Are We Not Men?

Happy Friday. My band of the month post this month is pretty much pre-empted by the two long film posts - but the last one was half a music post anyway, so here's the other half.

The Criterion edition of Island of Lost Souls has a very nice interview with Gerry Casales and Mark Mothersbaugh, talking about the film and their experiences of it, and including a film, featuring Secret Agent Man and Jocko Homo. It's a feature worth getting the DVD for (though only part of what is on there.) It's not on the web - but I summarized it in the Island of Lost Souls post... It's good stuff.

Fortunately the Devo films are online: so here's Secret Agent Man (with some industrial ruin, masks and beast men):



And Jocko Homo - every man woman and mutant on this planet will know the truth about de-evolution!



And maybe a bit more. Here'sBruce Conner's film for Mongoloid:



And a live bonus version of Mongoloid:



As for Pere Ubu: here's a live cut of Heart of Darkness, with stories. Ascribing the lyrics all to Raymond Chandler - wherever they came from, the lyrics are dense with literary and film allusion, which really was how Thomas worked in the 70s. This sounds very great, though you can't get the lyrics exactly...



So here's audio only, the single version:



Folk music of the urban pioneer movement: two parts of an interview with Thomas, talking about the band - and Cleveland, in terms that get to the congruence with Island of Lost Souls - the decay and downfall of the rust belt: at what point did those Aztec and Mayan cities become ruins? "Witnessing the death of a city, moving to ruins" - "this is the unloved thing"...

Part 1:



Part 2: and Utopia - rock music as utopia lost - "too stubborn to change our ideas and too stupid to quit":