Don't Shoot, I'm a Man

Hey, so, new Devo album coming out later this year! First new studio album since Smooth Noodle Maps, which I remember buying during my last term of college (that is, in 1990, ye gods).

No idea how good it's going to be (Devo, though one of my favorite bands, very rarely made a fully great start-to-finish album, though their great tracks would fill up several), but we now have a first track (single? are they even called that anymore?).

And here it is, "Don't Shoot, I'm a Man!":

Devo fanatics may remember that the orange-safety "Don't Shoot, I Am a Man" vest (as worn by Devo/Toni Basil/David Bowie backing dancer Spazz Attack) was first featured in a film shown to audiences at Devo live shows in the late '70s, where General Boy would guide the potentially devolved on proper attire for the modern urban mutant and spudboy or spudette. These are indeed REAL vests worn by hunters in hopes of not getting plugged by other drunk hunters in the woods on a weekend shootfest.

I looked for one of these vests to wear around NYC (or at least to punk shows) for years, but they seemed to have stopped making them with the words on them by the mid-'80s (I once went into the hunting gear room at L.L. Bean's in Freeport, Maine looking for one and was nearly blinded by a big room full of glowing orange vests and parkas). I just looked them up online however, and found that a Dick Cheney appearance was once greeted by protesters wearing "Don't Shoot, I'm Human" vests (I guess in the intervening years female hunters pushed for a gender-neutral version).

In any case, good to have the spudboys back, with a song and video that is definitely classic-style Devo, if not an instant classic in either case. I'd have loved to include some of the wonderfully disturbing original Devo videos here, but it looks like Warner Bros. has made sure that none of them are on YouTube, so here's something a little more rare, Toni Basil, backed by Devo (on the track, not in the video), performing their song "Be Stiff," from her album Word of Mouth (Devo backed her on two other songs of theirs on the album as well):

More Fun with Christian Album Covers

And from the many fine and funny (and occasionally disturbing) album covers on display at LP Cover Lover, another couple of Christian Music albums covers for your entertainment, where it just feels like there was a lack of awareness of what the cover might be saying/

I know who they're talking about here, but they might have made it clearer . . .

And the five members of The . . . uh . . . Gospel Four appear to be upset about missing their bus, and given the title of their album, they may be waiting a LONG time before they can move on . . .

It reminds me of some of the recent comments I've seen online about the current Conservative "teabagging" craze, to the effect that none of them were actually calling it that as they were smart enough to know what it means to some people in some contexts -- they were always using the term "tea party" and it was the dirty-minded Librul Media that said they were using the occasionally dirty term, so they could make fun of them. Sorry, nope, there's plenty of video and websites out there showing them discussing wanting to "teabag" Obama or (more ambitiously) "teabag" the White House. Ah, somewhere, John Waters smiles . . .