Jan. 4, 1979 review: Devo in the Mary Seaton Room

 

A great way to start off a new year.

Jan. 4, 1979 

Devo Purposely Reverses

Direction of Evolution

         It was the weirdest-looking crowd Kleinhans Music Hall had seen in years, but nothing was quite as bizarre Wednesday night as the main attraction – a spectacularly demented rock group from Akron, Ohio, called Devo.

         Once the group’s introductory film started rolling, it was clear where the inspiration came from for all the stocking-mask faces, bright buttons, strange ties, outlandish coveralls and funny glasses in the sell-out audience of about 800 in the Mary Seaton Room.

         The 10-minute movie, which included segments seen on TV’s “Midnight Special” and “Saturday Night Live,” was great fun, but it didn’t really tell much about devolution, the band’s philosophy of reverse development.

         What it did instead was clue the crowd that any kind of frenzied personal response to the music was entirely OK. For the most part, that came down to a twitching, spasmodic dance which brought back memories of St. Vitus.

         The quintet, an artsy bunch of dropout from Kent State University near Akron, appeared in their familiar yellow coveralls and industrial goggles, moving mechanically to the rhythms like so many deranged nuclear reactor engineers.

         Their repeating riffs massed into an insistent drone, a rude model of Brian Eno’s discrete music, which was then smeared with atonal swoops of Mark Mothersbaugh’s synthesizer and his shrill, shouting vocals, which were mostly unintelligible.

         The movie, the 10-song set and the exhilarating triple encore seemed longer than the hour they actually lasted. Devo got double mileage out of the songs in the movie – “Come Back Jonee,” “Satisfaction” and “Jocko Homo” – by doing them again live.

         The crowd gasped as Mothersbaugh and his guitarist brother Bob plunged into their midst with their cordless mikes, rose to a dancing frenzy with “Uncontrollable Urge” and should back a lusty response to the central question of “Jocko Homo” – “Are we not men? We are Devo!”

         With that, Devo shed their yellow suits and threw them into the front rows. Clad then in black Devo T-shirts, gym shorts and oversized elbowpads and kneepads, they finished off their set.

         For the third encore, Mark Mothersbaugh donned a rubber mask of the band’s infantile mascot, the Booji Boy, and cooed a falsetto love song. This is not as far as de-evolution can go, though. “Animal House,” the band suggested in a radio interview Wednesday, “is even more devo than us.”

         Opening in a 10 p.m. start were The Jumpers, but Buffalo’s leading exponents of the new directions in rock had an uneven night as they introduced five new numbers in a 15-song set.

         Look for more rock concerts in the Mary Seaton Room, which is kind of a junior, wood-parquet version of the big philharmonic hall on the other side of the lobby. Kleinhans manager Jim Doyle hopes to attract other groups who prefer a small concert hall instead of playing in a nightclub.

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IN THE PHOTO: Solar eclipse watcher? No, it’s Devo in 1979.

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FOOTNOTE: The Mary Seaton Room show was the first date on the band's "Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!" tour and came on the heels of their breakthrough into the national consciousness, courtesy of a major-label album by the same name produced by Brian Eno and an appearance on "Saturday Night Live."

Setlist.fm has no record of what was performed in Buffalo, but here’s what Devo played the following night on their home turf in the Akron, Ohio, Civic Center:

Wiggly World

Pink Pussycat

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (Rolling Stones cover)

Too Much Paranoias

Praying Hands

Uncontrollable Urge

Mongoloid

Jocko Homo

Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA

Sloppy (I Saw My Baby Gettin’)

Come Back Jonee

Gut Feeling (Slap Your Mommy)

DEVO Corporate Anthem