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What smoking music are you listening to? (2024)

ARE WE NOT MEN?
WE ARE DEVO!

Devo - Seattle Center Auditorium 11/28/81
Devo - Paramount Theater Seattle 12/12/82
Including a short history of live recorded Devo.

Wife not a Devo fan so I had to take her to see the Nutcracker ballet both years. The 1981-82 Devo New Traditionalists World Tour took Devo from being a mega=artsy cult band into the mainstream with cutting edge electronics, a completely new style of playing and a total abandonment of what a group should act or look like. Fueled by an almost constant rotation of Whip It and Satisfaction on MTV and the incredible response of their King Biscuit Flour Hour show almost all of America knew something about Devo,. This demand caused the size of the venues to increase beyond what their touring system could handle. Instead of doing a piecemeal job to make do the group put in a rush order for a new State of the art system that was considered one of the best mid-size systems in the world. Having been to some earlier tours you could hear the difference.

This was the first time Devo had played Seattle and the Punks thought they would be punkier while the New Wave crowd thought they would be more dance friendly. IMO yhey were dance friendly just not in the normal 4/4 beat way. It took a while but the audience did catch on. This show would be considered one of the seminal shows in Devo history much the same way Bowie's show in Long Beach did for him. I'll talk more about this in a bit

In contrast the December 82 show at the Paramount seemed forced. The band had toured for a year, jumped back into the studio to finish Oh No, It's Devo! and then back out on the road to support it with this tour. A nice surprisese was the 3d lasar amimation which really worked well. Little did we know that 4 shows later the band would effectively retire only doing about 20 shows over the next decade. They did give you wat you wanted to see. You had the dog bowl hats, the hazmat suits, songs with 5 synths and nothing else on stage and a recreation of the Whip It video where they played live while the video played behind them on a big screen.

Devo live on record starts with the official release of the Freedom Of Choice studio album. Warner Brothers wanted a promotional tool so they recorded a show in California to be broadcast as part of the King Biscuit Flour Hour in August 1980. This record was called Devo Live Warner Special Projects Music Show. While there were 20 tracks played only 16 made the record. This proved so popular it spawned a 4 track Promo EP called DEV-O Live was released in November. This was re-released as a 6 track EP under the same title in 1999 and in 2008 the Japanese box set This is The Devo Box included a full CD with the same name with both EPs and the rest of tracks. Meanwhile for Record Store Dsy 2019 the original 16 track promo album that started iy all was re-released.

Now we come to the 11/28/81 show that was recorded but not released until Record Store Day 2013 and finally there are 17 videos of Devo on their 50 Years of Devolution tour that were recorded at the Paramount in 11/23

Devo looking normal on the Fridays show 1981

Devo 1982 tour
 
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