OH NO! IT’S ANOTHER DEVO OBIT!

Well, hell.

Devo co-founder and guitarist Bob Casale is gone now. And I have to post something about it, not least because he’s the second Devo member to pass away in the past year (the first being original drummer Alan Myers, who died in June last year).

But of course there’s not much I can add that hasn’t been posted elsewhere on the interwub. What I can tell you is that I was a big Devo fan in high school, and Freedom Of Choice was a constant presence on my turntable. It is now a constant presence in my iPod (along with a number of other Devo LPs).

Also, like a lot of people my age, the first time I ever heard of them wasn’t when “Whip It” became a hit – it was on Saturday Night Live in the late 70s.

But since I'm not allowed to post any SNL videos from Hong Kong (because that's piracy somehow), here's a clip from their 1980 appearance on Fridays.

""Fridays TV Show" (1980) [Show F-10] Devo - "Uncontrollable Urge" (Live) [10 of 10]" (Watch on YouTube)

If I was ever to make a list of Bands I've Never Seen Live But Wish I Had, Devo would be near the top of it. 

Anyway. It’s a shame to know one more member of Devo is gone. But I’m glad he got to do one more album with the band (2010's Fresh) before he went.

Respect.

It's not right,

This is dF

SHE WAS AN EMOTIONAL IDIOT

And while we’re on music/pop culture deaths:

This may or may not be news to you, but Maggie Estep passed away last week.

I only found out myself a couple of days ago. I haven’t seen a whole lot of coverage on it (though I don’t live in the Great American Celebrity Circus Media Bubble, so it’s easy for me to miss stuff like this). But I thought I should say something – partly because I had her debut CD, and partly because in some ways, she represented the pinnacle of 90s GenX® AltCulture™.

I don’t mean that as a putdown of her personally. (The headline of this post isn’t meant as an insult either – it’s a riff on one of her more well-known pieces. See below.) Estep was a talented spoken-word performer who managed to be both alarming and funny. She also had great (if serendipitous) timing – when Alternative went mainstream on MTV and created the whole Generation-X industry, the poetry-slam scene was taken along for the ride, Spoken Word became a bankable genre, and suddenly Angry Hip Free Verse Poets were accessible in every mall in America.

And thanks largely to (1) being a good Spoken Word performer and (2) MTV, Estep became one of the faces of what we think of as GenX Pop Culture® – something so firmly rooted in the 90s that it feels (to me) as dated as Flower Power, Disco, Hair Metal and New Wave. And it’s a shame that she’s associated with that, because there was more to her than that.

That said, I admit I don’t listen to her CD anymore – mainly because the music sounds both generic and dated in a way that (say) Jim Carroll Band doesn’t. I prefer Estep either in print or with voice alone.

Like this:

"Maggie Estep - Emotional Idiot on Def Jam Poetry" (Watch on YouTube)

No more Mr Nice Girl,

This is dF