Creative Arts Festival, 1973

The 1973 Kent State University Creative Arts Festvial was an arts showcase most notable for the debut of Sextet DEVO, a precursor to DEVO. The show began at 7:00 PM and finished at 8:30 PM.

## Background

Art DEVO had formed in late 1972 by Gerald Casale, Mark Mothersbaugh, Bob Lewis and Peter Gregg as an artistic movment preaching the good word of devolution. By April of 1973 Peter Gregg had left the group and it began to shift more towards a musical project. Wanting to showcase this musical material, the group booked their first gig at a university arts festival. Realising however they didn't have enough people to fill up a full band, a group of other students were invited to join; Jerry's brother Bob on rythmn guitar and his Numbers Band bandmate Rod Reisman on drums. Bob Lewis had become anxious about their singing voices, and so brought in Chas. Frederick Weber III to sing.

The group named themselves 'Sextet Devo,' as they figured it would give them an air of legitimacy which would grant them a position in the arts festival. The group wore casual clothing, as their uniformed approach was not yet invented, but Mark Mothersbaugh wore a gorilla mask to protect his identity.

The show started with a warmup set by Mark , in which he played instrumental versions of *Here Comes Peter Cottontail* and *Mr. Jingeling,* the latter of which was a commercial jingle used to advertise Halle's department stores in Northeastern Ohio. By the third song, the full band came out, and began playing Private Secretary. By the end of the show, Mark's Minimoog began to malfunction, and produced a looping sound, lovingly referred to as a 'headache solo' by Gerald Casale. Midway through this solo, the rest of the band left the stage, but Jerry called them back to perform one last song, *Sun Come Up Moon Go Down*, on which Jerry performed lead vocals.

Devo proper debuted at the 1974 Creative Arts Festival, one year later.

## Setlist

* Here Comes Peter Cottontail (Steve Nelson / Jack Rollins)
* Mr. Jingeling
* Private Secretary (Gerald.Casale / Bob Lewis)
* Wiggle Worm
* Beehive Flash (G Casale / Peter Gregg)
* What Comes Around Goes Around
* Subhuman Woman (G.Casale / B. Lewis)
* River Run
* Sun Come Up Moon Go Down

## Credits

* Gerald Casale: Songwriter, Bass Guitar, vocals on '*Sun Come Up, Moon Go Down*'
* Bob Lewis: Lead Guitar
* Chas. Frederick Weber III: Lead Vocals
* Bob Casale: Rythmn Guitar
* Mark Mothersbaugh: Minimoog
* Rod Reisman: Drums

## Quotes on the Subject

> *We played at a Kent State Arts Festival. I think the people at the festival would have been a lot happier if we had been a Baroque string trio or a Heavy Metal band. They didn't know what to make of us... Our sound then was like Chinese Computer Music...*
>
>

- Gerald Casale, 1980

> *It was not really a band. We just called it Sextet Devo because I had been doing de-evolutionary art... Bob Lewis' connection to Bertholf sealed our position in the line up, and then he demanded that Fred [Weber] sing because Fred was a beautiful singer and none of us could sing right.*
>
>

- Gerald Casale, 2001

>
> *We didn't really play anywhere until we played a show in 1972. We hired a couple of people to be in the band, and it was called Sextet Devo. We thought, 'If we call it Sextet Devo, we can trick 'em into thinking we're a jazz band and letting us play at this Jazz festival.' We were an Ohio version of The Magic Band at that point - Trout Mask Replica was something that influenced us very heavily then. We were much more dissonant. And slow and plodding. It wasn't until '75 when Gerry took a drive to New York and saw The Ramones and other bands that we thought, 'Wow, listen how fast they're playing.' We thought, 'Our music will sound better faster.*
>
>
>
> *Until then we'd been playing at Ohio unemployment speed. Punk really inspired us to fire it up a notch or two*.
>
>

- Mark Mothersbaugh, Totally Wired: Postpunk Interviews and Overviews, 2009

> *At Kent State University’s 1973 Creative Arts Festival, we were the “Sextet Devo.” Why was it a sextet? Because my college student best friend and early Devo collaborator, Bob Lewis, was insistent that I couldn’t sing. He convinced us that having a crooning signer — who had sung with the James Gang (Joe Walsh) and with The Measles, a locally popular cover band — was the way to go. I didn’t buy it, and I was personally offended that he said I “couldn’t sing.”*
>
>
> *But there was a more important and subversive reason for going along with the ploy. It allowed us the “Sextet” billing to qualify for a pretentiously curated arts festival, sponsored yearly by the university gatekeepers. Clearly “Sextet Devo” was “art,” and not Rock N Roll. So we slipped in with a vote from Dr. Robert Bertholf, a tenured English Literature professor (and all around cool, brainiac guy), who was sympathetic to our cause. And that cause — starting then — was spreading The Gospel Of Devolution.*
>
>
> *Our setlist was eclectic, to say the least, and ample evidence that Lewis and I had spent way too much time philosophizing — and convincing Mark Mothersbaugh of the merits of the De-evolution trope — and way too little time with songwriting.*
>
>
> *On April 18th, 1973, our line-up was my brother Bob Casale and Bob Lewis on guitars, myself on bass guitar and vocals (I prevailed and sang “Sun Come Up, Moon Go Down”), Fred Weber on lead vocals/tambourine, drummer Rod Reisman, and Mark Mothersbaugh as keyboardist.*
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *The video that my good friend and colleague, Chuck Statler, shot that night to document our nascent performance is interesting in the same way that the recently surfaced news footage of 11-year-old Prince supporting the teacher’s strike in Minneapolis is interesting. Looking back, it is important historical evidence of… something.*
>
>
> *In front of an audience of 20 or so students, seated in a small auditorium and curious enough to check us out, we slugged through mid-tempo experimentation on songs like “Wiggle Worm,” “What Goes Up Must Come Down” (a relatively lively blues stomp by comparison), and a folk-rock indulgence titled “River Run” that showcased Bob Lewis’s country-folk leanings.*
>
>
> *All of that followed after Mark had played a solo keyboard warmup intro while the meager audience trickled in. He plunked out tunes like “Here Comes Peter Cottontail,” and “Mr. Jingeling” which was a Northeast Ohio advertising jingle for Halle's department stores. (Their mascot character, named Mr. Jingeling, was a grotesque man in a Christmas elf-type suit who went from store to store enticing kids to come in with their parents to buy, buy, buy!)*
>
>
> *The preamble that Mark provided was an excellent example of what we called “Low Devo.” But for me, the rest of that set doesn’t matter much, in retrospect. However, at age 24, it did provide a painful lesson on an artist’s learning curve.*
>
>
> *What did I learn?*
>
>
> *(A) Sing your own songs.*
>
>
> *(B) Don’t let others discourage you with doubt and fear.*
>
>
> *(C) Practice, do more, and talk less.*
>
>
> *The real highlight, though — given our critique of technology and of conformity culture — was classic Devo perfection. Mark’s Minimoog malfunctioned, and it was stuck in a loop of sine wave noise that swooped up in pitch like a warning alarm in a nuclear plant. He could only flip a switch and make it swoop down. And boy, that’s what he did for what seemed like an eternity, while we stood and watched. He kept putting his hand to his forehead, as if confused, and in pain. (Oh, did I mention that Mark was wearing a full-head chimpanzee mask for the entire set to hide his identity?)*
>
>
> *As the “Dada” aspect of Mark’s broken synthesizer disaster began to fatigue the audience, the other performers walked off stage and into the wings. But Mark and I refused to leave. Because our set wasn’t finished. And I can be heard in Statler’s video, yelling to a stage hand, “Hey! Go Get Those Guys!”*
>
>
> *Mark’s improvised “Headache Solo" was Devolved genius, and the thing that still resonates with validity nearly half a century later.*
>
>
>
> - Gerald Casale, 2022
>
>

## Further Reading

* "The First DEVO Concert" by Gerald V. Casale