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I don't think Mark's kidding at all about the subliminal messages. Actually, I think it pretty much explains the cult-like status of "Rushmore" There's a small interview in the recent issue of Giant Robot (#25--called "Are We Not Mark Mothersbaugh?") that I'll type up for you lazy types:
In the late 70's, Devo donned yellow jumpsuit uniforms, plastic hair, and played jerky, deconstructed pop heralding the devolution of society. The unlikely rock stars played on SNL, were in high-rotation during the early days of MTV, and became symbols of a mostly dumb New Wavethat they had nothing to do with. You won't see Devo on VH-1's "Behind The Music" because they stopped being a full-time band before things could collapse. Today, Mark Mothersbaugh, the focal spud boy, helms the Mutato music studio, where he makes soundtracks.
GR: The singer of Polysics just told me that the God of Rock appeared to him when he first saw a Devo video.
MM: Whoah! I don't know if that's something I'd want to share if I were him... When they were in town about a year ago, they stopped by the studio. I was in the middle of making Wes Anderson's "The Royal Tenenbaums" movie soundtrack. They left some CD's here and I really liked them. It was our music on hold for awhile.
GR: Is there an extra-large Devo following in Japan?
MM I used to preduce and write a lot of songs for bands in japan. You know Hajime Tachibana from The Plastics? I wrote most of the songs on one of his albums. Of course, there was a time when we were selling out Budokan. MTV didn't exist yet, and we made these films and showed them before we'd come out. We showed a concert in Hollywood with kids going wild in the audience. Japanese kids saw the video and thought "Oh, that's what we must do." The security people who usually had nothing to do but look constipated saw all these kids get onstage and didn't know what to do. Later, there would be a line of cops with linked elbows standing in front of us like they were protecting their children from the deadly influence of Devo.
GR: Do a lot of bands carry the Devo spirit?
MM: More than you'd think. It's from all different areas, and it's surprising and flattering. From Soundgarden to Kurt Cobain to Henry Rollins to The Aquabats--sometimes you wonder how they went the direction they did.
GR: Is making soundtracks different making music as Devo?
MM: It's totally different, but in some ways it's been a linear process. Bob Casale, Bob Most and Jerry Casale all work on this. We see each other almost every day--more than when we were in a band.
GR: How does the philosophy of Devolution hold up today?
MM: If anything, the world is more Devo than we predicted. The downward spiral is in a faster speed than we anticipated. Things are falling apart, technology being this big, clumsy stupid robot taking one step forward then, with the second step, stomping on the people it just saved. |
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