History Music / Devo

* BitingTheHandHumor: The band took potshots at Warner Bros. at every opportunity.

* CoverVersion: They've covered: Music/{{The Rolling Stones|Band}} "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (''Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!''), Johnny Rivers' "Secret Agent Man" (''Duty Now for the Future''), Lee Dorsey's "Working in the Coal Mine" (non-album single, on the ''WesternAnimation/HeavyMetal'' soundtrack, later added as a bonus track to ''New Traditionalists''), Music/JimiHendrix's "Are You Experienced?" (''Shout''), Music/ElvisPresley's "Don't Be Cruel" (''Total Devo''), Bob Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody" (Present on the demo collection, ''Recombo DNA'') [[Theatre/WestSideStory "Somewhere"]] (part of a medley on the live album ''Now It Can Be Told''), Bonnie Dobson's "Morning Dew" (''Smooth Noodle Maps''), Music/NineInchNails' "Head Like a Hole" (for the soundtrack of ''Supercop'').

* BreakingTheFourthWall: The tour supporting "Oh No! It's Devo" had the band interacting with the projected films. Mark would shoot the out-of-sync dancing dolls during the aptly-named "Out of Sync," and the band would be kicked down by the laughing pirate at the end of "Peek-A-Boo."

* BreakingTheFourthWall: The tour supporting "Oh No! It's Devo" had the band interacting with the projected films. Mark would shoot the out-of-sync dancing dolls during the aptly-named "Out of Sync," and the band would be kicked down by the laughing pirate at the end of "Peek-A-Boo"

* Music/NeilYoung: He indirectly [[http://neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2018/01/how-neil-young-got-devo-on-saturday.html got the band onto]] ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'', and they appeared in his film ''Human Highway''. It was Devo who started calling Neil "[[CoolOldGuy Grandpa Granola]]".

The story does not end there, though: Devo reunited and started touring again in 1996, replacing Kendrick with acclaimed session drummer and PromotedFanboy Josh Freese. That same year the FullMotionVideo PC game ''The Adventures of the Smart Patrol'' was released in collaboration with Inscape, and it was pretty ill-received. The reunion tour was, however, a success, and Devo would continue during sporadic tours for the next many years to come. In 2006, Devo 2.0, a collaboration project between Creator/{{Disney}} and Devo, saw the light of day. It featured a band of preteens, playing some of Devo's songs with rewritten LighterAndSofter lyrics, as Disney hoped to peddle the band to a kid audience. The old Devo fans were pretty unhappy about this, and Devo 2.0 never really managed to catch on with their intended audience; when their first album, ''[=DEV2.0=]'', tanked, the band dissolved. Devo took it all in stride, musing that the whole affair perhaps was the ultimate proof of de-evolution.

* {{Revival}}: Releasing their first new album in 20 years after several years of almost exclusively being a touring act.

The band had a large part to play in the early days of Creator/{{MTV}}, since so few bands at the time were making music videos and Devo had jumped aboard the idea well before the market really took off in the 80s. Their first video, in fact, was independently filmed in 1974 and debuted at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 1976. This film, ''In The Beginning Was The End: The Truth About De-Evolution'', contained performances of a warped semi-cover of "Secret Agent Man" and the Devo manifesto, "Jocko Homo" (featuring the repeated chant "Are We Not Men?", a line borrowed from an early movie adaptation of ''Literature/TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau''). The film also introduced two recurring characters in Devo media, Booji Boy - "the infantile spirit of de-evolution", played by Mark Mothersbaugh in a baby mask - and his military father figure, General Boy (played by Mark and Bob 1’s dad, Robert Mothersbaugh Sr).

** Some of these catch phrases are borrowed from sources that inspired Devo. "Are we not men?" is from from ''Literature/TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau''. The De-evolutionary Oath is paraphrased from B. H. Shadduck's pamphlet ''Jocko Homo Heavenbound'', and "The beginning was the end" comes from Oscar Kiss Maerth's book of the same name.

* ADateWithRosiePalms: Devo is usually quite blatant about this. Certain entendres can be found in "Praying Hands," "Uncontrollable Urge," and "Jerking Back 'N' Forth." Songs very obviously about jerking the root include "Be Stiff," "Fountain of Filth," and "Penetration in the Centrefold." Time out for fun indeed.
** That said, the song most people thought was about masturbation, "Whip It", was actually intended as an encouraging song for UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter's re-election campaign, according to Mark Mothersbaugh. Jerry Casale also told that he wrote the lyrics {{in the style of}} ''Literature/GravitysRainbow'', as he liked the way it parodied the American view on self-help.

* FiveManBand:
** Current lineup
*** TheLeader: Jerry
*** TheLancer: Mark
*** TheSmartGuy: Bob
*** TheHeart: Josh 1
*** TheBigGuy: Josh 2
** Classic lineup
*** TheLeader: Jerry
*** TheLancer: Mark
*** TheSmartGuy: Bob 2
*** TheHeart: Bob 1
*** TheBigGuy: Alan

* {{Bowdlerise}}: Disney made the band [[LighterAndSofter soften]] some of their lyrics for the Devo 2.0 project, often leading to their messages and extensive use of {{irony}} getting lost in the process. Go to the Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devo_2.0#Altered_lyrics article]] for specific examples.