WE ARE NOT MEN....

Just read an interview with Devo frontman and film composer Mark Mothersbaugh, in which he discusses what a drag it was to grow up in Ohio in the 1960's/70s's... until he saw a giant shark hologram at the Akron Art Institute and the Cuyahoga River caught fire:

"...What was going on then is that there was no voice. There was no voice in music. There wasn’t a Bob Dylan, and there wasn’t, you know, a Woody Guthrie, or anybody that was a conscience for, for, um, youth. Because after they shot kids, you know, on different campuses in ’70, it’s like the country went into a big sleep. And all the really politically active people - who were protesting, uh, you know, globalization, and America, you know, like, fucking around with the politics of Southeast Asia, and the Cold War and things - they all stopped. They all just became quiet. And by ’73, ’74, the, the music that you were hearing was disco, and, uh... concert rock, yeah. It was like, yeah, and Eagles, Styx…


"So that’s like, part of this whole thing about where DEVO came from and what - it came from a lot of different sources. We were just looking for a way to describe what we saw going on. We saw this incredible technology fucking everything up, you know. But we saw this stuff that looked and seemed amazing. And it should be doing great things. But yet, the quality of life was deteriorating. And so, you know, uh, there was like a bunch of things that came together at once…"

This does not detract from the fact that "Whip It" is being used on the small screen to sell dust mops and "Uncontrollable Urge" is peddling BMW's. (What's next, "Mongoloid" for Kangol hats?).

interview:
http://www.ostrichink.com/feb2004/mothersbaugh.html

mothersbaugh's web site:
www.mutato.com