PipemanRadio Interviews Gerald V Casale of Devo at Punk Rock Bowling XXIV

0:04 Hey, you have done to censure w C Why were you young? Whycoume America. It's time for the Adventures of Pipe Man on W four c Y dot com. West Pomp beats his number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the White Man. Correct, this is the pipe Man here on the Adventure's pipe Man W four c Y Radio. And I'm here with Gerald V. Casally from Devo. Yes here at Punk Rock Bowling. Yes, Oh my god. What this is an amazing festival. Isn't different than other festivals. Like it's so it's kind of cool because you have the club shows and then you have the festival itself and they kind of just invade downtown Las Vegas and take it over. Yeah, it definitely has its own flavor.

1:25 It's very different than any other festival we've ever played because there's a very kind of a homogeneous crowd in a way. Yeah. Yeah, they're of like minds. It's one tribe comes together here and you know what's wild is it's like, what I think is cool about twenty twenty four is that tribe that's here wouldn't have been a tribe in the eighties. Like, no, in the eighties, my friends when it would never tolerate me liking Devo. So I liked Devo, just nobody ever knew it. Yeah, you know, you know how the days were back then, and even with any you know, genres, like, everything was so like separated, and right now we're all united. So at least something from back then has gotten better. But well, I think what's happened is people do realize that de evolution is real, and so that any any band that was playing with a sense of urgency, with a sense of honesty, with a DIY aesthetic, which I think is central to punk, do it yourself and you know, trying to avoid blindly conforming and and basically resisting illegitimate authority, which is a big part of punk. I think all the bands that did that in their own way are now appreciated as opposed to this orthodoxy where oh no, you got to have

2:55 these same three chords and you have to have the safety pins and the riped shirt, you have to act like this, right, there was too much orthodoxy where the punks actually turned into what they didn't like. Ms. That's a great, great point, and like that's the perfect example I was talking about because I was a long hair back then, so I wasn't allowed to go to punk shows. Yeah, yeah, right, you know, and it was kind of silly, you know, yeah, all petty. So now the other things you talk about with de evolution, Yeah, did you ever think in twenty twenty four it would be even worse? No, we never thought it would be this bad. You know, we were you know, we were kind of smart ass about our satire and you know, we were not taking it too seriously. There was always a you know, humorous edge to DEVO, and we were more like canaries in a coal mine, just kind of warning people to what we saw. But did I ever think it would be like this? No, right, not at all, none of us. None of us did. If anybody in the band said that, they'd be lying, it seems like too. We started to move forward and took like fifty million steps backward. That's humans. It is. It is because I'm sure you're saying it too. And I see I go all over the world and it's happening everywhere, not just oh yeah, yeah,

4:26 there's a trend, and even in the places you wouldn't expect. That's what I mean. There's a palpable sense of evil in the air and it's almost global and all Western democracies and other countries that were semi democratic are quickly unraveling, and authoritarianism, plutocracy, fascism in fact, is on the march, and it's just disheartening. It's unbelievable to watch it work. Yeah, And that's what we were trying to warn people about, is there is the negative part of human nature is being unleashed right now. Yeah, that's what you're seeing exactly one hundred. So thank god we have Devo now in twenty twenty four. And I say that, you know, not only because of Devo, but just music in general. I think music is the ultimate uniter and in my opinion, the elimination of live music during the lockdown, yeah, is what made people very angry, very depressed, very all kinds of things because there was no outlet. What was punk music. It was always an outlet for all of that. Oh yeah, definitely. COVID was that extra shot that nobody needed. I mean that just really propelled everything right down the rabbit hole. Oh yeah. Now, one thing I have if you're going

5:58 to say something positive about that time, I think, and you tell me how you feel, as somebody has been ours for so long that artists were on this hamster wheel that was going really fast that they couldn't get off of, and that allowed them to get off the hamster wheel and get creative again. Well that's that's a nice way to look at it, and I hope you're right, and I hope that wasn't just wishful thinking. But yeah, I guess when people are forced into isolation and sitting in a back room twiddling near thumbs, there was enough at home music equipment permeating the culture that they could all do it yourself in their bedroom, right, yeah, exactly.

6:38 So, yeah, it wasn't all masturbation. It was some pretty good stuff there. You gotta find some kind of lemonade, right, Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of creativity, let's talk a little bit about your solo project. Okay. Well, first of all, what I'm really excited about is if we go on your website, there's these cool action figures. Yeah, let's talk about that. Tell us about your action figures. Yeah, that company that does those, you know, decided it was time to do one of me. And I've always been partial to the new traditionalist outfit with the black plastic pompadour Hairdoo and the action vest that I had designed, and our spud gun because the spud gun was part of a movie that never happened where Divo were Alter Ego is called the Smart Patrol, and they lived in a dystopian society, not unlike our own. There was an epidemic disease called asubuku mayelidas that turned your bones to jelly and you didn't die, but you just became a gelatinous mass. And Universal Health Systems owned all the patents on the medicines and the ectoskeletons that could help people walk and everything. So it was a monopoly and kind of like, now, yeah, they weren't making anybody any better, but they were just making money off of osso bucomyelitis. And and so the Smart Patrol worked for this uh, this professor that worked in

8:11 a recomminatet DNA lab and they come up with a basically a nickel and dime cure that seems to work, and of course, right away Universal Health Systems is out to get them. And a group evangelical group called the Pilgrims that are a televangelical group right and they're kind of aligned with Universal Health systems and they actually wear bad suits and pilgrim hats, oh boy, and yeah, and Divo has to to the smart Patrol has to have to defend themselves with these spud guns that shoot net graphite net out and take these guys out.

8:58 And yeah, and so I'm holding the spud gun in my outfit from New Traditionalists nineteen eighty one when I wrote that plot, and I'm glad to see it at least come out as an action figure. There you go, and you know, I want to explore the creative mind there, like what makes you just come up with stuff like that? Because it's genius creativity that you know, it's not something everybody could do. Well, yeah, I mean, I guess that's what makes an artist and an artist what makes them different from everybody else. To me, it's because you get an idea and you can't let go of it. A lot of people have great ideas and they think everything that an artist thinks, but they didn't do anything about it, and they move on, or they get socialized, or they get told you don't want to do that. You want to like succeed and get a normal job. But an artist doesn't have the good sense or the choice. It's almost like a genetic imperative, like you're forced to go through with these ideas that you have and make them happen. Yeah, you know, that's it you. It doesn't occur to you not to do it. You have to do it. I love that because that just means you're just a true artist.

10:16 There's people that are true artists and there's those that do it for other reasons. I guess so. And that's why you're here at Punk Rock Bowl in twenty twenty four, because I think it's only the true artist that can last as long as you guys have fifty years of deevolution. If somebody told you that when you first start this, would you be like yeah, I mean cause you them perceive them. I didn't even think back then I would be alive at this point. You know, it's like, doesn't matter the world's going to blow up in nineteen eighty four anyway. So you know that whole attitude. And tell me about your newest music. Tell me about Invisible Man. Oh yeah, have you heard the lounge version of that yet?

11:01 I did. That's what I mean by creativity too. You know a lot of those songs came about you know, I mean, Devo was on ice because Mark wasn't interested in doing any new Devo material and wasn't interested in collaborating. And and here I am. I'm I'm the guy that wrote or co wrote ninety percent of Devo songs with Mark, and and so I still have plenty of musical ideas, just not that often do I have an outlet to do it. But I started working with Josh Freeze. And Josh Freeze is a great person in addition to being one of the best drummers on the planet, and we work well together and a lot of times we'd be just messing around. Went back when Divo was rehearsing to play a festival or this or that in the early two thousands, and we kind of amassed all these like little like scraps of half formed songs. And at some point he said to me, why don't we finish these? Why don't we do something about these?

12:09 And I was glad he said that, and that's what I started doing with him. Invisible Man was the last one. But now I'm working on a whole suite of music based on a concept that I won't bore you with, but anybody can look this up. It's an American Indian and Native American Indian term that they came up with to describe the horror they felt at encountering the white man. When the white man came to America, it settled and took their land and started killing everybody. And it's called wet tico w e t iko, wetiko. And when I read about it, and I never knew about it, I was blown away because it was like, oh, this is their version of de evolution. Wow. And it's inspired me to write a whole suite of songs that the record will be called Wittiko. And once you look it up, or anybody looks it up, they'll go, oh of course. Casally would of course write a sweet based on Wittko.

13:16 Oh man, that's as killer stuff. And how do people go your website socials and stuff like that so they can check all this stuff out when that comes out? Check out in visible man, check out your action figures because those are like super cool where they go. I thought it was geraldvcasally dot com that might be the I made it easy. I know, right there you go and everything's right there, and yeah, they can check everything out, and so what can people expect that Devo live show that they've never been to Devo before. I think I've never been. I'm trying to think. I think I wasn't allowed to be at Divo. They can expect to be entertained. We can still do it. I love that. That's pretty cool.

14:03 Well, you probably can do it better than ever too, right, Somewhat, You're right, some things we do better than ever. I don't think we could play an hour and a half at the speeds we used to play at right, which were when I watched them now a bit insane. I'm like, we did that, and we'd do two shows a night. We do an early show all in the yellow suits until we stripped them off for Jockohomo, right, and then we would rest an hour and we'd do it again. Wow, that is major, because I'm just impressed when there's artists that play in two different bands at a festival right like hours apart.

14:43 But to do that, you know, I think people don't realize how much goes into that, especially a show like a live Devot show. Yeah, Devo was actually known for their live shows because people from the press and from the records, they didn't know what was about to happen live was a whole other thing where we brought a whole other dimension, you know, to the party. Yeah, and I feel that a band should do that. Why should you see a band that stands there shoegazing, sounding just like their record exac Weekly, We brought a whole other dimension, theatrics, visuals, film, and we still do that, and we really pump out energy. People are very surprised to find out how ballsy rock and roll devo can be nice.

15:33 I love it, and it's true because an artist, just because you're making music doesn't mean you're not an artists in many other ways. That's right, and it's the full sensory. A live show is the full sensory of all of it. Right should be, and you guys execute that perfectly. You're going to execute it here tonight at Punk Rock Bowling and man, thanks for being here and still spreading a positive message for the world, still giving us great music. Yeah, and given the pipe Man a chance to see you tonight. Well, thank you, Pipeman, Thank you for being on the Adventures Pipe all right, thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipemin on w for CUI Radio. This is Gerald Vica Sally from Deevo, and you're listening to the pipemin on w for cy dot com.