Devo
Men Behind the Music

It's not a band, it's a vision. It's a vision expressed across music, performance, film, writing, and visual art. It's a vision I don't understand, and which makes me uncomfortable. It's certainly not disco, but it's not punk either. Because it's homogenous, corporate, fascist, futurist, embracing radioactivity, patriarchy, the color yellow.

These home videos explain Devolution, opening more questions than they answer. And along the way, great videos and live concert footage of Devo's earliest robotic freakouts are offered as evidence of the truth of their story. It's an inversion of the creativity:budget ratio that would eventually come to define MTV, before it stopped becoming music altogether.

This movie is avilable only on VHS. Bits and pieces turn up on a badly-edited DVD, but this concert footage is indispensable.