Fifty years after forming, Devo has never broken into laughter at its own satire. At least not on stage. They remain a dystopic mirror of pop pretense, still play their gloriously disrespectful cov…
Mark Mothersbaugh leads Devo during a performance at the Riviera Theatre in Chicago on May 11, 2024. Towards the end of its show on Saturday night, Devo, which brought its 50th anniversary De-Evolution tour to the Riviera Theatre, finally asked the question I was expecting: Does everyone in this room believe in the theory of de-evolution? The signs are all around us, they warned. It’s the kind of light dinner-party quip you might expect from guys now in their 70s.
They were founded at Kent State University in 1970, as the campus was still resonating in horror at the deaths of four classmates, shot by National Guardsmen. Neil Young’s “Ohio,” his classic lacerating protest, would be released less than a month later, but Devo adopted a far longer-term approach to disillusionment.
The joke — in 1974, and even more so in 2024 — is that they come off paradoxically more human than far more famous acts that sell themselves as authentic.
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