AKRON, Ohio - Q: Are They Not Documentary Subjects? A: They Are DEVO!
New wave art band Devo is the subject of an upcoming feature-length documentary directed by Chris Smith, the man behind the viral Netflix documentary, “Tiger King.”
The documentary, elegantly titled “DEVO,” is currently in production and will delve into the Akron/Kent band’s formative years, and how the band members, then students, were shaped and inspired by the Kent State shootings in 1970.
Using a mix of archival footage and interviews with folks in and around the band at the time, the documentary will trace DEVO’s early years as they refined the concept of human society DE-volving through crass commercialism, lowest-common-denominator serving-mass media and other de-humanizing forces.
It will also look into how the visual and sonic aesthetic of DEVO was formed on the stages of long-gone local clubs such as Akron’s The Crypt. The film will detail how the quartet of former hippie art students and musicians made their unlikely rise to punk-adjacent stardom in the late 1970s and explore their innovative ‘80s commercial alt-pop peak when their visually and conceptually innovative videos helped a fledgling cable network called MTV establish itself as a pop culture tastemaker.
In a press release, director Smith praised the band, “DEVO was a huge influence on me. Their approach to music, film, video and art was something I had never seen before and was one of the truly formative artistic influences that showed me there were entirely new ways to look at things.”
In other DEVO news, the two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominees recently performed on an ‘80s cruise and have shows booked at Luna Fest 23 in Coimbra, Portugal and at Way Out West Fesst in Gothenburg Sweden in August.
Also, Devo singer-bassist, video director and winemaker Gerald V. Casale released an EP called “The Invisible Man” in 2022 that is available at GeraldVCasale.com.
And DEVO singer-keyboardist Mark Mothersbaugh was in the news recently for scoring the new film, “Cocaine Bear.”
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