Review: Devo kicks off 50th anniversary concert tour in Santa Cruz
Having wowed fans in Santa Cruz, Devo now has plans to perform two shows at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco.
The music kept right on building, growing more intense and fierce with each passing second, as the players onstage pushed both themselves and their instruments. Then, right as the music was hitting such an absurdly towering peak, Mark Mothersbaugh tore into the words of “Gut Feeling”:
“Something about the way you taste, makes me wanna clear my throat,” the Devo vocalist belted out as the crowd pulsed sharply in rhythm with the music. “There’s a message to your movements that really gets my goat.”
Um, wow. Really? This is what 50 looks like for Devo? Because the band — which got its start in 1973 and is currently celebrating a half century of making music — showed on Thursday night at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium that it can still rock with the best of them.
It was opening night of the North American leg of the Devo’s 50 Years of De-Evolution tour, which also includes dates on Sunday (Nov. 5) and Nov. 14 at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco. The band is supporting the newly released career retrospective “50 Years of De-Evolution,” which is available at Rhino.com.
It’s a tour that precisely underscores why Devo so justly deserves to be enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, serving up a career-spanning selection of innovative and influential songs that have weathered the decades incredibly well.
The band kicked off the show in (relatively) recent fashion, drawing from their last full-length studio album — 2010’s Something for Everybody” — for a solid version of “Don’t Shoot (I’m a Man).” From there, things would only get better as the band continued through 16 more tunes in a neat, tidy and joyous set that clocked in at just under 90 minutes.
The group — which currently consists of Mothersbaugh, vocalist-guitarist-keyboardist Gerald Casale, guitarist Bob Mothersbaugh, drummer Josh Freese and guitarist-keyboardist Josh Hager — kept right on fashioning punk, synth-pop, art-rock and new wave into that signature Devo sound as it touched upon such winners as “Going Under” (from 1981’s “New Traditionalists”) and “That’s Good” (from 1982’s “Oh, No! It’s Devo”).
Of course, the cell phones came out to capture the band’s performance of its most-famous song, “Whip It,” the side-one standout from 1980’s “Freedom of Choice” album that resulted in Devo’s sole gold-certified hit single.
“Whip It” sounded great, yet it hardly stood out from the pack as Devo just kept right on illustrating the depth, breadth and quality of its songbook. The concert got even better as the band moved on from its synth-oriented material (such as “Whip It”) and charged right into the more guitar-focused rockin’ cuts like the band’s terrific covers of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and the Johnny Rivers favorite “Secret Agent Man.”
The group closed the main set with a triumphant take on “Gates of Steel” and then returned for an encore highlighted by an incredibly high-octane version of “Gut Feeling.”
“After all that noisy, aggressive, assaultive stuff, I think it’s time for Devo to do something beautiful,” said Casale, who splits his time between Santa Monica and Napa.
Naturally, that led right into the encore-closing “Beautiful World” — which was sung by the mysterious masked Devo-character known as “Booji Boy.” (Not sure who was under that mask, but it’s probably worth pointing out — and I’m sure it’s just a coincidence — that Mothersbaugh was nowhere to be seen while Booji Boy was onstage.)
Booji would get the last word of the evening, as he looked forward — way, way forward — to a time when the band and crowd might celebrate another milestone occasion.
“I want to see you all here in 2073 for the Devo 100 year anniversary,” he said as the encore segment drew to a close.
Setlist:
1. “Don’t Shoot (I’m a Man)”
2. “Peek-A-Boo!”
3. “Going Under”
4. “That’s Good”
5. “Girl U Want”
6. “Whip It”
7. “Planet Earth”
8. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
9. “Secret Agent Man”
10. “Uncontrollable Urge”
11. “Mongoloid”
12. “Jocko Homo”
13. “Smart Patrol”/”Mr. DNA”
14. “Gates of Steel”
Encore:
15. “Freedom of Choice”
16. “Gut Feeling (Slap Your Mammy)”
17. “Beautiful World”
