I made a spur-of-the-moment post a few weeks ago upon the release of DEVO bassist Jerry Casale‘s new single, “I’m Gonna Pay U Back.” The song’s music video came out on the 8th, and upon watching it, I think I got a taste of the “positive brainwashing” I’ve been longing for recently. For the rest of that day, I was as excitable and positively charged as ever, coinciding with a period of creative stimulation in my own regard. Three days later, the wave of excitement, relief, and emotion that drenched my mind has (for the most part) subsided, allowing me to write about the matter at hand with more precision.

The music video coincides with the widespread reissue of Jerry’s 2006 solo album as the venerable “Jihad Jerry,” who wears turbans that match his suit coats and declares that “[his] is not a holy war.” The album itself supplies hard-hitting blues rock injected with an indie-electro twist, and Jerry is flanked by two soulful female backup singers to help him spit his de-evolutionary bars. Three DEVO rarities and a Yardbirds song receive updates for the twenty-first century.

Me discovering the album due to my exploration of the DEVO discography was cathartic. Jerry’s declaration of a “war against stupidity” instead of one against drugs or any specific religion was a refreshing statement for an angry, skeptical girl in a prejudiced, complacent world to hear. The project was satirically bent and just plain baffling at times, just like DEVO’s tactics of confusion and absurdity that made their medicinal messaging go down so tightly. It was bold and funny and refreshingly weird, and it spoke to me unlike much else had. (I touched on this here, too.)

With CD copies being scarce, I always hoped it would receive the reissue it deserved someday, though I did not entirely expect that to happen. I figured it would be too easy for a naive public to decontextualize Jerry’s tomfoolery and try to rip him a new hole for his alter ego, and part of me wondered if the project would get buried in the sands of time in the name of “playing it safe.” Cue the album getting reissued after all, with Jihad placed front and center, burning with passion and pride in woodblock effigy, on the album cover. Go figure.

It’s the perfect time to reissue it, too: nostalgia holds a fifteen year cycle, and fashion magazines seem to be plugging “Y2K” trends as the hottest thing a lot recently, though the low rise jeans and flip phones they promote seem more “mid-ohs excess” than “late 1990s techno fear.” Even I’m not completely immune: I ordered a brand new iPod for my birthday, as I still haven’t jumped the shark from MP3 collecting to streaming. (And now I can listen to remastered Jihad Jerry on it.) It seems like everyone is looking back on that dark and trashy time, trying to find refuge from an increasingly dire present. But is mindless indulgence and glamorization the best way to deal with thousands of faceless humans dying on the other side of the planet? Jihad Jerry asked this question back then, and now he asks it again.

In his new music video, Jerry confronts his alter ego in acknowledgement of his past and the mutinous multitudes he contains. It’s a daring example of self-expression, and Jerry is still bold and unapologetic in his seventies, despite various societal aggressions that the role of the elderly is to gripe about the youth from their high rocking chairs. (Not that he doesn’t look a good twenty years younger than he actually is without the video’s sci-fi Prisma filter.) He remains a spirited misfit and provocateur just as he was back in the day. But times have changed since then, and the future is even more uncertain than it was fifteen years ago. That also explains his urgency, his willingness to be so forward. Best to let yourself be heard while you still have the ability to speak.

Tags: DEVO, influences, media commentary, music, nostalgia, personal experiences, reviews, the good fight, the past, things I enjoy

This entry was posted on Monday, July 12th, 2021 at 00:17 and is filed under Reviews & Commentaries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.