From 1981: DEVO’S Freedom Of Choice Illustrated Review

By Keith Walsh

When DEVO’s single “Whip It” hit airwaves in August, of 1980, to most people it sounded like music from aliens. The tune put U.S. synthpop on the map, months before Depeche Mode in England recorded their first single. “Whip It” was the second single from DEVO’s third album Freedom Of Choice.

Based in Los Angeles but from originally from Ohio, DEVO were well known in the underground from their first two albums, the first produced by Brian Eno, the second by Ken Scott. Those albums were much grittier, featuring less polished beats, more prominent guitars, and frequent dissonant synths. Even on these two albums, the lyrics were concerned with social problems, mostly in a satirical or critical light. Their interpretation of The Stone’s “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” made them close to a household name, after they appeared on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, in late 1978. The lead single, “Girl U Want” featured the first inklings of some new alien sound and novel approach to satirizing the strangeness of infatuation. I was 17, shy and awkward, and as song about desire it was perfect. There’s something completely sincere about the lyrics on Freedom Of Choice, and for that reason the messages do not fall flat. Freedom Of Choice is a clear attempt to reach a huge audience. Robert Margouleff took the producer role, and the sound is slick, minimalist, with great care to sculpt commercial guitar sounds and keep analog synths in tune. Lyrically, there’s a continuing effort to promote a kind of morality or constructive ethics. Even “Whip It,” while interpreted sexually, is basically about putting mind over matter.

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DEVO’s theme since their early 70s origins is that the human race is no longer evolving, but devolving, into tools, nearly automatons. The album Freedom Of Choice particularly brings the ethics of personal choice into focus, asking listeners to think before choosing, in love and ambition, to seek a higher ground. While the music tends to be minimalistic, and energetic, it’s the messages that last. The video for the title track came out, and the appeal to the skateboarding crowd was a good idea, as it seems that those people sometimes use the sport as escapism from parents they don’t connect with. A majority of the messages from Freedom Of Choice in particular promote values that elevate our humanity above money interests. This is not too far from values promoted by mainstream radio preachers today.

Near the end of August 1980, I saw DEVO at Raincross Square, in Riverside. I had tickets for the second show that night as well, but as I was waiting in the long line outside the venue with a second set of friends I had invited, a riot broke out. There were murmurs in the line that the show had been cancelled. Anarchists hiding within the punk rock movement that had embraced DEVO as their own because of the rawness and rebellion of the first two albums went wild. Someone threw a bottle at the upper stories of the glass building, and windows shattered and fell. Helicopters arrived, the crowd dispersed and we went home. By 1983, musical instruments started to change, and by the mid 80s, electronic production took over a huge percentage of the new sounds on popular radio. I started to crave acoustic and organic sounds, but I will never forget the impact the warm analog production and sensible lyrics of Freedom Of Choice had on me in 1980 and 1981. KfW 10_30_25