PipemanRadio Interviews Gerald V Casale of Devo at Punk Rock Bowling XXIV

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Hey, you have done to censure
w C Why were you young? Whycoume

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America. It's time for the Adventures
of Pipe Man on W four c Y

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dot com. West Pomp beats his
number one internet radio station. Here's your

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host, the White Man. Correct, this is the pipe Man here on

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the Adventure's pipe Man W four c
Y Radio. And I'm here with Gerald

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V. Casally from Devo. Yes
here at Punk Rock Bowling. Yes,

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Oh my god. What this is
an amazing festival. Isn't different than other

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festivals. Like it's so it's kind
of cool because you have the club shows

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and then you have the festival itself
and they kind of just invade downtown Las

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Vegas and take it over. Yeah, it definitely has its own flavor.

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It's very different than any other festival
we've ever played because there's a very kind

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of a homogeneous crowd in a way. Yeah. Yeah, they're of like

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minds. It's one tribe comes together
here and you know what's wild is it's

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like, what I think is cool
about twenty twenty four is that tribe that's

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here wouldn't have been a tribe in
the eighties. Like, no, in

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the eighties, my friends when it
would never tolerate me liking Devo. So

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I liked Devo, just nobody ever
knew it. Yeah, you know,

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you know how the days were back
then, and even with any you know,

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genres, like, everything was so
like separated, and right now we're

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all united. So at least something
from back then has gotten better. But

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well, I think what's happened is
people do realize that de evolution is real,

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and so that any any band that
was playing with a sense of urgency,

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with a sense of honesty, with
a DIY aesthetic, which I think

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is central to punk, do it
yourself and you know, trying to avoid

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blindly conforming and and basically resisting illegitimate
authority, which is a big part of

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punk. I think all the bands
that did that in their own way are

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now appreciated as opposed to this orthodoxy
where oh no, you got to have

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these same three chords and you have
to have the safety pins and the riped

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shirt, you have to act like
this, right, there was too much

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orthodoxy where the punks actually turned into
what they didn't like. Ms. That's

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a great, great point, and
like that's the perfect example I was talking

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about because I was a long hair
back then, so I wasn't allowed to

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go to punk shows. Yeah,
yeah, right, you know, and

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it was kind of silly, you
know, yeah, all petty. So

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now the other things you talk about
with de evolution, Yeah, did you

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ever think in twenty twenty four it
would be even worse? No, we

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never thought it would be this bad. You know, we were you know,

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we were kind of smart ass about
our satire and you know, we

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were not taking it too seriously.
There was always a you know, humorous

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edge to DEVO, and we were
more like canaries in a coal mine,

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just kind of warning people to what
we saw. But did I ever think

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it would be like this? No, right, not at all, none

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of us. None of us did. If anybody in the band said that,

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they'd be lying, it seems like
too. We started to move forward

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and took like fifty million steps backward. That's humans. It is. It

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is because I'm sure you're saying it
too. And I see I go all

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over the world and it's happening everywhere, not just oh yeah, yeah,

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there's a trend, and even in
the places you wouldn't expect. That's what

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I mean. There's a palpable sense
of evil in the air and it's almost

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global and all Western democracies and other
countries that were semi democratic are quickly unraveling,

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and authoritarianism, plutocracy, fascism in
fact, is on the march,

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and it's just disheartening. It's unbelievable
to watch it work. Yeah, And

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that's what we were trying to warn
people about, is there is the negative

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part of human nature is being unleashed
right now. Yeah, that's what you're

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seeing exactly one hundred. So thank
god we have Devo now in twenty twenty

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four. And I say that,
you know, not only because of Devo,

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but just music in general. I
think music is the ultimate uniter and

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in my opinion, the elimination of
live music during the lockdown, yeah,

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is what made people very angry,
very depressed, very all kinds of things

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because there was no outlet. What
was punk music. It was always an

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outlet for all of that. Oh
yeah, definitely. COVID was that extra

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shot that nobody needed. I mean
that just really propelled everything right down the

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rabbit hole. Oh yeah. Now, one thing I have if you're going

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to say something positive about that time, I think, and you tell me

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how you feel, as somebody has
been ours for so long that artists were

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on this hamster wheel that was going
really fast that they couldn't get off of,

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and that allowed them to get off
the hamster wheel and get creative again.

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Well that's that's a nice way to
look at it, and I hope

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you're right, and I hope that
wasn't just wishful thinking. But yeah,

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I guess when people are forced into
isolation and sitting in a back room twiddling

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near thumbs, there was enough at
home music equipment permeating the culture that they

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could all do it yourself in their
bedroom, right, yeah, exactly.

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So, yeah, it wasn't all
masturbation. It was some pretty good stuff

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there. You gotta find some kind
of lemonade, right, Yeah. Yeah.

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And speaking of creativity, let's talk
a little bit about your solo project.

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Okay. Well, first of all, what I'm really excited about is

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if we go on your website,
there's these cool action figures. Yeah,

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let's talk about that. Tell us
about your action figures. Yeah, that

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company that does those, you know, decided it was time to do one

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of me. And I've always been
partial to the new traditionalist outfit with the

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black plastic pompadour Hairdoo and the action
vest that I had designed, and our

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spud gun because the spud gun was
part of a movie that never happened where

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Divo were Alter Ego is called the
Smart Patrol, and they lived in a

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dystopian society, not unlike our own. There was an epidemic disease called asubuku

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mayelidas that turned your bones to jelly
and you didn't die, but you just

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became a gelatinous mass. And Universal
Health Systems owned all the patents on the

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medicines and the ectoskeletons that could help
people walk and everything. So it was

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a monopoly and kind of like,
now, yeah, they weren't making anybody

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any better, but they were just
making money off of osso bucomyelitis. And

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and so the Smart Patrol worked for
this uh, this professor that worked in

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a recomminatet DNA lab and they come
up with a basically a nickel and dime

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cure that seems to work, and
of course, right away Universal Health Systems

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is out to get them. And
a group evangelical group called the Pilgrims that

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are a televangelical group right and they're
kind of aligned with Universal Health systems and

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they actually wear bad suits and pilgrim
hats, oh boy, and yeah,

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and Divo has to to the smart
Patrol has to have to defend themselves with

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these spud guns that shoot net graphite
net out and take these guys out.

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And yeah, and so I'm holding
the spud gun in my outfit from New

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Traditionalists nineteen eighty one when I wrote
that plot, and I'm glad to see

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it at least come out as an
action figure. There you go, and

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you know, I want to explore
the creative mind there, like what makes

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you just come up with stuff like
that? Because it's genius creativity that you

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know, it's not something everybody could
do. Well, yeah, I mean,

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I guess that's what makes an artist
and an artist what makes them different

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from everybody else. To me,
it's because you get an idea and you

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can't let go of it. A
lot of people have great ideas and they

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think everything that an artist thinks,
but they didn't do anything about it,

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and they move on, or they
get socialized, or they get told you

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don't want to do that. You
want to like succeed and get a normal

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job. But an artist doesn't have
the good sense or the choice. It's

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almost like a genetic imperative, like
you're forced to go through with these ideas

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that you have and make them happen. Yeah, you know, that's it

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you. It doesn't occur to you
not to do it. You have to

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do it. I love that because
that just means you're just a true artist.

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There's people that are true artists and
there's those that do it for other

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reasons. I guess so. And
that's why you're here at Punk Rock Bowl

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in twenty twenty four, because I
think it's only the true artist that can

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last as long as you guys have
fifty years of deevolution. If somebody told

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you that when you first start this, would you be like yeah, I

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mean cause you them perceive them.
I didn't even think back then I would

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be alive at this point. You
know, it's like, doesn't matter the

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world's going to blow up in nineteen
eighty four anyway. So you know that

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whole attitude. And tell me about
your newest music. Tell me about Invisible

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Man. Oh yeah, have you
heard the lounge version of that yet?

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I did. That's what I mean
by creativity too. You know a lot

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of those songs came about you know, I mean, Devo was on ice

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because Mark wasn't interested in doing any
new Devo material and wasn't interested in collaborating.

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And and here I am. I'm
I'm the guy that wrote or co

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wrote ninety percent of Devo songs with
Mark, and and so I still have

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plenty of musical ideas, just not
that often do I have an outlet to

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do it. But I started working
with Josh Freeze. And Josh Freeze is

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a great person in addition to being
one of the best drummers on the planet,

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and we work well together and a
lot of times we'd be just messing

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around. Went back when Divo was
rehearsing to play a festival or this or

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that in the early two thousands,
and we kind of amassed all these like

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little like scraps of half formed songs. And at some point he said to

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me, why don't we finish these? Why don't we do something about these?

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And I was glad he said that, and that's what I started doing

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with him. Invisible Man was the
last one. But now I'm working on

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a whole suite of music based on
a concept that I won't bore you with,

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but anybody can look this up.
It's an American Indian and Native American

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Indian term that they came up with
to describe the horror they felt at encountering

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the white man. When the white
man came to America, it settled and

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took their land and started killing everybody. And it's called wet tico w e

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t iko, wetiko. And when
I read about it, and I never

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knew about it, I was blown
away because it was like, oh,

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this is their version of de evolution. Wow. And it's inspired me to

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write a whole suite of songs that
the record will be called Wittiko. And

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once you look it up, or
anybody looks it up, they'll go,

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oh of course. Casally would of
course write a sweet based on Wittko.

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Oh man, that's as killer stuff. And how do people go your website

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socials and stuff like that so they
can check all this stuff out when that

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comes out? Check out in visible
man, check out your action figures because

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those are like super cool where they
go. I thought it was geraldvcasally dot

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com that might be the I made
it easy. I know, right there

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you go and everything's right there,
and yeah, they can check everything out,

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and so what can people expect that
Devo live show that they've never been

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to Devo before. I think I've
never been. I'm trying to think.

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I think I wasn't allowed to be
at Divo. They can expect to be

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entertained. We can still do it. I love that. That's pretty cool.

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Well, you probably can do it
better than ever too, right,

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Somewhat, You're right, some things
we do better than ever. I don't

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think we could play an hour and
a half at the speeds we used to

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play at right, which were when
I watched them now a bit insane.

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I'm like, we did that,
and we'd do two shows a night.

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We do an early show all in
the yellow suits until we stripped them off

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for Jockohomo, right, and then
we would rest an hour and we'd do

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it again. Wow, that is
major, because I'm just impressed when there's

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artists that play in two different bands
at a festival right like hours apart.

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But to do that, you know, I think people don't realize how much

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goes into that, especially a show
like a live Devot show. Yeah,

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Devo was actually known for their live
shows because people from the press and from

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the records, they didn't know what
was about to happen live was a whole

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other thing where we brought a whole
other dimension, you know, to the

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party. Yeah, and I feel
that a band should do that. Why

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should you see a band that stands
there shoegazing, sounding just like their record

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exac Weekly, We brought a whole
other dimension, theatrics, visuals, film,

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and we still do that, and
we really pump out energy. People

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are very surprised to find out how
ballsy rock and roll devo can be nice.

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I love it, and it's true
because an artist, just because you're

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making music doesn't mean you're not an
artists in many other ways. That's right,

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and it's the full sensory. A
live show is the full sensory of

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all of it. Right should be, and you guys execute that perfectly.

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You're going to execute it here tonight
at Punk Rock Bowling and man, thanks

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for being here and still spreading a
positive message for the world, still giving

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us great music. Yeah, and
given the pipe Man a chance to see

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you tonight. Well, thank you, Pipeman, Thank you for being on

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the Adventures Pipe all right, thank
you for listening to the Adventures of Pipemin

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on w for CUI Radio. This
is Gerald Vica Sally from Deevo, and

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you're listening to the pipemin on w
for cy dot com.