Welcome to Younghollywood. com. I am Greg Young for Young Hollywood. I'm here with Jerry from the band Devo. They've got a new studio album, 19 years in the making, I believe.

20.

20.

It's been 20 years since we released a record. A studio record. There's there's been a couple of, uh, thing, live recordings and stuff.

That's true, but not new music. Well, for those that aren't familiar, um, 20 years ago you guys were one of the most defining acts of the 80s. Um, and you kind of have a unique style about you. Um, obviously the very visual with the hats and um, you know, very, um, I guess kind of pop art, would you say?

Yeah, I mean, we were actually kind of multimedia and performance art before people had those terms, those labels. But that's what we were doing. We're ahead of our time then. And now we're not. And and we're in our time now and there are a lot of bands that I love that have cited us as an influence their current and, you know, big hits like the Tings and LCD Sound System and Santigold and what's cool is that you hear elements of Devo in in that music and so there's a taste for our style again. And here we are, the first guys that did the style.

I'm here with Mark, also from Devo. Uh he's going to show us around um his recording studio here.

This used to be filled with all MIDI gear, but now we're now that we're using computers, there's there's like a couple stray sad things, like here's my old Mini Moog that got midified, and now it's just sitting there all forlorn, lost. Doesn't get used for anything now. There's a lot of guitars in this building. Um, there used to be more. Uh, I There's a lot in storage now. There's probably a hundred in storage and about 75 here somewhere. In here, there's a lot of circuit bent things. Yeah. But, but Oh, yeah. Titanium. That's our Devo suit. This is like a, this is called a Putney VCS. I paint every day. I have about 300 and some books, I don't know how many that are full of stuff that I've drawn and painted and some of it done in Photoshop, you know, mix it all together.

So, how did the idea for the the dome, the hats come about?

We kind of liked that geometric look and so I remember we sat and drew that at a table in in Jerry's house. And um, it just looked good on on our heads and it helped make us look more alike. We like the idea that we look like five matching, you know, like pieces of a engine.

Now, 20 years is a long time between albums.

When we were in the record industry before, we were kind of this odd band that had their own outfits and and their own, you know, uh, slang and their own, uh, their own way to think about the world. And we were talking about de-evolution. We were saying things were falling apart, watch out. And um, the big difference is back then, people in the 70s, people would say, oh, you're just being cynical, you have a bad attitude. And and now it's like if you talk to people about de-evolution, people pretty much go, yep. Things are de-evolving, you know, and they they just kind of accepted at this point.

So tell us about the evolution of uh, Devo. You know, how did you guys get started? What's um,

30 odd years ago? Yeah, Jerry and I met at Kent State. We were both in the art department. So Jerry came over to my place and we wrote music together and he was a bass player in a band and I was a keyboard, synth, kind of experimental guy.

You were definitely, you know, paving the way for acts today like Lady Gaga and, you know, that are kind of having that sort of

Yeah, we were we were part of that. Yeah, we were definitely part of an art band. And so we thought of Devo as being this art project like an agit prop group where we could where we could blur the lines between commercialism and um and and uh, fine art. That's it.

Thank you for visiting our studio here, Mutato Muzika on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood.

Hey, this is Jerry from Devo. Thanks, Young Hollywood, for visiting our studio today. See you soon.