strike and over a month into the SAG-AFTRA strike, the studios (and their bargaining body, the AMPTP) seem as if they’re content to carefully ration the remaining supply of original content produced pre-strike. This Vox explainer by Emily Stewart does a good job summarizing the current scenario, the creative accounting that studios are employing, and when push may finally come to shove at the bargaining table.
I have fond memories of discovering old Stars of the Lid albums among the stacks of my college radio station library, so I was very bummed to hear of the passing of the ambient duo’s co-founder Brian McBride. Pitchfork staffer Phillip Sherburne put together a fond remembrance of McBride, accompanied by a list of 10 records that exemplify his thoughtful, slow-burning approach to music.
I’ve been anecdotally following my friend Leor Galil’s quest to throw first pitches at various minor league ballparks this summer and was fortunate enough to witness his pitch at a Chicago Dogs game a few weeks ago (admittedly, I saw it on the jumbotron as I was getting my ticket scanned). He wrote about his experiences on the mound and some notable first pitches from throughout baseball history in the latest issue of the Chicago Reader.
My wife introduced me to the New York Times’s latest puzzle game Connections a couple of weeks ago, and now I’m hooked. The puzzle’s editor Wyna Liu does a great job of explaining how the deceivingly simple category-matching game comes together in this piece published earlier this summer. It even inspired me to create my own Connections puzzle using a fan-made template.
Thanks for resisting the uncontrollable urge to quit scrolling. If you know someone who enjoys reading about ancient bands from Ohio, I’m pretty sure that the next issue will involve another act from the Buckeye State celebrating a multi-decade anniversary — you might as well share this issue with them, too. Twist away the gates of steel!