Sunday, September 10, 2006

Devo

Mimi, her best friend, Ani, Jen and I went to see the band Devo last night at the Paramount theater here in Seattle. A fine time was had by all, even though we had neglected to get any dinner in the kids before we left, so there were some moments of low blood sugar cantankerousness. We managed, though, to ply the youngsters with sodas and Red Vines to get through the show and then went our for Belgian frites afterwards, which made everyone feel much better.

The boys from Akron put on a lively and entertaining concert, doing all the old faves, including “Jocko Homo,” “Girl U Want,” “Uncontrollable Urge,” and “Mongoloid,” among others.

I had seen pictures of the new jumbo-sized Mark Mothersbaugh, and was worried that it would be like watching the portly Vegas Elvis, but he moved around stage just fine, and his hair, though grayer than in the old days, still flopped charmingly over his glasses when he got worked up. Bass player Jerry Casale did some of his signature robo-moves and while, overall, the choreography wasn’t all the impressive, it wasn’t embarrassing, either.

There were only a few moments when I felt like people I would have laughed at in the 1980s who were going to see a Rock n’ Roll Revival show.

To get in the mood for the evening, we watched a couple old Devo videos on Youtube. I was especially amused, then, when—during “Jocko Homo,” Mimi imitated Mark Mothersbaugh’s hand motions from that old piece. It cracked up the guy standing next to us, too.

In the lobby before the show, at least three different people told Mimi and Ani how lucky they were to be seeing Devo live. “Do you know how long, I’ve waited to see them?” they asked.

The kids were unimpressed; the grownups may have been waiting 20 years to see their heroes play live; for the youngsters, though, it’s been a lifetime.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah, the show was incredible... I thought Mark shredded... even if he looked alot like Roger Ebert... but yeah... was great fun and the drums were... damn impressive... was real cool to be reminded that THE original US electronic band... had a real drummer...

1:24 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home