Devo: Pioneers Who Got Scalped

Devo: Pioneers Who Got Scalped
Label: Rhino
Release Date: 2000
Recording Date: 1975+
Review Date: 2002

Mark Mothersbaugh has sold his soul to Rhino records. Various incarnations of Rhino have been cranking out Devo/Mothersbaugh releases in the last year or two – Devo live, Pioneers Who Got Scalped, Recombo DNA, and Spud x-mas, a Mothersbaugh x-mas album. If you pick up this latest anthology, you’re likely to feel like you’ve been the one who got scalped. Fans anticipated Pioneers as a long-rumored Devo box set. What they got instead was a pseudo-greatest hits disc and a “rarities” disc with a bunch of songs that should have remained scarce. On the plus side, the liner notes are rather thick and interesting.

Pioneers starts and ends with some voice outtakes from a Devo short film made early in their careers, around the time of Are We not Men? The next couple of tracks are from the soundtrack and are slightly rougher than the album tracks. There is a video release of the film floating around that is definitely worth picking up. The interludes between songs are sometimes tedious, but the primitive music videos are brilliant. The live footage is good as well. But getting back to Pioneers – the rest of the tracks on disc one are standard album fare except for the Stiff Records version of “Be Stiff”, a single mix of “Snowball” and another voice outro. The film tracks are interesting, but not worth the price of admission unless you’re a compulsive fan.

Disc two starts with another voice track and then quickly descends into an almost unlistenable mediocrity. Disc two spans the later half of their career, including the bitter end where the music became generic synth crap of the mindless quality that is antimatter to the rest of Devo’s legacy. There’s a reason why the “Theme to Doctor Detroit” never made it to the charts. There are a couple of good tracks, but otherwise the second disc is a washout. If you turn it off after the Hendrix cover “Are You Experienced?” you’ll be glad you never made it to Nined Inch Nails’ “Head Like a Hole” which is pretty embarrassing.

The book is nice. It’s small but thick, and features plenty of Devolving photos and band paraphernalia plus the usual small talk about how ahead of their time Devo was. All this is great, but anyone who is beyond a casual fan already knows this. The cover incorporates lenticular printing that sort of works and sort of doesn’t. Tilting the cover produces a mostly blurry image that has some motion. If you’re purely interested in the music, the Greatest Hits and Greatest Misses discs are a better purchase. If you’re looking for rarities and demos you’ll be better served by Hardcore Devo volumes one and two. The craptacular songs on this compilation would be easier to swallow if they were buried among a higher number of songs in a boxed set, which would also have made room for a larger sized and more legible book. Sadly, the shoddy product that is Pioneers Who Got Scalped may have killed any chances of seeing a better collection in the future. For hardcore Devo fans only, or for Whip-it only kooks who can find it used.

Online Action: rhinorecords.com

Why is there no official Devo web site?