Devo Created At Diamond Dogs Show

Aladdin Kabuki spots a bit of Devo in the crowd, summer 1974.

Halloween Jack is a real cool cat...

Today's Telegraph newspaper in the UK has a great piece entitled The Gig of a Lifetime, by Jerry Casale of Devo, on David Bowie's show at the Public Auditorium, Cleveland, Ohio, in 1974...now it's almost yesterday's news, I think it's OK to run it here in it's entirety. Over to Jerry...

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The gig was part of David Bowie's Diamond Dogs tour. I'd never seen anything as spectacular before. The tour was choreographed by Toni Basil, and the stage was designed by a New York theatre company. The result was hypnotic, weird and fantastic.

At the start, an 8ft diamond descended to the floor of the stage. The front opened forward and Bowie jumped out wearing a Kabuki outfit,

(Blammo note: Well, a Kabuki stick mask at least) pulling dance moves reminiscent of Broadway.

I lost count of the number of set changes and dance routines. It was seamless - an incredible fusion of rock music energy, theatrics and disturbing assexual innuendos.

The show solidified right then and there what I wanted to do with Devo. We'd spent way too much time smoking pot talking about ideas and doing nothing about it. Here was someone who'd taken the time to do it for real.

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You can read the online piece over at the Telegraph site, if not only to view the wonderful, if irrelevant, Ziggy shot they've used to illustrate the piece.

Thanx to BowieNetter, dukebox, for the pointer.