Friday, 26 November 2010

Astonishing last minute news


In the scramble to get all the resources ready for the app, I almost forgot that I had asked Mark Mothersbaugh (there he is in the picture above, backstage at Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown back in 2007, with your author) of Devo to let me use some of his music. I left it so late to ask, that I assumed I wouldn't be able to use it. And then late one night I got an email from Michael Pilmer, Mothersbaugh's archivist, assistant and general Devo Obssesso, with the news that Mark Mothersbaugh had given me permission to use the tune Stop Barking You Twit in the app. The track appears on the enormously limited edition six-disc set of home organ improvisations The Most Powerful Healing Muzik In The World, which was only available for purchase at Mark's art shows. It just so happens that I curated a show in 2006, and so I snagged a set back then. While I was working on the app, this tune popped up while the iPod was on shuffle, and I thought it be just right for the credit pages. So I dropped a line to Mr Pilmer, and the answer came back a few days later. To say I am happy about it is an understatement. Devo are perhaps the most important influence on my thinking and aesthetic. I first heard them in 1978, before their first album was released, and I went to see them at the Hammersmith Odeon in December of that year. I was very young, but somehow I assimilated their meaning, and became utterly obsessed by them. I would point the casually interested towards their cover version of the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction as a fair start point. For the more 2010 orientated, I would check out their new album (their first new album in 20 years) Something For Everybody, and its very funny marketing films that accompanied its release.

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