DEVO

Monday, April 15, 2026

DEVO

The Van Buren, Phoenix AZ

Every word of every song, that’s what I was thinking, there isn’t a song I didn’t know what was behind it, the story even before the Internet, I knew these guys, their music, the movement they stood for. Yeah, a movement, their music, a protest, rather, a reflection and it all coming true, the truth about DE-EVOLUTION. Born of the Kent State protests, DEVO fueled my youth. 

Getting started in music, typically we are introduced to it at an early age, myself included. My Mom giving me my first cassette player and a few tapes of Led Zepplin, Credence Clearwater Revival and Led Zepplin, that’s how I got started listening to my mothers music, the Beatles, Deep Purple and Pink Floyd.

But DEVO was purely my music. Most of the time again on cassette and with the background whine of the cars engine coming through on the soundtrack of my life. Stop the car, open the hatch, put the speakers on the lid and get busy skateboarding through life. Holding on to the side of the pool waiting for the song to start, push off and rip on cue, some forty five years ago.

There I stood, again this time in the deep end but this deep end is my life, deep into it my feet hurting a little from working all day (in a coal mine going downtown) and shoulder to shoulder pushed up front it was standing room only, the Van Buren was packed sardines style. All that was going through my mind was, “G~damn telephone camera.” 

I had written Mutato Muzika a couple of months back a short piece, “I’m requesting a press pass blah blah blah… I want to use my Nikon camera and lenses Mark, I’ve been listening to you guys since day one.” I knew it wasn’t going to work but sometimes you have to stick to what you know as how to do it by the rules, kind of like voting for a government office. You vote or write a letter because that’s the process. I knew it wasn’t going to work but I did it anyway. And there I stood with my smartphone watching them play.

The woman behind me, I could feel her tapping on my back as I was filming, “What kind of phone is that? It is amazing!” And I told her it was an Apple phone, “I’m a photographer” reaching into my pocket I grabbed one of my cards and handed it to her. “Oh thank you.” She was pretty but I’m not that kind of photographer.” I’ll leave it at that.

So it’s the next morning, my ears still ringing as I peck out my words on the iPad. The marvel of my stupid smartphone having grabbed a few images and my iPad putting it together I’m putting a lid on this story and moving on, laying back in the deep end and standing up in the pool of life skating into the shallow end I kick up my board and lay the iPad on the coffee table, “that was fun.”