CollisionWorks

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):