UMGAWA!!!

 From 2005.

Every now and then I lose all hope for the entire human race and I need a dose of the unwavering moral certainty put out by superheroes and what they represent, especially the pre-1960’s variety of good guys.

 Back in the days there were no real shades of gray to our heroes. You were either a good guy or a bad guy. It was that simple. Some were more violent and cynical in their methods than others — the Shadow and the pre-Robin Batman spring immediately to mind, since both did not hesitate to send villains to join the Choir Invisible — and others handed out ass-kickings that came from a more primal, earthy standpoint, such as Conan, Billy “The Mucker” Byrne, and Enkidu, co-star of the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh (how can you not get with a superhuman wildman who is civilized in no uncertain terms by the twin influences of friendship and serious pussy?). But none of those resonate in my estimation quite like Tarzan of the Apes, so today I went out and finally got my paws on the boxed DVD set of the first six MGM films about him. 

I have absolutely fucking loved Tarzan for as long as I can remember, one of the very few things my father and I had in common, and I still smile at the memory of my dad telling a five-year-old Bunche about how the word “Umgawa” was the jungle lord’s all-purpose word that could literally be applied to any situation whatsoever and work like a charm, a fact proven time and again throughout several of his films from the early 1930’s through around 1948. Perhaps my father’s one positive lasting influence upon me was spurring my interest in the heroes of his youth, especially Tarzan and Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century, both of whose comic strips amazingly launched on the very same day in 1929 (although both had first debuted in pulp magazines years earlier)… 

But I digress. 

Moving to the hostile and racist land of Westport, Connecticut in the summer of 1972 — I had just turned seven — I had no real friends save the little blonde girl across the street, Nora, would play with me in the vast, untamed swamp near I-95, and our favorite game was “Tarzan and Jane,” a much more interesting variation on “House.” I remember Nora in her Jane persona loving the idea of having a husband who was some wild jungle guy and a “child” who was a stuffed bear who also doubled as “Cheeta" the chimp, and complaining about how she and her mate were always more or less naked, and noting her strange interest in nudity in general, but we were clothed throughout all of this innocent kiddie role playing. Without even intending to explore its meaning we had hit upon one of the most intriguing elements of the cinematic Tarzan/Jane dynamic, namely that the two were primal, sexual creatures whose relationship was in no way prurient, just fun, innocent and utterly natural. Sadly, Nora moved away a few months later and I would not have any friends who had any kind of imagination for several years to come (plus I would have loved to have borne witness to the beauty that I’m certain she became). 

During the 1970’s in the Connecticut area, kids got their education on Tarzan from weekly Sunday afternoon screenings of films about him on New York’s Channel 5 — and the seldom-seen reruns of the Ron Ely television series from the 1960’s, which was not bad — and I can honestly say I saw all of them, but the details of many of the earlier entries faded from my childhood memories and were only awakened and really understood when seen again from a grownup perspective. Cases in point: TARZAN THE APE MAN (1932) and even more so TARZAN AND HIS MATE (1934), both films from before the hypocrisy and bullshit of the Hayes code (look that one up on Google; way too much to cover here). 

The first two of the MGM Tarzan flicks are violent as hell, politically incorrect to an alarming degree for modern viewers (depictions of Africans back in those days were less than flattering, to say the least), and surprisingly hot when it came to the Tarzan and Jane romance. What really blows me away upon seeing the MGM entries nowadays is how wrong I was in my original assessment of the films. As a child I loved them but upon getting older and reading creator Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels I was shocked to find the jungle lord was extremely articulate, fluent in several languages (French was his first non-simian tongue), and that Jane was a blonde American rather than the British brunette of the movies, and I perceived those deviations from the source material to be both insulting and a flagrant example of dumbing down some really great stuff. Well lemme tell ya, sometimes things that are altered for the movies can work out to be exactly right for the onscreen medium. The casting of non-actor and badass of the 1924 and 1928 Olympics, Johnny Weissmuller, proved to be brilliant since his Tarzan exhibited an animal wariness and athletic physicality that I honestly do not believe could have been gotten across by a stage or screen thespian. And don’t get me started on the absolute perfection of Maureen O’Sullivan’s Jane. Here was a love interest who was not only utterly lovely, but she was every bit as savvy and fearless as Tarzan (once she said “fuck civilization” and started swinging through the trees), and was also the kind of lady that guys just plain love and unless some ass-kicking on a rubber crocodile or rallying of an elephant herd was needed, Jane was pretty much the brains of the operation. Pretty radical for the 1930’s, I think. 

The first two of the MGM Tarzan flicks really focus on Jane and her rebirth as a “natural” woman after accompanying her father on a quest for the mythical “Elephant’s Graveyard,” a site that exists on a remote African plateau that also happens to be the home of Tarzan. In TARZAN THE APE MAN our nature boy abducts Jane from the safari, strictly out of innocent curiosity, and when he hauls her up to his tree home Jane is terrified — as is the audience — when it appears that Tarzan’s rough attentions are a preamble to rape rather than a desire to check out someone who is obviously different from him, different in a way that he has never encountered since he is the only human where he resides (or so we are supposed to believe, despite an abundance of black people all over the goddamned place). Jane soon realizes that she is in no danger, and begins to warm to the ape-man, openly voicing how hot she thinks he is and her relief at the fact that she can make such statements since he can’t understand her nattering in English. The smoldering gazes between the two are volcanic in their heat, and pretty soon Tarzan scoops Jane into his arms, looks up at his tree and nods to her as if to ask “Are you feeling this too?” Jane buries her face in his neck in silent agreement and the two retire to the arboreal love-nest, at which point the scene fades out and the screen goes dark for a surprisingly long time… When next we see Jane, she is unusually relaxed for a 1930’s movie heroine and embraces the Big Guy while blatantly expressing her obvious pleasure in his unrefined charms. It’s plain to even the most obtuse member of the audience that the Beast With Two Backs has been made, and by the time the story winds up Jane has ditched both the English stiff who digs her and the British notion of modest social propriety in general for the wild life with her loincloth-clad Lothario (and his chimp companion Cheeta). 

The sequel, TARZAN AND HIS MATE, is considered by many — including your humble Bunche — to be the best Tarzan movie ever made, and is chock full of all the excitement, sex, and violence that one could want in a movie even by today’s standards, so when it came out back in 1934 it raised a major ruckus. This time around, a party of irritating British shitheads arrive at Tarzan’s escarpment with the intention of returning Jane to England since there is no way that any sane white woman would enjoy being out in the wilds of Africa, what with all the animals, heat, Negroes, and that smelly, yodeling white guy in the leather banana-hammock. Well, they are in for a big shock when after hiking up the dangerous mountain face for the first half-hour of the movie, they find Jane not only happy to the point of lunacy, but also clad in as little as Hollywood would permit in 1934, an immodest state that she doesn’t even notice since she’s having the time of her life and has absolutely no intention of fucking up such a good thing by going back to Blighty (I told she was smart!). On the other hand, Tarzan is proven to be an attentive, playful and considerate lover, and since he does not bear the taint of uptight Western bullshit-as-values he is not jealous of the former suitor of Jane’s who has lead the expedition to find her since he knows that they are perfect mates and that nothing short of death could part them. Tarzan’s almost entirely silent love for his woman is truly powerful to behold, and when both characters are looked at as archetypes for both genders — the non-verbal he-man type and the talkative nurturer — their enduring appeal can be readily understood, an appeal made that much more interesting by the plainly illustrated fact that Jane is obviously the real power in their dynamic.

The thing really stuns modern viewers when they see TARZAN AND HIS MATE is the obvious sexual and loving relationship shared by the protagonists, and the fact that such a situation was seen in a major Hollywood film from 1934. There are a couple of scenes wherein we encounter our heroes after a night of flaming osh-osh and Jane is sexily nude under some sort of animal skin, lovingly gushing to Tarzan, and let us not forget the infamous nude swim scene in the river where we see a crystal clear bare-assed Jane (another Olympic swimmer doubling for Maureen O’Sullivan) and the lord of the jungle innocently frolicking together in the same way that couples do if they happen to be nude and not engaged in the aforementioned flaming osh-osh. I could go on about all of this, but I’d like to let the following user comment from the Internet Movie Database say it all for me: 

Author: (tom_amity@hotmail.com) from Lincoln, Nebraska, 2/2/2005 

Hard to believe, perhaps, but this film was denounced as immoral from more pulpits than any other film produced prior to the imposition of the bluenose Hayes Code. Yes indeed, priests actually told their flocks that anyone who went to see this film was thereby committing a mortal sin.

I'm not making this up. They had several reasons, as follows:

Item: Jane likes sex. She and Tarzan are shown waking up one morning in their treetop shelter. She stretches sensuously, and with a coquettish look she says "Tarzan, you've been a bad boy!" So they've not only been having sex, they've been having kinky sex! A few years later, under the Hays Code, people (especially women) weren't supposed to be depicted as enjoying sex.

Item: Jane prefers a guileless, if wise and resourceful, savage (Tarzan) to a civilized, respectable nine-to-five man (Holt). When Holt at first wows her with a pretty dress from London, she wavers a bit; when Holt tries to kill Tarzan, and Holt and Jane both believe he's dead, she wavers a lot. But when she realizes her man is very much alive, the attractions of civilization vanish for her. And why not? Tarzan's and Jane's relationship is egalitarian: He lacks the "civilized" insecurity that would compel him to assert himself as "the head of his wife". To boot, he lacks many more "civilized" hangups, for example jealousy. When Holt and his buddy arrive, Tarzan greets them both cordially, knowing perfectly well that Holt is Jane's old flame. When Holt gets her dolled up in a London dress and is slow-dancing with her to a portable phonograph, Tarzan drops out of a tree, and draws his knife. Jealous? Nope. He's merely cautious toward the weird music machine, since he's never seen one before. Once it's explained, he's cool.

Item: Civilized Holt is dirty minded. Savage Tarzan is innocently sexy. As Jane slips into Holt's lamplit tent, Holt gets off on watching her silhouette as she changes into the fancy dress. By contrast, after Tarzan playfully pulls the dress off, kicks her into the swimming hole and dives in after her, there follows the most tastefully erotic nude scene in all cinema: the pair spends five minutes in a lovely water ballet.(The scene was filmed in three versions--clothed, topless and nude--the scene was cut prior to the film's release, but the nude version is restored in the video now available.) And when Jane emerges, and Cheetah the chimp steals her dress just for a tease, Jane makes it clear that her irritation is only because of the proximity of "civilized" men and their hangups. Where is the "universal prurience" so dear to the hearts of seminarians? Nowhere, that's where. Another reason why the hung up regarded this film as sinful.

Item: The notion that man is the crown of creation, and animals are here only for man's use and comfort, takes a severe beating. Holt and his buddy want to be guided to the "elephant graveyard" so they can scoop up the ivory and take it home. They want Tarzan to guide them to said graveyard. You, reader, are thinking "Fat chance!" and you're right. He's shocked. He exclaims "Elephants sleep!" which to him explains everything. Jane explains Tarzan's feelings, which the two "gentlemen" find ridiculous.

Item: Jane, the ex-civilized woman, is far more resourceful than the two civilized men she accompanies. Holt and buddy blow it, and find themselves besieged by hostile tribes and wild animals. It is Jane who maintains her cool. While the boys panic, she takes charge, barks orders at them and passes out the rifles.

Item: Jane's costume is a sort of poncho with nothing underneath. (The original idea was for her to be topless, with foliage artistically blocking off her nipples, which indeed is the case in one brief scene.)

Lastly, several men of the cloth complained because the film was called "Tarzan and His Mate" rather than "Tarzan and His Wife." No comment!

Of course, Tarzan, who has been nursed back to health by his ape friends, comes to the rescue, routs the white hunters, and induces the pack elephants and African bearers to return the ivory they stole to the sacred place whence it came. The End.

So there you have it. An utterly subversive film. Like all the other films about complex and interesting women (see, e.g., Possessed with Rita Hayworth and Raymond Massey) which constituted such a flowing genre in the early 30's and which were brought to such an abrupt end by the adoption of the Hays Code.

The joie de vivre of this film is best expressed by Jane's soprano version of the famous Tarzan yell. A nice touch, which was unfortunately abandoned in future productions.

Let's hear it for artistic freedom, feminist Jane, and sex.

Very eloquently stated, I think, and how can you not immediately want to see a film condemned by The Church? So yesterday, after having a great non-barbecue lunch at the lower East Side’s esteemed Crif Dogs (a repast of two chili dogs and a side of tater tots), I bought the Tarzan DVD set and have set about enjoying my two days off by watching Tarzan flicks until I go mad in an effort to restore my faith in humanity; it is now 4:07 AM on Tuesday morning, and I’m still at it, and ya know what? These journeys to that otherworldly cinematic Africa are doing me a lot of good, and I hope to someday find the right Jane to complement my own inimitable Tarzan. Wish me luck.

IMITATION OF LIFE (1959) AT THE FILM FORUM

From 2015.

Lobby card from the film's original release, featuring Susan Kohner as the troubled Sarah Jane Johnson.

Just got back from the Film Forum's screening of IMITATION OF LIFE (1959), a film that has fascinated me since I first encountered it in the great Esther Newton's infamous "American Society On Film" class during my SUNY at Purchase college days. It's a re-imagining of a 1934 chick flick/"weepie" about two mothers, one black and one white, and their daughters, who all come together under one roof as a blended family and contend with issues of class, race, and family dysfunction, and the 1959 version is one of the all-time classic examples of a textbook emotionally-manipulative Hollywood soaper. Its examination of how American society of its era made true equality/harmony between blacks and whites in general unlikely at best and hauls out the longstanding tropes of the martyred, saintly older black woman who's the emotional backbone and real strength of the family (to both black and white factions), and the so-called tragic mulatto whose case of self-loathing is invariably more compelling than the upper-class travails of the white protagonists.

Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner), surrounded by white masks. Subtle it is not...

I won't spoil the plot's details but the 1959 IMITATION OF LIFE's portrait of Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner), the angry, self-loathing light-skinned daughter of a black father who's described as "almost white," is far more compelling than the rote rags-to-riches showbiz rise of its white main character (Lana Turner) and how her success leads her to unintentionally neglect her blossoming 16-year-old (Sandra Dee). The actress's storyline is not bad by any means, but it was something that was already seen numerous times prior to the film's release, however it's essential to the overall narrative by providing the perfect background against which to contrast the entwined lives of Sarah Jane and her mother (Juanita Moore) who works as the actress's live-in maid and bosom companion whose support and caring for the actress's daughter frees the actress to pursue stage gigs. Sarah Jane's rejection of her dusky heritage and her shattering desire to pass for white from an early age form the true emotional core of the story and Susan Kohner's Oscar-nominated performance renders the character's arc as nothing less than painful and heartbreaking. In short, if you have not seen this film, seek it out for Kohner's arc.

Which brings me to last night's Screening at the Film Forum, where I met the one and only Susan Kohner. Kohner's spectacular portrayal of the deeply troubled, self-loathing Sarah Jane Johnson struck a very strong chord with my mother's side of the family, especially with a certain aunt who basically was the character in real life. (Though Sarah Jane never ran into the same kinds of issues with the law that the aunt in question did, but the less said of that the better...) Following the film, Kohner sat for an interview with a film professor  — whose questions/expoundings were of little or no weight and who clearly missed the entire point of the movie he was allegedly such an authority upon; that assessment was shared by a friend of mine who was also in attendance and is a highly-knowledgeable film scholar and director of films herself — and later answered questions from members of the audience. Since the opportunity was afforded, I took the mic and told Kohner of how much her character and performance meant to my family and especially my aunt. Following that, she was also kind enough to pose for a shot with her that I will send to the interested parties in my family, especially the aforementioned aunt.

 Yer Bunche, with the one and only Susan Kohner.

MORE RECORD ARCHAEOLOGY

To give you an idea of what I as being programmed with during my formative years, at age 5 my mother gave me not the Pufnstuf soundtrack, but a knockoff cover album by a Christian group. The content is no different from that on the original soundtrack, and some filler material is added to pad out the run time, but there's nothing in the original that would be considered offensive or blasphemous, so why re-record it? My guess is that they did it so they could tone down the more agressive/psychedelic sounds of the relatively far more heavy-sounding musicianship on the original. This album is an example of white people white-a-tizing their own music, and the result is as bland as skim milk diluted with tap water.

When I pointed out that this was not the real Pufnstuf album but rather a "fake," my mother dug her heels in and insisted "It's better for you." After enduring it one time too many, I managed to trade my copy for the real thing. The older sister of a neighborhood playmate collected bad albums and needed a copy, so she traded me for the real one. The real one has Mama Cass's "Different," which was an early anthem for me. Anyway, this album displays all the worst elements found in children's records, and it preserved, track-by-track, on YouTube. I had not heard it since early 1972, and it was just as weak as I remembered.

A SHOW OF LOVE FROM DOWN UNDER

Upon arriving home from treatment — over two hours after I was released — the day's mail contained this unexpected show of love from my niece Indira, Indi for short, and it made my entire week. She lives in Australia, so I only get to see her face-to-face once every few years, and she is growing into a teenager who inherited her New Yorker mother's sweetness and beauty. She's terrific and I wish I could see her (and her brothers and mother) more often. That said, this letter was a tonic, and I will cherish it forever. 

A MUSICAL EPIPHANY

Originally published in 2010.

Rick Wakeman (in wizard drag) and pals, circa 1975.

Grownup awareness and hindsight sure can be a bitch...

A friend recently hooked me up with forty-two episodes from the Mike Nelson years of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, and as I make my way through them I occasionally encounter one that I missed during the original run. Such an episode is the one where Mike and the Bots took on THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN — a film I cannot believe was made by the same guy who directed THE BLACK CAT (1934) — and during one of the skit segments Mike does an impersonation of former Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman during his "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" solo period, complete with ludicrous cape and a fright wig to simulate the musician's signature tresses.

MST3K's Mike Nelson channels solo Rick Wakeman.

That bit kicked me in the head as, for the first time in nearly twenty years, my thoughts turned to the Rick Wakeman album "The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table" (1975).

Even the promo ad was overblown and pretentious.

For those who've never heard of it, "The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table" is Wakeman's musical evocation of exactly what its title states, and it's an ambitious bit of heavily-orchestral composition accented by Wakeman's talented keyboard fiddling. Fraught with choral vocals that sound like two-thousand singers were in the studio and minimally-worded retellings of some key aspects of the Arthurian legends — the lyrical scarcity theoretically allowing the music to fill in the narrative and descriptive gaps — the album can be seen by some as an ideal soundtrack to a lengthy D&D campaign (which would not be inappropriate since Dungeons and Dragons first appeared scarcely a year before Wakeman's foray into Camelot, and both efforts simply reek of that early 1970's fantasy vibe). Lancelot, Galahad, Excalibur, the Lady of the Lake, Guinevere, Merlin, and of course Arthur are all present and represented with the kind of legendary aural bombast that would have made Basil Poledouris turn green with envy.

God help me, I used to love that record during my mid-adolescence, appealing as it did to my "romantic" side, but now I look back on it and ask myself what the fuck I was thinking. While there're some admittedly interesting moments to it, "The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table" has got to be one of the most overblown and pretentious pieces musical masturbation ever recorded, very clearly the product of a twenty-five-year-old with delusions of grandeur (plus, it was written during Wakeman's recovery from three minor heart attacks at that young age, so that may factor into it). Particularly embarrassing are the bits where the lush orchestral compositions abruptly derail into teeth-grinding examples of rinky-dink "pee-anny," most notably during the track devoted to Merlin. It's largely the same thing Wakeman was shooting for with the soundtrack to Ken Russell's LISZTOMANIA (1975), only everything worked much better there and had Roger Daltrey along for the ride. But what really pushes this whole exercise over the top is the fact that it was supported by a live show of "King Arthur on Ice" — no, I am not making that up — that not unpredictably lost Wakeman money, leading to inaccurate reports of the composer going bankrupt as a result.

An example from "King Arthur on Ice."

Now that I've listened to the "Arthur" album again for the first time since perhaps 1990 or 1991, I cannot believe that I used to lay there in my room in Westport at the age of sixteen (a good three years before I ever smoked weed), caught up in its dreamy evocation of Malloryesque pageantry and actually buying what Wakeman was selling. As anyone who knew me at the time can attest, I was far from shy about sharing the music I loved with all and sundry (often much to their great annoyance), but "The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table" was never spun for my friends, which leads me to conclude that on some level I knew it was a load of bullshit and realized I would be soundly and deservedly ridiculed for being a fan. I feel like a complete twat and wish I could go back in time and kick myself right up the arse (as FATHER TED creators and writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews once so eloquently put it) for ever being such a complete and utter pussy. It's hard to convey what this album's really all about to anyone who has not heard it and I won't even try to give the album a proper review because everything I could possibly say about it has already been made quite clear.

So, what's your equivalent to "The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table" as the once-beloved album that now makes you want to wear a bag over your head out of sheer embarrassment? Please write in and share your shame.

DEVO: LIVE AT THE FORUM, KENTISH TOWN-5/6/2009

Q: ARE WE NOT MEN? A: WE ARE DEVO! (1978): an unexpected landmark in rock 'n' roll history.

To be fully honest, the spark that lit the fuse of my trip to England was the knowledge that my favorite band on the planet, Akron's mighty Devo, would not only be playing in London in early May, but they'd be playing their first album — 1978's Q: ARE WE NOT MEN? A: WE ARE DEVO! — in its entirety. Well there was no fucking way I was going to miss that since they only do a few of the tracks from that record in concert these days, and England is affordable enough to be doable, especially when being so kindly put up for free by Jewish Warrior Princess (who also provided the tickets as a birthday present; wotta gal!), so it was a done deal from the word "go."

As the date of the concert drew near, JWP opted to give the show a miss — Devo is definitely not her kind of thing, what with her been a self-professed "pop queen" and all, but it was more than enough for her to even consider attending — so she instead give her ticket to Sue, the ultra-cool and fun wife of my friend Tim Pilcher (they live a town over from JWP in Brighton) and I agreed to meet Sue and her friend St. John (pronounced "Sinjun") at a Pub called Annie's that was located a few blocks from the concert venue.

Wednesday soon rolled around and I made my way into London by rail. In no time I was in the London tubeway, and every time I've ventured into it I've been overwhelmed by its vertigo-inducing escalators.

Upon arriving in London's Kentish Town section, I made my way to Annie's and was delighted to discover the street outside the bar was overrun with folks sporting Devo shirts and Energy Domes (those flower pot-like pieces of headgear made iconic during the "Whipit" days).

Before entering the bar I spotted a cutie in a custom purple Energy Dome that she'd been given for her birthday, so I asked her if I could snap her picture.

She not only obliged my request, but also offered to let me wear her custom headgear for a photo.

After that I made my way inside and knew immediately that I was in the midst of people who not only "got" Devo, but also adored them they way I did. As I mingled and chatted among a crowd one would expect to find at a British football match, I feasted my eyes upon a variety of shirts and even tattoos bearing imagery and slogans only a true fan would understand and appreciate, and despite having seen the band numerous times, this was the first time I ever felt like I was really among my people.

Extra points to this guy for rockin' a Booji Boy tat!

This group of Devo hooligans were a bunch of tanked-up sweethearts who showed me even more love once they discovered I'd flown in from Brooklyn for the show.

An old Devo slogan, soon to be re-purposed as the title for an upcoming new song.

The sign-up line for a club-members-only after party that I did not attend. I'm gonna join the fan club as soon as possible so I can get in on this kind of shit!

Remember the climax of ENTER THE DRAGON, when Bruce Lee fights the main villain in a visually-confusing hall of mirrors? That's what I was reminded of when I went to use the men's room at Annie's, and I thanked all the gods that I was neither bombed out of my skull nor high on mushrooms.

British Spuds represent!

Who isn't brother? Who isn't?

If I'd known the show commemorated on this shirt was tkaing place, you can bet your ass I would have gone!

After absorbing all the good vibes and shooting the shit with St. John — a guy who's pretty much on the same page as me musically — I ended up at the Forum and awaited the start of the show and had a wonderful and totally unexpected moment. While observing the incoming crowd, I spotted a petite lady who looked very familiar and almost immediately I recognized her as Lene Lovich, one of my favorite performers during my high school years (Fall 1980-Spring 1983) and the warbly singer of the new wave classics "Lucky Number" and "New Toy."

Lene Lovich, circa 1978.

I walked over to the lady and asked if she was indeed who I thought she was, and she answered in the affirmative, pleased to see a fan from the States gush over her like an idiot. She kindly consented to pose for a couple of pics with Yer Bunche, and that act of sweetness could only be read as a good omen for the rest of the evening.

Yer Bunche meets Lene Lovich.

This shot was snapped by a girl who, judging from her age, may have been one of Miss Lovich's grand-daughters (Lene's a recent sixty). Now all I have to do is meet Nina Hagen and see if I can resist taking her into my arms and passionately kissing her awesome Teutonic self!

Understandably psyched, I made my way to the front row of the balcony and joined Sue and St. John with beers in hand, and gazed down onto what was surely the largest and most rabid crowd I'd ever seen at a Devo show, an enthusiastic crush of humanity that made me glad I was for once not on the floor or in the pit.

The floor as seen from the balcony: a close approximation of a street scene from SOYLENT GREEN.

The lights soon dimmed and the support band, Robots in Disguise, took the stage.

Flanked by two dancers who marched in place while clad in cheesy robot costumes, the two British chick-rockers let fly with some mostly good "electro punk" that set the mood quite well. They were lively and their show utilized the screens set up for Devo's multi-media intro, running goofy videos of themselves engaging in bargain basement sci-fi theatrics,

or footage of robot puppets fucking their brains out in numerous positions.

NOTE: I enjoyed Robots in Disguise enough to buy one of their albums, specifically "Get RID," after the show, and it was to my great dismay that I found out they're one of those bands who rock hard and have energy to spare when seen live, but utterly fail to deliver on an album. The record I bought wasn't even interesting enough for me to work up the energy to describe it as a steaming piece of suckness, so caveat emptor.

The girls of Robots in Disguise rock out with their cocks out. Too bad their album bit the big one...

When Robots in Disguise's set was over it was only about a ten minute wait until the lights once more dimmed and Devo's multi-media extravaganza began, this time opening with their early video of "Secret Agent Man."

"Secret Agent Man": "I got an afternoon pass/I don't get up off my ass!!!"

That chestnut was followed by the famous and disturbing video for "Jocko Homo" and then the men from Akron took the stage, their (mostly) just-under-sixty selves feeding off of the palpable energy of their UK audience.

The Spudboys take the stage and Britain shows its love.

Opening with "Uncontrollable Urge," a tune that rocks in the first place but totally kicks motherfucking ass when performed live, the boys sent out wave after wave of sheer de-evolutionized power that blasted the audience off their asses and onto their feet in a gyrating frenzy.

Gerry and Mark make with "Uncontrollable Urge."

Mark begins the ritual shredding of his jumpsuit.

Mark's plaintive and frustrated take on the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" was up next and witnessing it brought me straight back to the moment when I first saw Devo, nearly thirty-one years ago on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, a performance that left my jaw hanging open and made me exclaim out loud, "What the fuck did I just watch?"

Try as he might...

...Mark just can get him no satisfaction.

Frontman Mark was quite obviously having a great time and showed the mutual love by wading into the elated throng of true believers.

"Praying Hands," "Space Junk," "Mongoloid," "Jocko Homo," and the rest of the beloved tracks from that first album kept on coming and the crowd ate it up like a starving man confronted with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and two large sides of mashed potatoes and gravy.

Nearly sixty and still kicking ass like nobody's business.

Mark makes with the rah-rah during "Mongoloid."

The tragically-underrated guitar-slinging excellence of Bob 1.

Seeing as it was an intentionally short set, the boys wasted little time in stripping down to their black t-shirts and shorts.

When the beautiful and evocative guitar strains of "Gut Feeling" began, the place went wild and I sat transfixed, utterly happy to be in that place at that exact moment in history.

"Come Back Jonee" elicited much the same response from all on hand, and just about everybody joined in on the chanted chorus of "Jonee! Jonee!"

As the album's contents neared an end, the fully-charged crowd and band basked in the sheer mutated joy of it all, reveling in a heartfelt celebration of a strange and wonderful musical concept that was very much ahead of its time.

One of the show's many highlights was Mark completely fucking up the lyrics to "Sloppy (I Saw My Baby Gettin') and just going with it when he realized trying to recover would have been a lost cause, and then there was the classic moment when Bob 1 attempted to strike a "cool" rocker pose with one foot up on a speaker, but instead ended up taking a header and landing flat on his ass, where he continued to play while laying supine and staring up at the ceiling.

Mark Mothersbaugh: rawk gawd.

The prophet of de-evolution once more walks among the faithful.

When they'd exhausted the first album, the boys came back for a pair of excellent and house-rocking encores, namely "Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA" and the classic "Gates of Steel."

But, alas, as all good dates must, the audience with my favorite band was over too soon for my liking, but I can honestly say that this was the finest of the many Devo concerts I've borne witness to. The level of energy from both the band and the crowd, the material from their seminal first album, and the tightness of the performance added up to a classic moment in Devo's history and in the annals of my own concertgoing, and I wish I could have had all my friends who are Devo fans there to share it with me. There was a professional camera team there recording the proceedings, so I hope this show eventually becomes available on DVD for all to see. This one's right up there with the famous 1980 FREEDOM OF CHOICE tour in terms of sheer quality, and considering this show was less than half the length of that "Whipit"-era landmark, that's really saying something.

WE'RE ALL DEVO!!!