DEVO at Uline Warehouse Stage

This was not a typical New Wave oldies show but a top-40 art project that posed more questions than answers.

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Concert Reviews

Just when it seemed like every other person at Summerfest was sporting a brand new Stetson or skintight Daisy Dukes, DEVO swooped in to save the day.

Thursday night at Uline Warehouse Stage the high-concept Akron spuds—who turned an art project into a career that lasted over 60 years—played an energetic set that posed as many question as answers—something the band has done from the start.

“How many here believe devolution is real?” Mark Mothersbaugh rhetorically asked the capacity crowd. He didn’t need an answer, he just needed to look at the multitudes, many of whom sported the band’s trademark red energy dome hats. “The truth is all around us,” he said.

The band’s stage show was as slick as it was intelligent. If you pegged them as quirky New Wave schtick, then it was your loss because the quintet seamlessly moved from riff-driven rockers like “Freedom of Choice,” “Peek-A-Boo” and “Gates of Steel” to the veiled power pop of “Mongoloid,” to the Kraftwerk-ian call-to-arms “Are we not men? We are D-E-V-O!” from “Jocko Homo.”

According to urban legend, DEVO plays their biggest hit “Whip It” early in the set (this night it was song six) to weed out the riff raff and fair-weather fans. Well, if that was the case, the Summerfest audience was dug in for the duration.

For a band that formed in the fallout of 1960s America (Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale met at Kent State University in Ohio), Thursday’s concert offered timely messages like “Freedom of Choice.” Satire waltzed arm-in-arm with social conscience, if you cared to look under the hood. Devo also dutifully performed refracted versions of “Satisfaction” and “Secret Agent Man” (but unfortunately no “Working in the Coal Mine.”)

Multi-generational audience

Imagine you are a kid in grade school and your parents are so cool they say, “Let’s go see Devo at Summerfest.”  You may not realize it at the time, but this is your duty now for the future. This was not a typical New Wave oldies show.

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Historically as much a visual project as a band, the concert moved through sartorial phases of DEVO from Mao-inspired suits topped with red energy domes to hazmat suits to the short pants/elbow and knee pads look to the individual DEVO block letter shirts that led to the band’s encore and appearance by mascot Booji Boy for the evening’s finale, “Beautiful World.”

As DEVO’s set wound down other stages were already letting out, which led to the mingling of inquisitive stragglers in cowboy hats and faithful energy dome-heads. Built upon a genius concept (humanity’s obsolescence), DEVO turned out to be smart enough to outsmart the concept.