Devo and Filmmaker Chris Smith on Their Sundance Doc: How the Band’s ‘Transgressive, Naughty’ Performance Art Infiltrated the Pop Mainstream
variety.comChris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Devo is headed to Sundance, not just for the festival premiere of the Chris Smith-directed documentary film that share’s the band’s name, but a Jan.
21 performance by the group at the just-opened Marquis on Main Street. And maybe that’s not all from the rock avant-gardists turned “Whip It” hitmakers. “Powder’s gonna fly,” promises original member Gerald Casale. “We’ll be skiing,” concurs co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh. “We’ll be doing stunt-skiing.” Well, let’s leave it at the premiere and performance, then; Mothersbaugh and Casale don’t really intend to put the “jock” back in “Jocko Homo,” most likely.
But 45 or 50 years ago, they were very much shredding anything resembling rock ‘n’ roll norms or mores, as captured in Smith’s “Devo,” which chronicles a half-century of the group doing its best to introduce subversive philosophical and musical ideas into the mainstream, especially in their most revolutionary, formative years.
By the time they became MTV staples in the early ‘80s, there was something a little bit more user-friendly, if not actually cuddly, about Devo, as they rode atop a wave of synth-pop, on its edgiest curl.
Read more on variety.com