The Devo FAQ

Devo's World Service

Music

The Moog Cookbook
Did a version of Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" on their second album; Mark does the synth solo.
David Byrne
Feelings contains a track called "Wicked Little Doll", which was recorded at Mutato Muzika and has Jerry doing backup vocals.
The Daredevils
One of the Devos hooked up with Brett Gurewitz (formerly of Bad Religion) and called themselves "The Daredevils".
Andy Summers
... (guitarist for The Police) did a project called XYZ that was engineered by Bob 2. The video for the Big Single was directed by Jerry Casale - a black and white video of two people at a party (Andy and a girl) looking for each other.
Visiting Kids
Mark+Jerry+Bob 1 played instruments and their children sang. It's distributed by New Rose Records (Rose 230 CD). The video for their Big Single "Trilobites" is in the Devo Bootleg Archive. Incidentally, Alex Mothersbaugh is pictured on the cover of Shout - Bob 1's daughter. Alex Casale is thanked on smoothnoodlemaps as being born on March 5th, 1990. Nancy(e?) Ferguson was a member of the Visiting Kids, (obviously one of the older ones) and Mark has been married to her since about 1993. I'm guessing she's one of the girls in the liner for Now It Can Be Told, since they both match her description. She's also in the "Disco Dancer" video.
Toni Basil
Her Word Of Mouth album was produced by Devo and some of the boys played on the album. There were covers of "Pity You", "Be Stiff", and "Space Girl Blues". Spazz Attack performed in the "Be Stiff" video.
Jermaine Jackson
They sang backup on "Let Me Tickle Your Fancy".
Martini Ranch
... was a band with Bill Paxton (he played "Hudson" in the movie Aliens) and Andrew Todd. Bob Casale produced the track "How Can The Laboring Man Find Time For Self-Culture?", while Mark and Alan played on it. Mark sang additional vocals on one other track, "Fat-Burning Formula". Ivan Ivan, who remixed a lot of Devo's later material produced two other unrelated-to-Devo tracks. The album was called Holy Cow. The disc is out of production but a 12" mix of "Hot Dog" appears on the Just Say Yo compilation disc, the second disc of the Just Say Yes series.
Barnes & Barnes
Bob 2 produced a cover of "What's New Pussycat" on the Zabagabee album. On the Soak It Up EP, Mark co-wrote "Before You Leave (Positive Life)", which used the music from Devo's "I Desire". Barnes & Barnes are Bill Mumy and Robert Haimer, who also worked on "Adventures In Wonderland" when Mutato didn't. Annerose B¨cklers, who sang backup on "Deep Sleep", also co-wrote B&B's "Monkey Life" from Soak It Up. Rocky Shenck, who did one of the "Post-Post Modern Man" remixes, also worked on art and photography for several B&B albums, including Soak It Up. Booji Boy appeared in the "Zabagabee" video, talking about how B&B taught him to "wax his carrot", and then proceeded to demonstrate...
Barnes & Barnes gained notoriety with their "Fish heads, fish heads, roly-poly fish heads" song.
Hugh Cornwell and Robert Williams
The Mothersbaugh brothers are featured on one song on the album called Nosferatu, done by Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers and former Captain Beefheart drummer Robert Williams in the late 70's. The name of the song is "Rhythmic Itch", which Mark helped write. It's on Liberty/United records cat # UAG 30251.
The Boogie Boys
Mark and Booji made an appearance in the "You Ain't Fresh" video.

Jerry Casale, music video director

Soundgarden
"Blow Up the Outside World"
Silverchair
"Freaks"
Foo Fighters
(Dave "Nirvana drummer" Grohl's band, also featuring Pat "Sometimes Nirvana backing guitarist" Smear). The name of the video is "I'll Stick Around". An MTV interview with Grohl revealed that he picked up We're All Devo and was amazed by what he saw. He found Jerry's name under the directing credit and approached him. Dave "wanted to make a video like a Devo video - without being a parody of one."
Jane Siberry
"One More Colour"
The Cars
"Touch & Go" and "Panorama"
Rush
"Mystic Rhythms" (from Power Windows) & "Superconductor" (from Presto)

TV

"The Last American Virgin"
... used "Whip It" and had a scene where a partygoer wore an energy dome and a New Traditionalists t-shirt.
"Clueless"
"Freedom of Choice" was used.
"Miami Vice"
"Through Being Cool" and "Going Under" were used.
"Rudy Coby, The World's Coolest Magician"
... used "Puppet Boy" in his 1995 (94 if you're English) TV special.
Honda Scooters, Coca Cola
Devo did commercials for them in the eighties. Commercials these days capitalize on "Whip It" (Twix candybars in '96, a Sunbeam cover version in '96, and a White Castle ad featuring an energy dome replica).
"21 Jump Street"
"Uncontrollable Urge" was used in an episode centered around some M.I.T. nerds.

Movies

Boogie Nights
"Jerkin' Back 'N Forth" was used in the trailer.
Mike's Murder
"Beautiful World" is used during a male strip scene.
Rockula
The Visiting Kids' music was used in this movie starring Dean Cameron, Thomas Dolby Robertson, Toni Basil, and Bo Diddley.
Supercop
Devo covered nine inch nails' "Head Like a Hole" and provided the original song "Supercop" for this Jackie Chan movie.
Casino
"Whip It" and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" were used in Martin Scorcese's 1995 movie. The original version of "Working In A Coalmine" is also used!
Happy Hour
Devo starred with Tawny Kitaen and Jamie Farr.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
"Are You Ready?!" is on the sountrack and is featured prominently during a fight scene in the movie.
Tank Girl
"Girl U Want" was completely reworked, rerecorded, and played over the opening credits. The sountrack CD has Mark's vocals, but the movie uses a version with female vocals.
Big Meat Eaters
"Pink Jazz Trancers" is used.
Nine and a Half Weeks
"Bread and Butter". This one is easily availible on the soundtrack album; However, the liner from the CD says that the song does not appear in the US theatrical version of the film.
Fright Night
"Let's Talk"
Dr. Detroit
"Theme From Dr. Detroit" and "Luv Luv" for ("Theme..." has a video on We're All Devo but not The Complete Truth...)
Tapeheads
There is a Swedish version of "Baby Doll" on the soundtrack. Doug says:
The two main charcters (the tape heads) are hired to produce a video of "Baby Doll" for a Swedish band. It's presented as an original tune, rather than a Devo cover. The song appears nearly in it's entirety as a big Sweedish guy and his band have paint poured and sprayed on them. Pretty good movie. Jello Biafra of Dead Kennedy's fame makes a cameo as an FBI agent.
Slaughterhouse Rock
They worked with Toni Basil on the soundtrack. Brian Larson wrote:
Anyway, Devo did the music for it (that's what the credits say, but I suspect it's more like Mark Mothersbaugh did the music). It's mostly just electronic background music as the undead are biting off heads and (in one memorable scene) punching fists through a guy's face all the way through the back of his head. There was one song in the movie that Toni Basil (of "Hey Nikki you're so fine..." fame) sings. This song is pretty good, but I don't remember it. It is heard several times throughout the movie. This song was written by Devo but not performed by them for the movie.
The Human Highway
Devo was featured in the Neil Young film. This is where the footage used in the video "A Worried Man" comes from. They had Booji singing "Hey Hey My My" with Neil and they also did "Come Back Jonee". A quote from Denis C Warburton:
The film "Human Highway" was a film by Neil Young. It starred Devo, Dennis Hopper, the guy who played Al in "Quantum Leap" (sorry, I can't remember his name at the moment), and of course, Booji Boy. It was originally billed as a nuclear comedy. What it actually turned out to be was a really pathetic film, although there is some great Devo footage in the film ("Worried Man" song, misc. bits w/ the spud boys & Booji, and "Come Back Jonee" live footage from Mahubay Gardens, and Booji & the spud boys playing some song with Neil Young.) You can get a copy of this movie from the Devo Bootleg Archive, although I recently heard (I believe it was this newsgroup) that "Human Highway" was going to be released on video sometime in the near future... Bottom line: Devo parts are good, the rest of the film sucks.
There's an article on the film in the Aug 19, 1995 issue of Billboard; Devo's mentioned a lot. The video has finally been released and should cost you under $20. It's been re-edited, so now the Devo parts are longer and the really horrible parts are shorter. Oh yeah, I've heard that Neil made everything up the night before each scene was shot.
Spirit of '76
Info from robert@nfinity:
Also, DEVO did cameo in this movie "The Spirit of '76", the one about the future people who try to time travel to 1776 to retrieve the constitution to save the future. Instead they wind up in 1976. Mark, Bob, Gerald (I think), and David Kendrick are all in the film at the beginning and end. I *think* David Kendrick had an actual part. They were in the credits as "Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO!"
Pray-TV
Devo was featured as DOVE. They sang a rippin' version of "Shrivel Up".
Revenge of the Nerds
There was a band dressed up as Devo, and for the second movie Mark and Jerry wrote tunes and had Devo perform them.
Neuromancer
Devo is rumored to have written a complete soundtrack for a movie version of William Gibson's Neuromancer novel. The movie was never made. Some people say they released the songs as an EP, but this is doubtful. "Some Things Never Change" from Total Devo was sampled in the intro screen for the Neuromancer computer game and was used in an instrumental version as the background music for the entire game. My best guess would be that they included the songs from the would-be movie on the Total Devo album, which is why it is so long (52 min. CD instead of the usual 30-35 min. albums--although we must consider that they had four years to work on it!). Some more info comes from JoeRo:
I talked to Gibson about this a couple of years ago. The movie was never made. The guys who optioned the movie rights for Neuromancer were "complete amateurs" according to Gibson (apparently they named their production company Cabana Boys Co because that's what their last day jobs were!) Unfortunately Gibson at the time was almost as clueless about this part of the game as they were and sold the rights to the wrong people for less than they were worth. However, they revert back to him after some years (I don't recall how many) so he may eventually get a movie made. Too late for Devo, though.
Maybe not. I don't know how successful the Johnny Mnemonic movie eventually was, but at the time of its release I started hearing rumors that Gibson was going to finally get Neuromancer to the silver screen because of Johnny. Supposedly, this was why the "Molly" character was written out of JM; something about legal troubles if she was used in Neuromancer. I asked Interplay if they planned to rerelease or redo the game, but they said they had no such plans. Maybe if a movie actually gets made, they'll change their tune.
Urgh...A Music War
... doing "Uncontrollable Urge" live.
Heavy Metal
They (sort of) appeared in the film. A spudly band performs "Through Being Cool" towards the end of the movie, and "Working In A Coal Mine" is played over the closing credits.

Devo Performing on TV

Many of these performances can be had from the Devo Bootleg Archive.

The PBS series "On Tour"
... featured Devo in two episodes (#3 and #18).
"Ellen"
Devo performed the theme song dressed in yellow suits and blonde wigs. ('96)
"American Bandstand"
In 1981, they lip-synched "Snowball". Bernadette Peters was also on the show.
"Saturday Night Live"
Twice; the first was October 18, 1978 when they played "Satisfaction", and the second one was during the oh no! it's DEVO era (The boys sang "That's Good" and shot rubber chickens out of the air during the "POP!" parts in the song.)
"The Merv Griffin Show"
Around '81-'82, They wore the plastic hairpieces and gave one to Merv. The first time, they did "Freedom Of Choice", "Whip It", and "Snowball". The second time, they performed "Jerkin' Back 'n Forth" and "Working In a Coalmine" on treadmills and showed the video for "Beautiful World".
"Mike Douglas"
"Whip It" lip-synched
"Square Pegs"
"That's Good"
"Late Night with David Letterman"
During the Oh No! It's DEVO era.
"The (pre) Halloween TV Concert in 3-D"
Broadcast to various college campuses on 10/30/82.
"The King Biscuit Flower Hour"
The Devo Live 1980 EP was recorded at the Fox Warfield for broadcast on the show. I saw an interview with Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum who said that that was the first concert he ever attended.
"Solid Gold"
"Peek-a-Boo", where they were all playing the wrong instruments for the "live" performance. They also played "That's Good" that time, and another time "Jerkin' Back N' Forth" and the "Through Being Cool" video.
"Fridays"
Three times, once doing "Girl U Want" and "Gates Of Steel", once doing "Whip It" and "Uncontrollable Urge", and the third time doing the "NuTra Theme", "Jerkin' Back N Forth", and "Working In A Coal Mine". "Through Being Cool" was also performed with a special intro by "DOVE, the band of Love" (a semi-common DEVO disguise):
Jesus by the river bed-ooooh
Jesus lay down by me-oooh
Jesus by the river bed-oooh
Jesus came into me
Now I saw Jesus in the morning by the burning bush
I saw Jesus in the afternoon too-oooo
I saw Jesus at dinner swimming in my stew
that Jesus, he's everywhere
"Don Kirschner's Rock Concert"
Video: "The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprize", then live "Secret Agent Man" and "Blockhead", then an excerpt from The Men Who Make The Music, live "Mongoloid" and "Uncontrollable Urge", finishing with the video for "Devo Corporate Anthem" (which is just the five of them saluting).