Monday, October 13, 2014

CBGB Festival: Devo; Jane's Addiction @ Times Square

CBGB Festival: Devo; Jane's Addiction
@ Times Square
New York, NY - October 12, 2014

Assuming Devo still has the same world view it has always had, then they must have had a dilly of a time in Times Square. Under the banner of a music festival named after the club that celebrated the musical response to the nadir of life in these United States and around the world, surrounded by the ultimate in easy, mindless, brainless, lifeless consumerism, here was the band from Akron. They were a prime example of the soundtrack to the dystopian techno future and as years go on, it appears that future is becoming the present. So why not?! A little Devo in the middle of the numbing madness!

When Gerald Casale implored to "fucking whip that thing", it was on. Suddenly the tourists pushing their strollers past the jewlery store were getting a dose of another way of life. This was not going to be the total Olive Gardening of punk rock. And it was more than you're 80's one hit wonder nostalgia. It was as follows:

That's Good
Girl U Want
Whip It
Satisfaction
Uncontrollable Urge
Mongoloid
Jocko Homo
Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA
Gates of Steel
Beautiful World

Only being a relatively recent convert to the catalog, (recent meaning in the last five years), and having never had a previous experience seeing them live, I cannot fully give the measure of an informed thought. But I would not have expected them to have kicked off with my favorite of their 80's sounding 80's songs, the synthetically pop "That's Good" and they anthemized it the way I would have wanted it. Then it was time to rock before Booji Boy (another learning experience) tried to say something about CBGB and Devo's first trip to New York. In the context of all the pocketbooks and Hershey Kisses and jukebox musicals you could buy, it was all very Devo.

It was also time to rock when it came time for seeing Jane's Addiction, also for the first time. And it was a rock show indeed. If Jane's Addiction is your thing. When Perry Farrell said Dave Navarro was the most L.A. guy he ever met, that was about the nicest way of saying the same thing I would have said in a meaner way. I long got over my indifference to Jane's Addiction and their grotesque slickness and Cali-ways of doing big time rock. Better to just roll with it and like what I like. And it was worth it for Perry's "Happy Sukkot Shlomo" drone which I assume meant he saw the lemon-carrying Lubavitch walking around but who knows? That might have been from the heart. As when he said "We Jews love you. And we love your children." He also said some well timed stuff about MONEY (see above). Then he said some stuff about sexual pleasures and then about the Mayor and that was the end of that. Oy gevalt.

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