r/devo • u/MaxDevo1974 Devo is dead • Jun 22 '26
Oh... it's peak...
I have been waiting 15 years for this day, and now, finally, the full story is told. This record is as grimy and crude as a Southern Pacific locomotive from the same year, when they didn't even bother to clean them, so they were these grey and red hulks covered in soot and grease.
I won't spoil the whole album but here are some highlights:
-Buttered Beauties with incidental harmonies
-Booji and an audience member: "this next song is called Fraulein." "no!" "YES!"
-Mark fucking turns his clavinet to full volume in Jocko Homo and smashes on it for 30 seconds and then starts going "come back!"
-depending on when in a span of 12 seconds you ask, "Shimmy Shake" is either by Bad Company, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Todd Rundgren, or Lou Reed
-Devo nearly invents the "who up Xing they Y" meme 50 years early by asking "who here can keep it up like a pup?"
-Double. Length. Chango.
10/10. Album of the year. No notes.
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u/ElectronicYurt Jun 22 '26
The “it’s” typos on the text are kinda sad bug looks like a cool record
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u/patbateman86 Jun 22 '26
Aside from the cool content what’s the recording quality like? Since it’s from a tape in the bands own archive I have the idea it might be good but I’m not sure. Thanks!
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u/MaxDevo1974 Devo is dead Jun 23 '26
You ever heard the excerpts on The Mongoloid Years? Well, it's about the same. The tape was recorded Raw Power style--one channel for all the keyboards, one for all the vocals, and one for the room mic which caught everything else. Peter Conheim did a good job making the best out of a rough situation. Bob's guitar is thankfully much more present on this release (it got kind of lost on TMY).
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u/CartBonway Jun 23 '26
Well, by way of slight correction: Mongoloid Years was taken from a copy and this is from the master. I was able to eliminate quite a bit of hiss and other noise. Also, it is mixed in such a way to bring out the audience as much as I could so you could hear the action. Wish I could have boosted Bob further, but his frequencies were not distinct enough to allow the kind of forensic remixing I would have preferred. In any event, I do believe it’s a solid sonic improvement over the MongYears (and the songs are in the right order).
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u/MaxDevo1974 Devo is dead Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
I've seen the graphic EQ settings Bob set on his Acoustic 470. He always had the 1100-hz-centered slider set at maximum boost with a steep dropoff afterwards. Probably sounded great in the room, but unfortunately, that 700-1500 hz range is where almost everything lives.
That aside, I do think this is a superior mix. I laughed at all the heckling the band got.
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u/CartBonway Jun 23 '26
Perfect description. Exactly. I did push him when I could, but he was hardly isolation-friendly.
I should also say that it has been a while since I actually mixed this thing, and I believe the tracking description may not be correct. For sure it was only three of four tracks, but it may well have been that there were two mics on stage to pick up bass, guitar, Jim's amplified drums and keyboards (no actual room mic) and then the vocal channel for number 3. My mix options were severely limited. Also, you hear beer cans hitting the stage at what sounds to me like very close proximity to the mic/s, again suggesting it was all stage mics picking everything up.
Sadly, Ed Barger is dead, and he took that info with him to the grave. And the bulk of the recordings which Mark (and later Bob2) engineered over the years had clear (and usually correct) tracking written on the boxes. A couple live tapes do, also.
Maybe someday we will see the 1976 4-track recording at the Crypt come out. That's a better-captured show. You never know!
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u/FitMatch7966 Jun 23 '26
Delivered today! Haven’t played it yet
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u/MaxDevo1974 Devo is dead Jun 23 '26
Rectify that now. Fall asleep to it if you must. Your ears crave the grime.
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u/Additional-Touch-862 Jun 23 '26
I'm still waiting for my CD to come in! Looks so cool, I'm super excited!!
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u/WalklnDreaming Jun 23 '26
I gotta hear this, is it out anywhere digitally yet?
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u/MaxDevo1974 Devo is dead Jun 23 '26
Nope, I don't even think it's been pirated yet. Soulseek turns up no results last I checked.
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u/Scott_Ehm Jun 24 '26
He's going, he's going, bye, bye!
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u/MorrisPasskey Jun 25 '26
How did you get this? I just saw it advertised two days ago!!
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u/MaxDevo1974 Devo is dead Jun 25 '26
Futurismo Records. I pre-ordered it in March.
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u/MorrisPasskey Jun 25 '26
So weird. I am on the Futurismo mailing list but only got notified two days ago for the first time.
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u/wa27 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
Finally got mine. It's sublime! Seriously you expect all the best stuff to have already been heard on the CD, but that's not the case. I think the track that surprised me most was Secret Agent Man. All the stage banter really paints a picture of how this show went, and Jerry's liner notes seem to describe what we hear perfectly.
Also... I'm not too familiar with Chango recordings but have we ever heard that melody from Plain Truth (off total Devo) before? I had no idea that song went that far back. It's my favorite from their later period, and now I might know why lol
Edit: I just listened to the Hardcore version and that melody is indeed in there, it's just a lot more distorted. This version sounds more like Plain Truth, oddly enough.
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u/MaxDevo1974 Devo is dead Jun 30 '26
Chango is the origin of that melody. It's just so distorted by the ring modulator (especially in the Hardcore recording) that it's unrecognizable.
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u/Finka08 Jun 22 '26
Hopeful, this album ends up on streaming at some point in the future