{"id":4738,"date":"2025-12-15T14:54:37","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T13:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/?p=4738"},"modified":"2025-12-15T14:54:39","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T13:54:39","slug":"devo-q-are-we-not-men-a-we-are-devo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/music\/devo-q-are-we-not-men-a-we-are-devo\/","title":{"rendered":"DEVO \u2013 Q: ARE WE NOT MEN?\u00a0 A: WE ARE DEVO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Artist: Devo<\/strong>
Album: Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo \/ Devo Live<\/strong>
Label: Virgin Records<\/strong>
Link: https:\/\/clubdevo.com\/
Style: Pop\/Rock<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many bands working in the pop rock style, Devo was formed when a group of students attending the same university got together. In this case, it was Kent State University in Ohio, the very same university where Nixon sent in the National Guard to suppress a student demonstration, leading to the military opening fire on 4 May 1970. Nine students were wounded and four were killed. Music lovers know that this tragic event inspired a song by Neil Young, but fewer people associate it with the political awareness of the members of Devo. The latter, who were art students, initially used drawing and painting to express their ideas. With the help of a teacher’s advice, they conceptualized the principle of D-Evolution, a kind of programmed decline of modern societies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was not until 1972 that these artists really began to use music as a means of expression. If you listen to them objectively, their style, with lyrics that are often misunderstood, can easily make them seem like entertainers who only retain the anti-conformist side of Dadaism. However, as mentioned above, their message is much deeper and more sophisticated, as you can see clearly in a recent documentary available on Netflix. Returning to the box set, it includes Devo’s first album (1978), plus a live recording made a few years later. Using instruments that they have greatly modified themselves, the musicians incorporate choruses that are chanted and repeated like slogans to atypical, frenetic and bouncy rhythms. The bass, which also retains its originality, can be likened to funk, while the energetic guitar shares quirky melodies with the interventions of a dissonant synthesizer. Many of their tracks are perfect for getting stuck in your head and following you around all day, like their version of \u2018Satisfaction\u2019, approved by Mick Jagger himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Largely due to their excessive originality, but also because of their love\/hate relationship with the commercial machine surrounding music and the specialized media \u2013 MTV in particular, which nevertheless reveled in these pioneers of the music video in its early days \u2013 Devo’s success was short-lived. The interest they received therefore never matched their talent and originality. On the most defined systems, the sound recording of the first album lags behind more audiophile productions. Listening with headphones, particularly Sennheiser HD 800S headphones, clearly reveals this aspect, whereas entry-level headphones tend to smooth out the slightly muffled sounds. However, this sound is not perceived as a limitation to the listening experience and is in keeping with the offbeat style of the music, which is very catchy. Here, the live performance is more expansive and dynamic, returning to higher production standards, this time with a noticeable difference and therefore greater enjoyment if the listening system is of high quality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Devo, the troublemakers of American pop and rock, have littered their career with songs that make you want to sing along. Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo \/ Devo Live contains a good portion of them…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":4739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[257,255,158,175,256],"class_list":["post-4738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-are-we-not-men","tag-devo","tag-pop-rock","tag-rock","tag-virgin-records"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4740,"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738\/revisions\/4740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}