Devo Evo

Devo 2.0, originally uploaded by niznoz.

One of the things that strikes me about the rising generation is the obliteration of the line between integrity and selling out. The two are harmonized now, with selling out an extension--not a betrayal--of authenticity.

I don't see this as a problem. It's actually consistent with the trend toward total integration that's been unfolding for years.

Here's an illustration of how the current sensibility came to be, from a recent interview with the founder of Devo, Mark Mothersbaugh:

Q: Do you feel that this sort of consumer-based art conflicts at all with the critique of consumer culture that you were doing with Devo?

MM: Not at all. In fact, we used to get criticized back in the early days of Devo because, to us, what we were about, back before it was very cool to be into merchandise, we thought of our album cover as a place where we could do the inner-liner sleeves... as a matter of fact, if you look at any of the old Devo records, our inner-liner sleeves were always a merchandise page. We thought of it like the back page of a comic book where you'd see all the things you could order. Smith-Johnson novelties, stink bombs, baking powder-propelled rockets and X-Ray specks and all that kind of stuff. I loved that page of a comic book every time and I always looked at that stuff and sometimes would order it, and the Devo albums, we wanted them to be like a Cracker Jack box where you'd have a prize in there. I remember in 1978 when we put out our first album, and somehow our manager also managed Neil Young, and I remember Neil Young going, "You guys, I don't know what you're doing bringing merchandise into rock ‘n roll—that's so uncool!" "Of course now, all these years later, he sells a ton of t-shirts and DVDs and things. But at the time he thought it was kind of sacrilegious, and we're like, "You don't understand! This is all fun! Rock ‘n Roll is better than that!" It's like, everything that turned you on when you were a kid, you should still be able to be part of it. So for us, we thought the merchandise just had to be smart instead of stupid. So we tried to do smart merchandise, and I'm still trying to do smart merchandise.