The beginning of the DVD begins with Star Wars-like language scrolling off into the abyss, top to bottom. The message is a political, social statement of poignancy and conviction. And one of keen humor and satirical heft.
August 17, 1980. Planet Earth, the United States of America.
It was a dark time. The American President, Ronald Reagan, a former actor in motion picture entertainment, presided over the land. His oil-rich federation and fundamentalist Christian supporters sought to return the population to past times and practices that defied logic and would heap sorrow upon the masses.
But on this night in 1980 a revolutionary band of self-proclaimed "spudboys" who made strange new sounds and sang strange new words would make their presence known in a city by the water. The five young men traveled thousands of miles from an industrial wasteland known as Akron, Ohio, their collective place of birth. They had struggled against all odds to survive in a culture driven by fear and prevail in a ruthless business powered by sharks. They called themselves Devo, for they believed that de-evolution, not evolution, was the guiding force of humankind's future.
On this night in 1980, Devo had no idea that history would prove their cautionary vision to be so frighteningly correct. Now, 25 years later, the reign of President Reagan seems in retrospect like a ray of sunshine compared to the present day rule of Emperor "W" and his fellow fundamentalist enemies around the world.
De-evolution is real.
Like a sickle.
Bassist Gerry Casale, one of the founding members of the band's concept of de-evolutionary performance artists, wrote on the back cover:
This lone artifact offers indisputable evidence that in 1980 Devo had reached a turning point. We were no longer just art monsters, we were mainstream performers too.
Certainly a jab at the record industry's attitude toward Devo. This is a band that relied on being able to document the present's absurdity and predict the future's ominous fate. This quote touches on a sort of validity Casale is taking credit for in the year 2005. In Devo's latest resurgence in past year or two, I've been amused by the number of times the band members, especially Casale, remind everyone of what they said and how they were fucking right. But they always take that credit with a bemused smirk, as if they aren't surprised by any of the many troubling aspects of current day America. Thankfully, they've returned to continue mocking society's de-evolutionary behavior.
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