Schorsch Kamerun on Devo – Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978)

I have bought Devo’s debut in 1979 after the track “Mongoloid” somehow made it into the Friday-Top-Ten of the wicked local Disco “Kaisersaal”, which was called ‘Ballhaus Vaterland’ (“Fatherland Ballroom”) before. I had wrongly perceived the album as punk- like everything that was gloriously going on one’s nerves. The subversion that emanated from the album seemed to fit perfectly into our still very unreflected concepts of counterculture.

The sound of the record? The greatest mocking machine that absorbs and digests all of humanity’s original sins- amusement parks, all cheap spectacles and one dollar items- and in form of plastic-noise forces those Homo Sapiens’ whose evolutionary decline is unstoppable to a final, big celebration. Devo- the de-evolution, the zero-humane not-moving-forward- have managed to transform a manifest concept into rousing power. The seriousness of their highly culture-critical intentions is inherent in every fiber and yet is never superficial. Producer Brian Eno may have played a large role in this. Back then, we all felt like we could only even survive with such music, because through it we knew that it was worth calling this whole shit out as the shit it was, and not in a decent way.

Close your eyes and imagine that the suicidal battle-cry “We are Devo!” makes your legitimate fears of the daily scam-ulcer grow into a fun rocket with which you can, depending on your mood, flee or attack immortally quickly.

by Schorsch Kamerun
(German Legend, singer of avantgarde-punk band Die Goldenen Zitronen, author, theatre director)