Are we not Devo?

It’s 30 years today since Bauhaus released their seminal single, Bela Lugosi’s Dead. I ought to talk about Bauhaus. But I’ll save it for another day. For today, I’d rather talk about Devo, who, 31 years ago, released their first album, Are We Not Men? We Are Devo. Now, I liked Devo. They divided opinions like no other American band of the time. They were too intellectual. They were insensitive. They were ahead of their time. They were young. They were old. They were wierdos. Their message was nonsensical or dangerous. Was it really possible then, never mind now, to open the eyes of the world with song titles like Mongoloid and Jocko Homo? They were championed by David Bowie and Brian Eno, who produced their first album. Did Devo invent that snare drum sound that Bowie nicked for his Low LP? Stiff Records took them on board in the UK. There must have been something there, so why didn’t Devo ever crack it? At Knebworth in 1978, in the very month they released their debut LP, they experienced the same fate as U Roy and The Mighty Diamonds had at Reading in 1976. Canned off for being too different, in the wrong place, with the wrong audience. But was there ever a right audience for Devo? Poor Virgin Records. First U Roy and The Mighty Diamonds. Then The Sex Pistols imploded. Then there was Devo. Virgin had only ever had success with Mike Oldfield’s tubular balls. But now they wanted to be a rebel brand who only took on the challenging, so what did they expect? And Virgin wasn’t to get any mainstream success again until David Sylvian’s Japan – and then only briefly, before he, too, walked away from the limelight. (True, Virgin did bring Human League from the margins into the mainstream.) But that’s another story. Back to Devo. Trouble is, nobody ever really knew how to take Devo. In a time of simplistic, cut-through Punk, Devo wanted you to think about this idea they had whose name nobody could quite remember, never mind grasp. I was one of the only one among my peer group who engaged with the de-evolution idea, which went something like this…Forget evolution, think of the opposite. De-evolution. Instead of evolving, humankind is actually going backwards. Just look at all the social dysfunction and mass mentalism of the so-called most developed countries. Especially America. Although bizarre, it was quite refreshing for an American band to avoid flying the flag and all that sentimental chest-beating. It didn’t last. Devo had their 15 minutes in 1978. Are We not Men? We Are Devo flopped and America began to embrace Born To Run whereas Britain eventually turned to U2. But, since Devo, those of us who remember what it was all about have always been able to point at elements of society – from Big Brother to Facebook - and say, We are Devo.

markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk

Electronica (The Quinquagenarian Mix)

Yes, I know I should be listening to the Marcin Wasilewski Trio or Tom Farrell, but I’ve given in to a need to explore electronica. I’ve had to do something about a knowledge which began with Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, got drunk on DAF in the Palais Schaumburg, then stumbled up the Holger Hiller before falling foul of Aphex Twin and The Orb. So I dove into the deepend of a music download site somewhere on the west bank of the Rhine and emerged with Kompact Total 4 between my teeth and a piranha called Superpitcher on my tail. The latter’s version of Eno’s Baby’s On Fire sounds like Boney M doing Hendrix. That good? That bad? It’s all pretty relative, isn’t it? ‘Are you in the market for repetitive beats?’ the download site asked me. Actually, on first hearing, much of this stuff sounds like the klang you curse the 18 year-old knobcheese who drives past your window at 80mph four in the morning blasting out a death pulse from a neutron star. You feel like you need a day’s gardening after enduring Frei’s Freiland, or quality time at a health spa after subjecting your spirit to the doorbell disco of Maria by Closer Musik. A lot of it sounds like the soundtrack to a vicious burglary, produced by people who have forgotten what it means to put their arms around another person. This is the noise of a cold criminal nailing a cat to a wall in Yates’s wine bar in the centre of a city like yours. To get anything out of this you surely have to be more plastered than a plasterer from Plaistow. Or totally wired, can’t you see?! But you have to get through this cloud of confusion. There’s a long way to go and you need to enjoy the journey, so pay attention! After all, what with people so obsessed with genres these days, it’s difficult to take two steps forward into electronica without zig-zagging left and right and getting quite, quite lost. 2-Step/Garage. Abstract. Breaks. Dance. DJ Mix. Downtempo. Drum ‘n, Bass. Electroclash. Electronic Ambient. Electronic Dub. Electronic Experimental. Electronic Industrial. Global. Groove. House. IDM. Jungle. Krautrock. Leftfield. Nu-Jazz/Broken Beat. Remix. Techno. Trance. Trip-hop. Turntablism. Not to mention Aphrodisiac, Cannibalism and Roadrage. Actually, I made up the last three, but you get my point. Everybody wants their own genre in electronica. And, in this world of digital recording, precording and frecording, is anything not electronica? Or, looking at it the other way round, does electronica exist at all, or is it just a way of playing another style of music? I’m surprised about how incestuous it all is – everybody recording and remixing everyone else’s versions. You wipe my bottom, I’ll wipe yours. I don’t knock this approach – The Good Son vs The Only Daughter is a brilliant, Sylvian-supported remix of his album, Blemish, probably better than the original. But wipe your own arse is all I’d say, you 21st century gigolos. But is electronica worth it? That’s my question. Do I like it beatless, banging, grinding, sensual or glossy? You ain’t going to keep me out with no semantic smokescreen, Jörg! Even though, today, electronica is as wide as jazz and as deep as a painting by Marc Brown. Just because it starts with synthetic pop of the Rice Krispies variety like Röyksopp and ends way over the horizon with the avant-garde emetic of Triola. I will find something I like and turn it into memory mix. But just a word, D J Koze, about your mix of Reinhardt Voigt’s Zu Dicht Dran...remember you’re a human being - not even a dentist would do that. Finally – it doesn’t take long if you’re persistent - I think I’ve found something under Nu-Jazz: an album by Craig Taborn called Junk Magic. Sounds like The Pop Group or James White’s Contortions put through a synth. But I might start with The Field’s From Here We Go Sublime, a bottle of Adnam’s Innovation and a couple of Neurofen.

Maybe we make too much of electronica. It used to be nothing more than sequenced keyboards. Brian Eno showed its true worth, as ambient sound. Post-Punk bands like Human League and Simple Minds were keyboards-based bands. Remember, Punk had banned keyboards from the stage. They were Rick Wakeman’s toys. Yet, the summer of 77 may be recalled for the flowering of Punk, but I also recall it for two big tracks, I Feel Love by Donna Summer and Oxygene by Jean-Michel Jarre. These changed music forever. The Giorgio Moroder-led I Feel Love became the platform for the dance music we’ve known ever since. Oxygene was MOR Tangerine Dream, spawning the soft ambient and trance music to come. Interspersed with Dub and Punk, I played them over and over again. With Punk out of the way, keyboards were back. The early, experimental Human League singles and albums went nowhere. The hypnotic, multimedia live shows were witnessed by two students and a robot dog. Electonica had arrived on these shores. And it didn’t have to be Germanic or intellectual. It took a while for Human League and Simple Minds to work this one out. Cabaret Voltaire and bands like 23 Skidoo never did or didn’t care. They were happy with art-house. Then the New Romantics came along, bringing brightness and fun and a recall for Pop. With synth drums the technology of the day, electronica progressed into the mainstream. Simple Minds were very much part of this progression from German experimentation into British pop. They grew out of the ashes of a fake Punk band with a great name – Johnny And The Self-Abusers. They got their new Post-Punk name from Jean Genie by David Bowie, or Play It Safe by Iggy Pop. One way or the other. They were influenced by Lou Reed but interested in the experimentation that new synth technology now offered. So, early albums tended to reference Kraftwerk and Neu! and the more unapproachable Teutonic groups. It was not until they signed to Virgin that they began to make headway (this label had faith and patience and gave the breakthrough for so many bands, including The Sex Pistols, Public Image Ltd, Magazine, Human League and Japan). They were even produced by the hippiest of hippies, Steve Hillage. They got to support Peter Gabriel. When I first saw them in March 1981, they were stretching out to headline places like The Venue in London. Jim Kerr would stride onto the stage in knee-length leather boots and jodhpurs. For all the world, the 21-year old electric equestrian. Something was changing. There was a new dream of gold. Jim Kerr is 50 today and much more has changed. Simple Minds occupied my thoughts greatly in 1981 and 1982. They promised me a miracle but they delivered something considerably less than that to the multitudes thereafter, during the course of the 80s. After a brief flirtation with pop somewhere in a new romantic summertime, they became a bloated stadium rock band, produced by the same man who went on to produce U2, Steve Lilywhite. In this, they had their greatest success. So that, at one point in the mid-to-late 80s, there was little difference between Simple Minds and U2. A long, long way from the roots in electronica. And that’s what I mean – electronica used to be a means not an end. The drum machine was never the star, only the satellite of love. Now it’s owned by the German death-heads once again. Personally, I like the bands who are trying to take it away from them and breathe some humanity back into it - like my favourite Norwegians, Royksopp.

markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk