Devo's co-founder now excited by future

For a man best known for his belief that mankind is devolving (well, that and wearing a flower pot on his head), Mark Mothersbaugh sure sounds optimistic.

"Kids have the ability to have very sophisticated tastes. They can hear a lot of music in a short amount of time," Mothersbaugh says by telephone from his "green, circular studio" in Hollywood, Calif.

"I'd love to be 20 right now," he continues. "YouTube is so much more than what I ever imagined MTV could have been, never mind what it became. I love what's happening. (The Internet has) changed everything. It's changed how musicians write music. It's changed how music sounds. It's such an exciting time."

It's also an exciting time to be Devo, the band Mothersbaugh formed with Gerald Casale at Ohio's Kent State University.

Devo's first four albums have been remastered and reissued digitally and on CD with bonus tracks, as well as on colored vinyl. The reissues helped build anticipation for "Something For Everybody," the first Devo album in 20 years and its first on Warner Bros. since 1984's "Shout."

Why return to the label Mothersbaugh says didn't get the band even when it had a hit single in 1980 with "Whip It"?

"They offered us marketing money," Mothersbaugh replies. The alternative, he says, was "putting (the album) out on our website and maybe 5,000 people will ever hear that we have a new album out."

Devo (which also includes Bob Casale, Bob Mothersbaugh and new drummer Josh Freese) used the money to hire an advertising agency, Mother (campaigns for Stella Artois, Target and many others), to handle the album utilizing focus group to determine the songs and the album's art work.

Devo submitted 20 songs, of which the focus group chose 12.

Mothersbaugh sees the unusual method as being in the tradition of one of his heroes, Andy Warhol.

"I think he would find it amusing," Mothersbaugh says. "He was very adept at blurring the line between commercial and fine art."

It's a logical step for a band that 30 years ago used its album's inner sleeves to hawk T-shirts and "energy domes," the upturned planters the band wore as head gear on the cover of 1980's "Freedom of Choice."

But if there's a strain of whimsy in Devo, the band is rooted in tragedy.

"Gerry and I started collaborating in 1970 as students at Kent State," Mothersbaugh says. Although primarily working in visual arts, both were musicians as well.

"I was in an experimental, electronic prog-rock band and Gerry was in a blues band," Mothersbaugh says. "We joked that we were 'The Flintstones' meets 'The Jetsons.'"

Music became their focus after four students were shot and killed during a protest against the Vietnam War in May 1970. The campus shut down, keeping Casale and Mothersbaugh out of their artist's studios, so they turned to music.

"Having been there for the shootings made us feel like rebellion was obsolete," Mothersbaugh says. "You couldn't change things that way. So we thought about who does change things and we started paying attention to Madison Avenue."

The band's theory of things falling apart confused fans who liked the catchy tunes and quirky image, while its focus on visuals confused pre-MTV critics. Mothersbaugh recalls a concert review that said, "If I wanted to play a video game, I'd go to an arcade."

Devo suffered the fate of many ahead-of-the-curve bands, as bands who took its media-savvy lessons to heart bumped it from the charts.

The band released albums in 1988 and 1990 and toured occasionally but the members had moved on to other careers. Casale directed music videos and commercials, while Mothersbaugh movies and TV shows such as "Pee-Wee's Playhouse" and "Rugrats."

He's still working with children's projects. He's on deadline to finish a song for The Muppets before hitting the road with Devo. He's also a regular on Nick Jr. preschool show "Yo Gabba Gabba," on which he shows viewers how to draw elephants and such.

He jokes that he took the "Yo Gabba Gabba" part to "freak out" his two adopted daughters, now 8 and 5.

As if they weren't confused enough. The older girl first heard Devo on "Devo 2.0," an album of Devo songs sung by children released by Disney in 2006.

"The first time she saw Devo play, she asked me, 'Why were you playing all those little kids' songs?'" Mothersbaugh recalls. "I said, 'I'm Devo 1.0.'"