Day and Night Digital | Irish Independent

Last month at the music industry showcase to beat ‘em all South by Southwest in Austin Texas, legendary new wave band Devo appeared during the interactive part of the festival in a panel cheekily-entitled “Devo, the Internet and You”.

During the 90-minute talk, the band along with a label and advertising reps outlined their plans to penetrate every aspect of our tech-savvy pop culture over the next year. Of course, being Devo, everything was delivered with a healthy dose of japery. Rubbish Powerpoint slides, “colour studies” and live focus groups run by a Scandinavian ad man called Jacob with his tongue firmly in his cheek. There were venn diagrams, hilarious poll questions - “What color best describes vomit?”, cheeky infographics and use of bullshit bingo-friendly words like “synergy” featured heavily.

Amongst the laughs though, were some genuine ideas about how to market a band in modern times. “Why can’t you market a band like you would market Miller Lite?” Devo bass player Casale asked. The band known for their funny red hats (or “energy domes”) revealed they were thinking of changing the colour of the hats to blue as a recent experiment at a Winter Olympics gig suggested the audience preferred them.

Now, the band are putting their crowd-sourcing ideas into global practice beyond a conference room by announcing the Devo Song Study which launched at their website last week.

With the song study, the band and their label Warner Brothers aim “to collect data regarding which of our current roster of recorded material is most appealing to you, the general public.” In other words, the band have posted clips of 16 songs on the site and are asking fans to choose their favourite 12.

It’s the perfect time for an ’80s band such as Devo to take advantage of an uncertain music industry and the social merits of the internet. Their new songs like ‘Fresh’ and ‘Don’t Shoot! I’m a Man!’ sound pretty vital and this process of re-invention (sorry devolution), could see them gain new fans. Especially, if that fan has participated in the song study and feels involved in the outcome of the album, the title of which is also to be decided by a focus group of course.