Are we not men?

Three weeks ago I was standing at work waiting for the time to pass, when I received a phone call from my friend Suzy. "Do you like Devo?"
"uh...fuck yeah, I like Devo"
"wanna go see 'em in Houston?"
"uh...fuck yeah, I wanna go see 'em in Houston."
and it was on.

Yesterday afternoon, we drove to Houston to see Devo at Reliant Park and damn, damn, damn it was easily the best show I've seen all year.

And by that, I mean the Devo portion of the evening.

Our expectation driving up was that the Psychedelic Furs would be opening the show. Fair enough. I like the Furs and was actually looking forward to seeing them almost as much as Devo. After we found an, literally, out of the way Indian restaurant and had dinner, we arrived at the venue about a half an hour before the show.

At first I thought we were at the wrong place, because the parking lot looked painfully empty. There seemed to be less than a hundred cars. I figured that the dimensions of the lot just looked askew since it was situated right next to Reliant Stadium and the Astrodome. Maybe the size of those objects just threw off the perspective and made everything else around it look somehow more insignificant in comparison. Yeah, uh, no that really wasn't the case at all. If there were a hundred cars there, it was a miracle. Keep in mind that we were early, but it was still a little sad to walk into the arena and realize that as small as that place was compared to the behemoths around it, it was still too big for the tiny crowd that had so far arrived.

The first thing to catch my eye as we walked in were various Luna Tequila banners hung all over the concourse. Seriously. Not the merch table. Not the beer stands. Not even the Spuds in costume all around us. There were HUGE banners advertising Luna Tequila all over the place. At first I just kinda wrote it off until I walked up to the merch table and noticed that they were selling Luna shirts and caps. That's when I realized that in the fine print above the logo, you could read the names of the bands on the bill. This revealed two things. 1) This was the Luna Si tour (get it. lunacy). The fact that Devo, of all anti-corporate culture bands, was touring with such blatant corporate sponsorship was really disheartening. and 2) There were not two, but three bands on the bill. Devo, Psych Furs and mother fucking When In Rome. Jesus god almighty.

To say that I could have gone my entire life without seeing When In Rome is a great understatement. But if I hadn't seen them last night, I would have missed out on one of the great traditions of music biz cliché. The one hit wonder, flogging a new album. Did they play "The Promise"? Of course they did. They also played about five or six other songs. Did they even have that many songs on their one album? The best part was when they announced, "This is off our new album. You can find it on sale out at the merch table!" You could hear the general crowd conversation level suddenly go up about ten decibels. The funny thing is, it pretty much sounded like every other song they played that night. I guess I gotta give it to them for consistency.

I should, at this point, also indicate that Suzy and I were sitting in the 6th row. Very good seats. Not so close that we had to crane our necks to look up and not so far that we had to stare at the back of someone's head for the duration of the show...Or so you would think. As fate would have it, we managed to sit behind the only...let me repeat that...THE ONLY person who felt the need to stand up and dance for the duration of When In Rome's set. I shit you not. And furthermore, not only was she dancing, she knew every fucking word to every fucking song, which she proceeded to sing along to even as she was busy making semaphore like pantomimes to the lead singer (Except during the new one. You can put money down and bet that she was as quiet as a church mouse during the new song, so as to gleam every nugget of romantic wisdom she could from the dead sea scroll like new discovery.) And you can bet dollars to donuts that he was singing directly at her at least 5 to 10 percent of the time. I think he tried to avoid eye contact with her the rest of the set.

After the break we say down to watch the Psychedelic Furs. The guy behind us offered the consolation "Maybe she's not a big Psych Furs fan..." To which his friend added, "or maybe she's just a stander..." Turns out she was just a stander. Luckily, as I've mentioned before, the hall was still pretty sparse, so we just scooted over about four seats and were able to get a direct view of the show. I wish I had a lot of details about this part of the show, but unfortunately it suffers for having been not as good as the headliner and not as bad as the opener. I was actually looking forward to seeing the Psych Furs, but ultimately the whole experience was encapsulated by the moment when I found myself stuck in the bathroom in midleak when the started to play "Ghost in You" by the time I got back, the song was over. One thing in particular does stand out. In spite of spending the majority of his career cultivating a Bauhaus/Sid Vicious look, Richard Butler now looks and dresses exactly like Wesley Windham-Pryce from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Now T.V. geeks will notice I didn't say Wesley on Angel. Wesley on "Angel" would eventually become a badass as well as quite cool. No. He looked like Wesley on "Buffy", the uptight and terribly British Watcher that couldn't be cool if his life depended on it. We're talking pin stripe slacks. Long sleeve shirt with a sweater vest. Sports coat. Glasses. Kinda like a British private girl school English teacher. Come to think of it, he did look kinda cool.

By the way, while on my piss break during the middle set, I walked by the merch table and saw When In Rome hanging out there, offering to autograph anything that anyone wanted them to sign, so long as it was purchased that evening. They weren't having much luck at all. ("No, seriously man. If you buy it, we'll sign it! I'm not kidding.")...(I'm not kidding)

So then it was time for the main course. The night was already a bit surreal, given that the show was being sponsored by 106.9 ThePoint, or something like that. This was obviously one of those catchall "BOB" style stations that happens to play the occasional "new wave" song during their flashback lunch, which makes them about as qualified to host a Devo show as any other station in Houston that doesn't play Classic Rock or Hip Hop. The local radio personality who MC'd the show reminded us that they would be bringing Sheryl Crow and Steve Miller later on in the year. He was a satin jacket lifer with a Big Boss Voice. One of those guys who'd probably worked for the station for the last twenty years or so. You know the damn place has changed format like five times since he started, but dammit he's there to do his job no matter what music the station plays and anyway, he likes it a lot better now that they sometimes play Paula Cole and Sting. It's a big improvement over those years from '95 to 2000 when they were a Modern Rock station or something. Oh, and did I mention the mullet? Anyway...

By this time, the crowd thickened out somewhat. It was still anemic, compared to what I had expected, but considering that I'd heard that they had to resort to BOGO's (buy one, get one) to move tickets in the last week, I guess it could have been worse. As far as the crowd that was there, it was a 70/25/5 split between children of the 80's who were out for a fun night away from the kids, hardcore Spuds, and younger hipsters. As a matter of fact, I commented to Suzy at one point that this was the oldest demographic for a show that I'd been to in a long time. The fact that the people comprising this older demographic were all my age still doesn't really sit well with me. I've been spending all my time going to see pretentious hipster bands (Tapes and Tapes, anyone?) with people that could almost be my kids. I feel like Lorelai Gilmore. This creeping fear of my own mortality did not, of course, prevent me from mercilessly ridiculing my fellow thirtysomethings behind their back in true Rob Fleming fashion. ("I dont' give a damn. We go out one godammn night a month! I'll stand up and dance if I fucking want to. I don't care what time we told the sitter we'd be home. She can go out whenever the fuck she wants! I get this one night. Is that too much to ask? And don't tell me that I've had too much to drink, Barry. I'll get another beer if I goddamn want to. Some girl offered me a hit off her joint in the ladies. I might just walk back in there and take her up on it if I want! Wooooooo!!!! Whip it goooooooood!!!)

One last brief observation. The Spuds fucking ruled! Blue jump suits. Hard hats. Flower pot hats. Even the shellac hair pieces. These people came to rock, and goddamn it if they didn't fucking rock! In the face of such superior fandom, I was a slug in the sun, privy to a great becoming. Before them, I rightly trembled. I owed them more than fear. I owed them awe.

And then there was DEVO. All is Devo. Devo is all. My sweet lord. They hit the stage and for the life of me, I'm ashamed to say that I don't remember what the opening number was. I think it might have been "That's Good", but I'm not sure. I do know that they killed it. From the opening drum kick, they played with more energy than a band half their age. They sounded so big, and they were friggin' tight. The fact that the drummer WAS half their age (Josh Freese of Perfect Circle) might have something to do with it, but the rest of the band was part of the classic line-up, and they put everything they had into it. "Girl You Want", "Gates Of Steel", "Freedom Of Choice", "Uncontrollable Urge" "Wiggly World", "Mongoloid", "Jocko Homo" and yes, even "Whip It". When they played their cover of "Satisfaction", unlike the Stones, they played it with every bit of intensity and anger as when they recorded it. Unlike the Stones, they weren't phoning in the performance for the sake of filling their wallets with more money. Pound for pound, they were ten times the band than they should have been. They came out wearing the yellow jumpsuits and flower pot hats and ended the night in black Soccer uniforms and white kneepads. And let me tell you, the Mothersbaugh and Casale brothers don't have the tannest legs in the world. But damn. They didn't give a shit. By the last song ("Gut Feeling", maybe? I don't remember. I remember what they played, but not when.) when Mark walked out on stage wearing a giant foam cowboy hat and Yosemite Sam moustache, he was drenched in sweat and he still jumped around like he could have gone on another hour and a half.

The show finally finished around midnight, and we still had to drive home. Actually, Suzy had to drive home. It was my job to man the ipod and keep her from falling asleep at the wheel and killing us both. This document is testament to the fact that we both succeeded in accomplishing our tasks. I finally got home and went to sleep around 4 this morning, and I gotta say that I truly owe Suzy for calling and inviting me in the first place. I promised to pay off her debts if I ever won the lottery. I'm good for it, but I guess I need to actually start buying lottery tickets.

By the way...
As for the crazy dancing fool in front of us, she left two songs into Devo's set. Apparently she really was there just to see When In Rome. She paid almost $60 a ticket just to see When In Rome. I really almost hope that she ran into them at the merch table so that they could sign her breast or something. At the very least, she could have been their groupie for the night. Twenty years in the biz, they at least deserved a little nookie while they were in Houston...

Maybe that's where she went after the second Devo song?