by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 15, 2008   Last Updated: March 16, 2008

It had been 10 years since Devo recorded their first album, "Are We Not Men?" - but by 1984 they'd been dropped by their first record label, and drummer Alan Myers had left the band. In 1988 Devo returned to their roots for a live concert in Los Angeles, and when they joked about the band's 10 years in the business, they drew supportive cheers from the crowd. That performance is captured in a fresh and original album called "Now It Can Be Told."

Though the performance was ostensibly to promote their new album, "Total Devo," the band packs in an amazing variety of songs. They surprise the audience by opening with an acoustic guitar slowly strumming the anthem chords for "Jocko Homo," their signature song about "evolving up from little snails" (now accompanied by a slide guitar). They'd never performed their second track before, a cheery acoustic ditty about a coming revolution which Gerald Casale introduces as "a happy one." They make a grand return to their trademark synthesized sound, with keyboards, electric percussion, and a remorseless bass. The album contains 17 songs, running for over an hour, including an 11-minute grand finale. In the end only three songs came from the "Total Devo" album.

The finale offers an amazing combination of "Shout" and "Disco Dancer" with the song "Somewhere" from "West Side Story." The keyboards rise for nearly three minutes into another anthem that commands "Remember you were there, remember if you care, all those who held their ground when it all came down." The Broadway musical's lyrics about the doomed lovers' hopes for "a place for us" are preceded by a very devolved shout: "He's ready to die." As "the femmes Devo" take the stage, the band keeps the music going continuously, culminating with the upbeat perpetual rhythm of "Disco Dancer." Casale sings about "a world that's turned unkind," and the crowd calls out approval as the song ends suddenly.

It's nice to hear the band getting appreciation from its fans. "There's people out there that just don't think Devo is cool any more," Casale teases at the album's beginning. Proving they were more than a new wave flash, the band returns the energy with an unusually mature performance. And as the album ends, Casale leaves them with one final Zen-like slogan of devolution.

"Be happy or not!"

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