Devo “Q:Are We Not Men? A:We Are Devo!” released 40 years ago today, August 28th, in 1978. Our copy, on red vinyl, is the UK release on Virgin Records; the US version has the more familiar album cover.

Devo’s debut album hit #12 in the UK and #78 in the US and, in later years, has been hailed as one of the most significant post-punk/new wave/art rock releases of the 70′s. Ever the forward thinkers, both David Bowie and Brian Eno vied for production duties on Q:Are We Not Men? after hearing Devo’s demos; Eno won the position but Bowie did help out with some of the work and ended up remixing many of the LP’s tracks.

Many of my favorite Devo songs appear on Q:Are We Not Men? including their first single “Mongoloid” (released first on Booji Boy Records and then Stiff Records in ‘77,  Devo then rerecorded it for the LP) and its B-side “Jocko Homo” which introduced the call-and-response “Are we not men?” / “We are Devo,” which is considered to be Devo’s anthem. I also love the jerky-jerky danceable chaos of “Uncontrollable Urge,” the offbeat – literally – cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction (I Can’t Get Me No)” and the bass-driven new waver “Praying Hands.”

Allmusic says about Are We Not Men? “Produced by Brian Eno, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! was a seminal touchstone in the development of American new wave. It was one of the first pop albums to use synthesizers as an important textural element, and although they mostly play a supporting role in this guitar-driven set, the innovation began to lay the groundwork for the synth-pop explosion that would follow very shortly. Q: Are We Not Men also revived the absurdist social satire of the Mothers of Invention, claiming punk rock’s outsider alienation as a home for freaks and geeks. While Devo’s appeal was certainly broader, their sound was tailored well enough to that sensibility that it still resonates with a rabid cult following. It isn’t just the dadaist pseudo-intellectual theories, or the critique of the American mindset as unthinkingly, submissively conformist. It was the way their music reflected that view, crafted to be as mechanical and robotic as their targets. Yet Devo hardly sounded like a machine that ran smoothly. There was an almost unbearable tension in the speed of their jerky, jumpy rhythms, outstripping Talking Heads, XTC, and other similarly nervy new wavers. And thanks to all the dissonant, angular melodies, odd-numbered time signatures, and yelping, sing-song vocals, the tension never finds release, which is key to the album’s impact. It also doesn’t hurt that this is arguably Devo’s strongest set of material, though several brilliant peaks can overshadow the remainder. Of those peaks, the most definitive are the de-evolution manifesto “Jocko Homo” (one of the extremely few rock anthems written in 7/8 time) and a wicked deconstruction of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” which reworks the original’s alienation into a spastic freak-out that’s nearly unrecognizable. But Q: Are We Not Men? also had a conceptual unity that bolstered the consistent songwriting, making it an essential document of one of new wave’s most influential bands.”

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Roxy Music, the band’s first album, hit #10 in the UK. Our copy is the US version; the original UK release did not include the track “Virginia Plain,” which Roxy Music recorded after the initial release (along with “The Numberer”) and then included it on the US album. They released “Virginia Plain” as a single and it went to #4 in the UK. Allmusic says, “Falling halfway between musical primitivism and art rock ambition, Roxy Music’s eponymous debut remains a startling redefinition of rock’s boundaries. Simultaneously embracing kitschy glamour and avant-pop, Roxy Music shimmers with seductive style and pulsates with disturbing synthetic textures. Although no musician demonstrates much technical skill at this point, they are driven by boundless imagination – Brian Eno’s synthesized ‘treatments’ exploit electronic instruments as electronics, instead of trying to shoehorn them into conventional acoustic patterns. Similarly, Bryan Ferry finds that his vampiric croon is at its most effective when it twists conventional melodies, Phil Manzanera’s guitar is terse and unpredictable, while Andy Mackay’s saxophone subverts rock & roll clichés by alternating R&B honking with atonal flourishes. But what makes Roxy Music such a confident, astonishing debut is how these primitive avant-garde tendencies are married to full-fledged songs, whether it’s the free-form, structure-bending “Re-Make/Re-Model” or the sleek glam of “Virginia Plain,” the debut single added to later editions of the album. That was the trick that elevated Roxy Music from an art school project to the most adventurous rock band of the early ‘70s.”

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Heroes made it to #3 on the UK charts but only hit #35 in the US. However it was almost universally hailed by music critics, named as album of the year by several music publications. Bowie’s collaboration on Heroes with both Brian Eno (synths) and Robert Fripp (guitar) served to make Heroes both a rock album and an art-pop experiment (a great example of this productive tension is the track “Blackout” which is ambient and dissonant yet funky with get-down beats and pop-hook guitars). Bowie released two singles, the title track “Heroes” which charted at #24 in the UK in ‘77 but did not chart in the US until after Bowie’s death in 2016 when it went to #11, and “Beauty and the Beast,” which hit #39 in the UK in early ‘78.

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The single “Sound and Vision” from Low reached #3 on the UK charts. The album itself reached #2 in the UK and #11 on the US Billboard chart. Its critical impact was lasting: Rolling Stone included it in its 500 greatest albums of all time and Pitchfork’s website places it at #1 in its top 100 albums of the 70′s.

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