There is music that numbs you. It’s your coworker’s Taylor Swift playlist on repeat over Bluetooth while you’re stuck washing dishes for the next two hours. It’s the new Meghan Trainor single radiating out over the plaza when every one of the many restaurants in sight is packed to capacity and you’re starving. It infuriates you to the point of inaction. It blinds you with annoyance and rage. And when you hate everything, you can’t love anything. You can’t direct your passion if you are stripped of your direction.
And then there is music that makes action. It’s the music that gives your brain a shock of some brand new, never before heard sound (or maybe it was dug out of a dumpster, flipped, subverted, and churned a bit). It’s the raw sonic synergy that makes you contemplate the life you live, a life you once lived, a life you could be living. It’s the pinpoint verses and choruses that give you a new perspective or awaken some deeply suppressed code tucked between your arteries, unscrambling and rescrambling the concepts and ideas you always felt but could never articulate. It’s the music that zaps you awake from the slumber of boredom. It’s the music that surprises you. It’s the music that provides hope.
It’s the music that wants you to write a song of your own.
I swear that music is probably one of the last bastions of intellectual potential in today’s world.
I type to you from the comfort of my brand new dorm room. I’ll get into the real nitty gritty of why exactly I had to switch rooms when it’s further behind me, but I’m glad to be here. I moved in on Saturday, which involved three trips across the Stopher-Johnson bridge and resulted in veg-out levels of exhaustion. It was a worthwhile exhaustion nonetheless.
Instead of a house warming party, I did what I often do on weekend nights and indulged in music written by old men. But instead of expressing my wackjob musical taste in headphone-induced isolation, I did it in a room of other people. 15-60-75, The Numbers Band, have been playing the area for fifty three years, and this was the first time they played in Kent after I got here where I wasn’t gallivanting home on break. Besides, it was at the Kent Stage, which I’ve never been to, and it’s a much more relevant-to-me first show there than, say, Ace Frehley or Crash Test Dummies.
Knowing the Numbers’ first album, I was well aware of the group’s sound – an angsty and passionate strain of the blues-meets-jazz-meets something else entirely, with the right lick of dissonance that pinpoints their origin smack dab in the middle of the Rust Belt. There isn’t much to do in Akron, so I guess the primary solution is to make music or do drugs (or both). It’s so Pere Ubu, so “Navvy” at times, how it leaps and squelches and swells up in a big ball of noise assaulting your frail ears. I know there’s some interview where David Thomas is like, “Jimmy Bell is the ONLY GOOD SOUNDING ALBUM EVER RECORDED.” Which is a large overstatement, but it is a really good sounding album.
Their live sound reflects that to this day. The noise was crisp and loud. Every member was talented and tight. It was pretty damn stunning. Bob Kidney is a great band leader, and a hilarious one at that. Lots of great banter. A few guests came up for songs peppered throughout the night, like Chris Butler of the Waitresses and Tin Huey (seen wielding possibly the coolest bass I’ve seen since the Steinberger below)! Everyone sitting around me was older, and the woman beside me was asking me how the heck I knew who they were. (She was impressed.) Lots of name drops in the fragments of conversations that poked my head during intermission. It felt like a good ol’ time, one of many, with lots of invisible lines darting across the room like yarn strings on a bulletin board. Aside from being the youngest person in the room, I might’ve been the only person in the room who was seeing the Numbers for the first time.
It’s surreal acknowledging that there’s been this tiny scene here that’s been happening since practically the sixties but has not expanded far past its zip code, resulting in all the cool old people from back in the day being connected to everybody else and living within an approximate 50 mile radius of each other. It’s kind of fascinating, honestly, being in a vortex so rooted in its geography and persistent obscurity. My perspective as a current student definitely helps feed some fascination in it for me. In my cultural anthropology class, we’ve discussed the processes of field work – participant observation, cultural relativism, historical particularism. In Music as a World Phenomenon, I’ve read many mentions of the contributions of ethnomusicologists documenting music traditions across the globe. Does the shadow of the Goodyear Blimp fall differently than that of the steel sky birds worshiped by some remote island communities? Are all those “Punk 45” compilations less important than the “world music” CDs that hipster David Byrne fans buy to prove that they’re not only into African sounds when white guys do them? It really does feel like I’ve encountered some hidden anomaly that has somehow withstood JB’s becoming shit-kickin’ country/get crunk Brewhouse, gentrification, and things getting caught on fire. In a documentary we were shown in anthropology class, a group of linguistic historians arrived at a remote ex-Soviet village to document its language and were told, if only you’d come five years earlier, because many of that language’s most versatile speakers had died off. It’s like I’ve ended up mingling among the last great hurrah of a cultural phenom microcosm by complete accident; maybe I could’ve come at a time when the esplanade didn’t exist, but I’m here anyways with mental pen and paper. And I’m the only person of my generation who gives a crap. I’m one of the only people who gives a crap at all, really. But I guess it’s worthwhile that there’s somebody that gives a crap.
Nevertheless, 15-60-75 continue to chug away with great vigor, tucked away safe from the spotlights of the nebulous festering “classic rock” stadium blob. I do kind of love how you can see Terry Hynde, Chrissie’s brother, be extremely awesome on the saxophone for twenty dollars plus ticket fee, though. In 2023, can you beat that?
Okay, back to listening to “High Heels Are Dangerous” on repeat.
Someone on last.fm changed the album photo for Simply Saucer’s superb Cyborgs Revisited compilation from the good ol’ fashioned monochrome photo I’m used to to the original cover, the same photo soaked in searing psychedelic YMCK acid. It’s common for black and white photos to be everywhere on last.fm, and I do enjoy the combined old school-and-concise ethos of that mission, but I also appreciate the WHOA TRIPPEN OUT WOOOOOOAH effect of this shakeup.
I’ve been feeling the psych quite a bit these past days, to be truthful. Barbarella has been on my brain something fierce. As I get back to navigatrixing the trials and tribulations of Planet College, I guess I feel myself a tiny bit of its titular heroine, albeit less dumb (let’s be frank, she was pretty dumb) and more post-Babs Jane Fonda mugshot. At least, that’s what I’m trying to convey for myself. This is the semester I start going all in with the May 4 commemoration, after all, so I’ve got to get into that FTA ‘tude somehow. (Jane was scheduled to speak at the fiftieth back in 2020, but we all know how that went. NEAT.)
There’s a Barbarella remake in the works, apparently, which I only learned of fairly recently even though it was announced months ago. They’ve been trying for one since I think the nineties with actresses such as Drew Barrymore, and each try has ended in a quiet whimper of an abortion. This makes sense considering that Barbarella is a movie that could have only been made in 1968. How to you expect a modern audience to react to certain parts of that movie? Fittingly, there’s a plot summary for an early 2000s attempt (which of course I can’t find again for the life of me), and it sounds absolutely nothing like the original. Interesting if put in the right hands, but not faithful to the source material. Maybe it’s closer to the source material’s source material, which I am not yet familiar with. (Thanks to Mahvel’s subliminal effects on pop culture at large, I always forget that Barbarella is a comic book movie.)
That terminated remake seemed to take a more overtly political bent than the original, with lots of societal inequality and having your innocent past shattered before your eyes and the like. The original is also political, but in a super subtle way that is, obviously, drenched in copious amounts of sex. It is so sexy, in fact, that all anyone talks about regarding it is whether or not it is sexist. There’s surely a lens other than the feminist one that people can take about this movie* (while still recognizing Jane Fonda’s eternally radiating wonderfulness), and it doesn’t have to be an extremely serious one. Our world is more absurd, technologically advanced, and, frankly, stupid than ever, just like a Barbarella adventure. And what do we do? We refuse the laugh. It’s insane. And if you don’t recognize the insanity you can’t sustainably live.
2023! Less knee-jerk puritanical reactions, more embracing and exploring the trappings of liberation and all its hidden ugly corners, the pure intertwining with the reprehensible in perfect yin-yang union. If that remake actually happens, it is going to be awful.
And then the nerds re-congregated, and DEVOtional Saturday happened.
And what a de-evolved time it was.
The Jimmy Psycho Experiment, who have been DEVOtional openers for a few years now, set a relaxed mood well with their tiki-loungey versions of everyone’s favorite DEVO hits. Attention soon shifted towards the many special guests, whose Q&A sessions took up a good chunk of the night. Good old Mark was back for round 2, though he was slightly more subdued when compared to his misdemeanor on Friday. DEVOtional old timer Jerry Casale, who almost always comes out to support the fans, brought with him the music video premier of his next single, “The Invisible Man.” Without spoiling too much for everyone who wasn’t there, it was hands-down one of the most amusing things I’ve ever witnessed, and it only makes me more fascinated about what exactly goes on within Jerry’s mind that could make him conjure up something so perfectly, undeniably wack. But you’ll all see it in a few months.
Steve Bartek, the guitarist on Jerry’s recent music who is best known for his work with Oingo Boingo, joined Jerry in looking very smart and answering questions. I didn’t get to talk with him at all, but he seemed like a really genuine guy. The dark horse of the program, however, was one Michael Schwartz, better known as Rod Rooter, DEVO’s evil manager from way back. Throughout the night, Mike seamlessly incorporated his character into his talk-talk to the point where I initially genuinely wasn’t sure if he was joking or not when he discussed being the first white guy on King Records with a song produced by James Brown. (Spoiler alert: he WASN’T).
Sometime before DEVOtional started, Max had the brilliant idea of making Rod an entire election campaign which proceeded to snowball from a joke to people on Facebook actually buying made-to-order polo shirts emblazoned with the phrase “America’s Begging For The Barrel Room.” The virus had spread so far that Max didn’t even have to give Mark one of the campaign buttons he was handing out; he had already been given one by someone else. With Mike’s charisma and wit, I wouldn’t hesitate to vote in his favor, and I can’t help but hope he becomes a mainstay. (“The Man” did approve of Max’s effort, by the way.)
Max signed one of his posters for him while I stood by, causing him to ask Max in character, “Is THIS your GIRLFRIEND?” Max would go on to be very fixated on the fact that Mike was a few hours early to the punch on that.
Jerry, Mark, and the rest were signing items for hours. I heard someone say their autograph session clocked in at over three hours, which blows my mind and makes me want to pray atheist style for their dominant wrists. Max used the opportunity to gift Mark and Jerry bags containing some of his original music and hand decorated lab coats, with airbrush art for Marky and colorful tampons for Jer-Jer, while I stood by as photojournalist and emotional support.
(Jerry sadly didn’t try it on for us in person, but the photo he uploaded later more than makes up for that.)
I wasn’t immune to the photo opportunities, either.
All the while, Al Mothersbaugh’s band, Massive Hotdog Recall, brought the party as usual, proving that “Shout” can be a good song if you add some non-synthetic, whip-spankin’ horns to it. New Devolution, an energetic tribute band who came all the way from Chile to perform, followed by plowing through high-power early 80s DEVO tracks. The fun factor was through the roof as the spontaneously generated giant helium balls the crowd was serving around threatened to make a dent in it.
After the raffle, which I did not win anything at, the highly anticipated Fight Milk, who were not balls, took the stage. They exemplified the fun factor just like last year, but having more than one guy on the stage again (while retaining last year’s cardboard cutouts) totally elevated their energy. Alongside Jackson, the band’s creative mastermind and sole constant, it was great having Tavi from Finland back onstage, whether he was flashing a creepy smile at the audience with down pitched vocals or scurrying around the stage wrecking his guitar strings. Those boys be DEVO.
Max was also making his live performance debut, and he absolutely killed it. Not many other DEVOtional performances would both perform a song that hadn’t been performed since 1974 and make the live debut of Jerry’s latest single. (TAKE THAT, OLD MAN! Just kiddin’.) Max took lead on both, and it was so great seeing him in his element. It truly wouldn’t have been the same without him up there in that goddamn tampon coat hurling his Rod Rooter buttons at the crowd. I even caught a photo of one in mid air! I love blinding everyone with the flash from my camera.
Detention finished off the night, though I sadly didn’t get to see most of their set because, deja vu, I was too busy having a conversation in the Ballroom’s bar the room over. (I got to hear their Steve-tribute cover of Oingo Boingo’s “Little Girls” in muffled format, though!) At least I did get to chat with their singer Elliott, who I’ve bumped into a few times on the Kent campus, beforehand. Us Kent chicks gotta stick together.
And then, just like that, the night had winded down. Everyone packed up, stumbled out of the ballroom, and hit up Ubers back to their hotels. And then it was over.
Did it beat last year’s for me? No. That year was too special! But I’ll gladly let it be the first loser.
And hey, I got a boyfriend out of this one, so I guess that’s a plus.
In the past week, I became the subject of numerous jokes about how I was going to need four blog entries for that past weekend alone—it later multiplied to six—because of all the events that got jam-packed into three and a half weary, weary days. Three days that contained my personal favorite nerd gathering, the DEVOtional, and would go on to comprise possibly the most roller coaster-like weekend of my life thus far.
Welp, after over a week, here it comes.
The aforementioned weekend really kicked off on Thursday (though I had a class the next morning). The members of DEVOtional veteran act Fight Milk, having come in early for rehearsals, found time in their schedule to come down to good ol’ Kent State so I could show them around.
I’ve been seeing Fight Milk at DEVOtional since 2019, and it’s been wild seeing them morph and mutate into what they are now. Not only do they always bring the most extreme amounts of fun, they also really get what DEVO is all about in a way. They are dedicated, and they respect what those old fogies were doing while still maintaining a Gen Z flair. Add that all three of their performers this year were coming from such long distances—lone constant Jackson from Seattle, Tavi from Finland, and Max from San Diego—and it only felt fitting that they should get to see where DEVO all began.
The first up important locale was Governance Chambers, the site of both the “Jocko Homo” music video and DEVO’s second ever show, in the Student Center. Luckily, one of its sets of doors was unlocked and no one was in there, so we slipped in without even a whimper from anyone actually working in the building. URBAN EXPLORATION! It was a great joy seeing the guys be such nerds in there, ESPECIALLY Max, the guy who, you know, covered the entirety of that second show.
They also did some obligatory Mark Mothersbaugh poses:
Before heading into town, I got to show them the site of the shootings on May 4, 1970, which DEVO’s bassist witnessed and credits with being the catalyst of the band. You would figure that the place where DEVO was born, and a place so historical at that, would be at least somewhat noteworthy for people to visit when they’re coming up for the DEVOtional every year. At least we got to do our part.
It was a solemn experience walking down to the victory bell on the commons and looking down on the Taylor Hall parking lot from the perspective of the National Guardsmen who killed four and wounded nine that day. But it was a worthwhile and important one, and all three also enjoyed the visitors center inside Taylor Hall as well, with all its artifacts providing context.
Here they were looking for coin offerings that matched up with 1970 at I believe Allison’s parking space.
We also stalked through McGilvrey Hall, which has some May 4 related displays on its first floor and is generally an incredible time capsule of the mid century in terms of its hallways. We peeked into the auditorium in Cartwright Hall, where DEVO have performed—there was a recital going on!—as well.
After some aimless wandering, we headed down the esplanade into town, got handed some Get Out Of Hell Free cards by some old dude, and made our way towards Water Street, which contains a row of buildings that can be seen in the video for “Secret Agent Man.” More nerd behavior ensued.
When that was all said and done, our next goal was sustenance. Taco Tontos was on the menu. On our way down, we ended up running into a poster for DEVOtional, the whole reason these three nerds were here in the first place. We still don’t know the culprit.
We would then discuss all the secrets of the group’s set list while Tavi ate the best burrito he’d had in his life. Actually, we all ended up getting burritos. What weirdos. How deviant from the norm. Another important lesson realized by these friends: Taco Tontos never disappoints.
We made our way back to the campus one last time so the guys could get an Uber and rest up for Friday’s activities.
It was an absolute blast showing the guys around, and it felt like a natural way to kick off the weekend. For me, it was definitely more than satisfying getting to see Kent State finally get some acknowledgment—especially from some talented nerds who have been finding themselves on the forefront of…whatever this modern battleground is. After all, you can’t go forward without knowing your history.
I’m leaving for college Friday. All the finishing touches are being put on my departure, and the gravity is only now truly setting in. It’s overwhelming to think about sometimes. Not really terrifying, just overwhelming. Overwhelming in the way that thinking too much about something makes you feel, until you think too much some more and realize the workload is totally tolerable. It’s kind of annoying.
The Melvins have been the soundtrack to this pre-collegiate angst ever since I saw them over a month ago, and I assume they’ll still be there to help me through my post-pre-collegiate angst. Looking back, that show feels like it was the equivalent of stumbling into a church only to encounter a fire-and-brimstone preacher’s most imposing sermon and becoming a hardcore Christian on the spot out of fear and awe. To put it lightly, I’m hooked. It’s simple, really: I like things that go against things I don’t like, the list of which includes genre trappings, banality, the lack of a sense of humor, hypersensitivity, and stupidity. All of these things are incredibly overbearing, which makes it all the more satisfying to find a driving force of subversive defiance to those norms. Like the Melvins.
Looking at groups like DEVO and the Melvins feels like looking at a beacon calling forth all the boys and girls who are fed up with straight society and crave more than what it gives. Call me a moth to a flame, then—a calculated moth to a calculated flame, that is. I’m a freethinker, and I’m not into pledging blind allegiance. Following things mindlessly sets people up for failure. I say follow things that make you think. The Melvins make you think because one’s brain is constantly trying to decipher what the hell King Buzzo is singing whenever you listen to ‘em. Or sometimes I’ll find myself listening to a song (sometimes by the Melvins, sometimes by someone else) and questioning how their label let them release it in the first place or how it is even permitted to exist. Who green lights “Skin Horse”? Who? Seriously. This is no diss; I love that song. But on every listen, the perfection of its warped, tragic, alienating strain of insanity seems too good to be true. But it is true, and it’s concrete, and it feels very special to see.
Looking at the big picture, I don’t think that yesterday’s and today’s…what’s a good term…creative terrorists get the credit they deserve for their sheer bravery. Thanks to efforts like theirs, people like me get to hear things that tap into a very vital, rare, primal vein that satisfies many good, weird criteria. People are more pent up and frustrated than ever. And the things many of these people have always wanted to express but were too scared to, might just get belted into microphones by punk rock priests at sold out shows. Things like this encourage me to keep on marching. I wouldn’t be setting up for the real world with confidence without taking those influences with me.
I bought a DVD of the first season of Wonder Showzen a few months back, and I’m finally getting around to watching season two on archive.org. The show uses the schtick of a kitschy kid’s show—crude animation, puppets, smart mouthed children—to make mincemeat out of every touchy subject imaginable. The result is a show that is capable of offending everyone on earth. And sometimes that even includes me!
A few clips of it have apparently gone viral in recent times (Bush was still in office when it was originally on the air) because people just can’t tell if the show’s brutal satire is for real or not. I think there is something very powerful about something like that, something that continues to make people uncomfortable. It forces people to confront the true nature of the problems they would rather not think about, the things that even the most gung ho social commentators on all sides of the political spectrum would rather sweep under the rug. In a world where polite ignorance is more socially acceptable than actually dealing with deeply rooted problems, Wonder Showzen tackles those problems and their absurdities all at once with a shuffle and a wink at the camera. That’s what I like about it.
It’s also just really amusing seeing rando New Yorkers get egregiously pissed off at a blue hand puppet asking them stupid questions.
My first log as a legal adult. Who would’ve thought! Yeah, I’m pretty hardcore. It’s definitely an interesting time to be going through so many rites of passage, from graduating to reaching adulthood last Sunday. It’s also pretty interesting how all these rites of passage seem to coincide with similarly wonderful concerts. I got an incredible DEVO show as a graduation party, which I’m still not quite over. This time around, it was the Melvins who brought me into adulthood on Friday, two days before my gestation completion anniversary. I wanted special for my birthday, dammit, and I ended up getting much, much more than I could have ever asked for. At the very least, I can check off my list seeing the mighty King Buzzo’s hair in person.
The concert also coincided with my first time to what was once a steel capital of the world, good ol’ Bethlehem, PA. Sounds quaint, doesn’t it? The town surrounding the venue and extending across the river itself is nice and quaint. The venue is located right by the old Bethlehem Steel plant, which was operational until, somehow, the mid-nineties. It now looms over a bustling little cultural spot, towering as a series of antiquated pagodas of rust and dead industry. (The morning after the Melvins my family checked out the self guided walking tour along the plant’s old material transport trestle, which allows for some incredible up-close action. It’s truly an incredible and fascinating sight to experience.) The venue itself also houses a movie theater and boasts an orange spiral staircase adorned with intricate blown glass art where we waited to get our tickets checked. Within the ballroom, concertgoers could’ve gotten a table at the also orange balcony looking out on the crowd and stage. The steel plant loomed behind the stage through the large glass windows and would later be illuminated in neon light when the sun set. All in all, it was very atmospheric.
I was initially positioned directly stage right, up against the security gate as I’ve gotten used to at shows that feature them, for openers Harsh Mellow (excellent name). I was impressed at their energetic, intense brand of noise rock, and I’m really excited to see what they do in the future. I had drifted back slightly and more towards the front of the stage to talk with some of my dad’s friends by the time the second band, Helms Alee, took the stage and proceeded to turn everyone’s minds to sluuudge. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if their set went on for longer than the Melvins’. I had a good view of their drummer, who was a total powerhouse in her own right and also very sweet at the merch booth before and after the show. Fun times.
And then, promptly as the headliners took the stage, I was shoved—or maybe something in my consciousness pulled me a little bit—right up against the gate, just slightly off-center from Buzz Osbourne’s microphone stand. What followed was something akin to my mind being blown—or maybe it’s more like my mind being unfolded and refolded, like origami. The more I think about it, the more I’m sure the triple threat of “Oven”, “Lovely Butterflies”, and “It’s Shoved” that opened the show flipped some sort of weird, hidden, primal switch in my brain. I feel like a reformed young woman now after having seen the Melvins. As a result of the weekend’s sonic therapy, I feel respectable and healthy urges to put myself out there more, engage myself more creatively, and try different styling techniques that would increase the volume of my hair. Well, maybe the latter is just the aftershock of getting to see Buzz’s incredible hairdo in person. I am being completely serious when I say that no photograph or video can truly replicate how absolutely incredible it is to see with one’s own eyes.
But I digress.
To put it simply, the band was relentless. Songs launched into each other with the beat of Dale Crover’s pounding, primal drums with barely any time to spare, blending the night’s sequence of events together like a syrupy sweet molotov cocktail. Yet sonic blasts of pent up punk rock fury still played ping pong with sublime, smirking moments of teasing quiet throughout the night—thanks, complex and diverse song structures. “Bob” bless their current bass player, Steve McDonald, who wore what I initially thought was an ironically awful white disco suit before realizing it was some sort of fancy kung-fu jacket accented with gold, elevated from it’s previous Halloween costume status. He was clearly having the time of his life up there, hopping around, crouching, and striking many an audacious pose throughout the night. And then there was Buzz, the one perhaps most appropriately dressed up for Halloween in July in his iconic skeleton robes. I can safely say I’ve never been more intimidated by a man than I was there in my spot in front of the vicious King Buzzo himself, and that’s a good thing. I was even too intimidated to take photos when he got probably as close to my part of the audience as he could’ve gotten as he hammered on his transparent-body guitar. I was that in awe. He and Steve thrashed surprisingly precisely around the place, making good use of the stage’s expansive floor area due to Dale’s drum kit being placed so far back. Dale emerged from behind his instrument of choice at one point to use one of his sticks as a sword in a brief fencing match against the neck of Steve’s bass, which was extremely entertaining. The same goes for Buzz’s liberal use of hand gestures during breaks in songs where he didn’t play guitar, which I will always find very, very amusing no matter who is doing it (and no matter whether or not their hands should actually be strumming those strings at that place in the song). Yes. I dare say the whole band took it to twelve.
I got more used to my surroundings as the night went on. I was marked safe from the inevitable pit the entire time, though I briefly considered joining it before remembering how lucky I was to have acquired the best view of Buzz in the house. Besides which, it was really funny glancing over periodically at the antsy, stingy looking security guy at the front of the stage, who was jerking back and forth as he watched the pit with much concern. It was pretty great to glance back at, too—imagine “Honey Bucket” tearing up such a clean, modern, composed establishment! At the beginning of the show there was some sort of country band playing on one of the complex’s outdoor stages, visible through the glass wall from my initial standing position. I wonder how those guys would’ve reacted to what went on inside. In terms of my reaction, I was mesmerized, pulverized, and totally hooked even after the band left the stage. They could’ve gone on another hour and I still would’ve been wanting more.
But hey, the band is pretty well known for their tour grind, so it’ll presumably be easy to see them again down the road. I slept contently that night knowing that.
Two days later I turned eighteen. If it were 1970 I’d be old enough to kill, but not for votin’. I’ll probably be woman enough to not be able to kill or vote at all soon if this country keeps going the way it is. 246 years this week, huh? I see so many people nowadays wondering how many years it’s got left with the way things are.
Based on their hypotheses, it’s probably less than the Melvins still have in them.
I got around to watching Planet of the Apes for the first time last night, and I don’t think a film has soared like a blasphemous paper airplane so high above my already lofty expectations before. I adored it. Rod Serling must have been having the time of his life writing the script—”human see, human do”? Come on. It’s too good. I have literally never been so giddy watching a movie as I was when the high judges at Taylor’s unjust trial recreated the famous “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” formation as Zira and Cornelius tried to present their theory of human-to-ape evolution. It was just too perfect.
Despite the film having been released in 1968 (and featuring a “don’t trust anyone over thirty” reference as a sign of the times—though that’s probably just what all this ‘boomer’ talk mutated from) it felt all too relevant. If anything, it was refreshing. Too often into today’s world, the human is viewed as a creature of pure goodness and virtue by both sides of the societal equation. Either acts of cruelty are always good and just, or they are inhuman and unnatural. But neither of these perspectives recognize that humans are equally capable of good and bad. The same goes for the film’s apes: you have your Zaiuses, and you have your Ziras. The ape society shown in the film insists that it could have never evolved from a previous species; socially accepted religion states they were created in their higher power’s image. The earthly powers that be within that society know the truth—that they evolved from dirty, uncivilized humans—but calls heresy on anyone who tries to legitimize the facts. Doesn’t this fear of truth in favor of species superiority sound familiar? The apes repeat the flawed duality of the humans that came before them, and Taylor retains it as he tries to claim superiority over the apes instead of equality. It goes to show that a lust for power over others is an innate and primal instinct, and it can only be tampered by favoring reason and fact, which, while not impossible, is being slowly eradicated on a wide scale—and even the proprietors of the truth aren’t always perfect.
Life is so fun!
With all of this superb social commentary, I find it really amusing that the film’s popularity inspired a slew of sequels that, from what I understand, centered on primal action scenes over a message. They ended up even making Planet of the Apes toys so that America’s youth could not only watch man find himself reflected in what he once saw as the complete opposite of his society, but also reenact it on their own on a miniature scale. And how do you get kids to buy toys in the 1970s? You put that crap on TV.
The youth of that era needed to know that the off model, extremely dinky figures and play sets being churned out were the coolest, most action-packed experiences ever conceived in between their Saturday morning shows, and how else to do it but to condense the film your toy line is based off of into about a minute of compact insanity?
Whoever was responsible for this commercial was clearly having the time of their life. It totally reduces the film down to it’s most base parts but does so so creatively, so elegantly, that I say it deserves some sort of spot up there with the original. Budget and length constraints only imply the opening spaceship crash via the astronaut doll literally washing up on a sandy shore. He provides extremely dramatic, kung fu gripping narration as he explores his surroundings and is captured by apes who seek to “OPERATE” on him to keep him from being a “FREETHINKER.” He swiftly escapes with the help of some actual human children, who were also probably also having the times of their lives moving him around the plastic set.
But the absolute best part comes at the very end. Mimicking Taylor and Nova’s ride into the Forbidden Zone at the end of the full length film, the newly-free, nameless astronaut doll sits on the back of a mechanically powered toy horse as it actually trots across the shore. The human kids are gone, as they have gotten bored and moved on to the next hot licensed toy line. The astronaut peeks out from behind a seaside rock formation to explore “WHAT STRANGE PLANET” he’s crashed on. The screen immediately cuts to the most adorable rendition of anything ever: a cutesy shadow of the Statue of Liberty stretches out across the beach as the terrified astronaut gasps “OH…NO…” upon realizing that this mysterious planet was his own (despite surely having not been made in the US of A). He stops short of goddamning anything to hell, which would not be permitted on child oriented TV. It is absolutely glorious.
And I will always be a cheerleader for reason and logic, but sometimes you just need a dose of gorgeous, perfectly executed insanity. You just gotta bask in the glory and remember where you came from.
Thank you, Rod Serling, for being such a genius; and thank you, MEGO Toys, for being such shills!
On Wednesday night, the seaport district of New York City was overtaken by hordes of beautiful mutants. It would have been my third to last day of high school had I not taken two days off to throw down with some enlightened brethren to see DEVO, that de-evolution band who have been soldering on for forty-nine years now. The show they put on did nothing to dent the reputation they’ve built up for themselves.
We arrived in NYC a few hours before the show started and ushered our way down to the waterfront as quickly as we could to mingle with spuds. Energy domes of many colors and persuasions—classic red, blue, black, mirror ball—sat on many heads. (I wore mine on the way to New York, getting many compliments and side eyes in the process, but ended up leaving it in the hotel room due to its bulkiness.) I spoke to many friends I hadn’t seen in months and others that I had long anticipated meeting in person.
The show marked the first time I had ever taken an escalator to a concert. The herd was guided up a good three or four of them to the roof of the complex where the stage was located. The entire scene was very swanky, something DEVO deserve after years of toil and the steaming hot weather of the festival they played in California last weekend, which was a talking point among its attendees. The buildings of New York City towered in the distance. The noise they made probably echoed out over the water and over the city like the ring of a gun.
Thanks to my bodyguard duo of friends Chaim and Rachel, I was easily able to assume my usual DEVO position: right up against the guard rail. Much like my last fling in Chicago, I found myself directly in front of Jerry’s synth bass setup.
Rod Rooter’s sardonic address, familiar to us from Chicago, opened the show once more. And to quote the New York Dolls, something must’ve happened over Manhattan, because the sheer energy that DEVO brought was monstrous. Every member was absolutely in their fullest de-evolved element. I would have never expected to see Jerry smile so much during a DEVO show. He was clearly having the time of his life up there, especially during my favorite live offering of theirs, “Secret Agent Man,” when he let his tongue wag around like he was in autopilot ecstasy.
The guitars were sharp as usual—Bob 1’s sonic attacks at the audience came out very nicely, especially as he snapped his strings during his frazzled “Mr. DNA” solo. The stoic Josh 2 wielded a brand new custom axe that blended in well with his radiation suit while Josh 1 slammed the skins with alien precision from stage right.
And of course, Mark Mothersbaugh, certified birthday boy, gave a fittingly good show, even if the large speaker box in the way of my view reduced him to a disembodied head and sometimes obscured him entirely many a time throughout the night. The rest of the time, he came out far enough for my part of the audience to bask in his de-evolved glory.
And even when DEVO wasn’t singing, they had the crowd by the collar. Jerry gave a bitter, all-too relevant monologue to the “spuds, spudesses, and everyone in between on the spectrum” in the audience before “Jocko Homo,” lamenting the sad worldwide spread of de-evolution—when it comes to good ol’ DEVO, politic and stage presence are not mutually exclusive. Later, the certified birthday Booji Boy of the night came out at the encore to throw energy dome shaped cookies—wrapped in COVID-safe prophylactic baggies—at the crowd. He monologued about DEVO’s dead cool friends rising from their graves and crawling to the venue while Jerry looked on with the most glorious, bug-eyed face I’ve ever seen. And then it was over.
But not yet for me.
Shortly after arrival I learned that I alongside a few other young alien types were not only invited to meet the band in the dressing room but also to the after party (thanks, Michael!). The “dressing room” was a vast little room that everyone was crowded into one third of, by the door. It was in this space where I found myself face to face with Mark Mothersbaugh himself. Scared and intimidated by his form, I had to put my oft-neglected self defense skills to use before he could pounce first.
Not too rusty. After this photo he wanted to make sure it turned out well for the memories. That rascal.
I also got to remeet Bob Mothersbaugh, who remembered me from DEVOtional 2019, and talk to Josh Hager, who proved to be just as kind in person as he’s been to me via Fakebook. Jerry was in a rush—with “a lot of crap to deal with”—and I barely caught him.
After the room had cleared out, the after party was next in our targets. Set in a even smaller but equally swanky restaurant on the first floor, the room was packed with people, many of whom I didn’t recognize. I had never encountered such a busy, socialite, adult event, but I was able to mingle my way around successfully, talking to old friends and even a few new faces.
I bumped into Mark again, mentioning my plans to attend Jerry and his alma mater, Kent State University. He gave me a sticker of DEVO’s newest logo, a golden compass with energy dome accents that the band members wore on their chests during the show, as a sort of congrats cookie. I did the same when I caught back up with Jerry later in the night. By that time he had relaxed from whatever had been going on in the dressing room. He seemed very happy to hear about my plans!
As the night went on, much of the party became a delirious and beautiful blur to me, the result of a positive disorientation. More and more delicious looking food was placed on a sleek, long white table throughout the night, and numerous times servers with swanky snack foods asked me and whoever I was speaking to if we wanted to try. The cake for the birthday Booji Boy, adorned in energy domes that were apparently marshmallow, came out some time during the night as Jerry serenaded Mark very enthusiastically. I ate a slice, even though I wasn’t hungry. There was talking, talking, and more talking. And it was amazing.
And then I rode home the next day and attended my final day of high school the day after that, an undercover agent as my peers remained totally unaware of the events I had witnessed just hours earlier.
Jimmy Bell’s Still In Town
Monday, February 20th, 2023I type to you from the comfort of my brand new dorm room. I’ll get into the real nitty gritty of why exactly I had to switch rooms when it’s further behind me, but I’m glad to be here. I moved in on Saturday, which involved three trips across the Stopher-Johnson bridge and resulted in veg-out levels of exhaustion. It was a worthwhile exhaustion nonetheless.
Instead of a house warming party, I did what I often do on weekend nights and indulged in music written by old men. But instead of expressing my wackjob musical taste in headphone-induced isolation, I did it in a room of other people. 15-60-75, The Numbers Band, have been playing the area for fifty three years, and this was the first time they played in Kent after I got here where I wasn’t gallivanting home on break. Besides, it was at the Kent Stage, which I’ve never been to, and it’s a much more relevant-to-me first show there than, say, Ace Frehley or Crash Test Dummies.
Knowing the Numbers’ first album, I was well aware of the group’s sound – an angsty and passionate strain of the blues-meets-jazz-meets something else entirely, with the right lick of dissonance that pinpoints their origin smack dab in the middle of the Rust Belt. There isn’t much to do in Akron, so I guess the primary solution is to make music or do drugs (or both). It’s so Pere Ubu, so “Navvy” at times, how it leaps and squelches and swells up in a big ball of noise assaulting your frail ears. I know there’s some interview where David Thomas is like, “Jimmy Bell is the ONLY GOOD SOUNDING ALBUM EVER RECORDED.” Which is a large overstatement, but it is a really good sounding album.
Their live sound reflects that to this day. The noise was crisp and loud. Every member was talented and tight. It was pretty damn stunning. Bob Kidney is a great band leader, and a hilarious one at that. Lots of great banter. A few guests came up for songs peppered throughout the night, like Chris Butler of the Waitresses and Tin Huey (seen wielding possibly the coolest bass I’ve seen since the Steinberger below)! Everyone sitting around me was older, and the woman beside me was asking me how the heck I knew who they were. (She was impressed.) Lots of name drops in the fragments of conversations that poked my head during intermission. It felt like a good ol’ time, one of many, with lots of invisible lines darting across the room like yarn strings on a bulletin board. Aside from being the youngest person in the room, I might’ve been the only person in the room who was seeing the Numbers for the first time.
It’s surreal acknowledging that there’s been this tiny scene here that’s been happening since practically the sixties but has not expanded far past its zip code, resulting in all the cool old people from back in the day being connected to everybody else and living within an approximate 50 mile radius of each other. It’s kind of fascinating, honestly, being in a vortex so rooted in its geography and persistent obscurity. My perspective as a current student definitely helps feed some fascination in it for me. In my cultural anthropology class, we’ve discussed the processes of field work – participant observation, cultural relativism, historical particularism. In Music as a World Phenomenon, I’ve read many mentions of the contributions of ethnomusicologists documenting music traditions across the globe. Does the shadow of the Goodyear Blimp fall differently than that of the steel sky birds worshiped by some remote island communities? Are all those “Punk 45” compilations less important than the “world music” CDs that hipster David Byrne fans buy to prove that they’re not only into African sounds when white guys do them? It really does feel like I’ve encountered some hidden anomaly that has somehow withstood JB’s becoming shit-kickin’ country/get crunk Brewhouse, gentrification, and things getting caught on fire. In a documentary we were shown in anthropology class, a group of linguistic historians arrived at a remote ex-Soviet village to document its language and were told, if only you’d come five years earlier, because many of that language’s most versatile speakers had died off. It’s like I’ve ended up mingling among the last great hurrah of a cultural phenom microcosm by complete accident; maybe I could’ve come at a time when the esplanade didn’t exist, but I’m here anyways with mental pen and paper. And I’m the only person of my generation who gives a crap. I’m one of the only people who gives a crap at all, really. But I guess it’s worthwhile that there’s somebody that gives a crap.
Nevertheless, 15-60-75 continue to chug away with great vigor, tucked away safe from the spotlights of the nebulous festering “classic rock” stadium blob. I do kind of love how you can see Terry Hynde, Chrissie’s brother, be extremely awesome on the saxophone for twenty dollars plus ticket fee, though. In 2023, can you beat that?
Okay, back to listening to “High Heels Are Dangerous” on repeat.
Tags:15-60-75, Akron sound, concerts, ethnomusicology of the Rust Belt, Kent Ohio, Kent Stage, music, Ohio, random anthropological analysis hour with Sophia, things I enjoy
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