ON THIS DAY:: 2nd Album Release || DEVO : FREEDOM OF CHOICE

 ARE WE NOT MEN?

 WE ARE DEVO!

Devo second album

On this date in 1980, DEVO released their third studio album FREEDOM OF CHOICE, (16th May, 1980).

NOTE: The video here is DEVO performing to a playback of GIRL YOU WANT on French TV in 1980.

Sex in DEVO’s third studio album FREEDOM OF CHOICE was disguised and euphemised, but only very thinly. In many ways, this was the perfect Devo album — for, if dealing with humanity as a collection of biological blobs, this was a mechanical soundtrack for a mechanical pursuit.

Musically, the album was more of a whole than previously, and stripped of the quirky spikiness which characterised Q: Are We Not Men? Packed with eminently danceable rhythms and eminently memorable melodies, FOC found Devo eschewing lead-guitar breaks for bursts of punctuative rhythm guitar.

On the surface, ‘Freedom of choice’ looked to be a song celebrating personal freedom. But no. This was Devo fearful of man’s regression to a preliterate society, back to the herd.

"We loved that song very much when we were creating it,” said Jerry Casale in 2003.

“It was about how people were throwing away their freedom of choice into meaningless choices like between Pepsi and Coke, or pink fur shoes or blue suede shoes. Just mindless consumerism. They'd rather not be free, they'd rather be told what to do, because that's what appeared to us was the case, especially in the Reagan years. That was a very Devo position: Freedom of choice is what you've got, freedom from choice is what you want.”

The video here is single GIRL U WANT, toying with the advertising campaigns that depict must-have buys, framed by the words ‘WANT IT’ with the question mark deliberately left out.

FROM: Decade Club 77-87 FACEBOOK

ON THIS DAY IN MUSIC

June 30th

1966 - The Beatles

The Beatles played the first of three concerts at the Nippon Budokan Hall, Japan. The concert was filmed with The Beatles wearing black suits. The following day's first performance was also filmed; with The Beatles wearing white suits. There was a strict police presence with 3,000 police observing each concert played in front of 10,000 fans.

1973 - George Harrison

George Harrison knocked Paul McCartney from the top of the US singles chart with 'Give Me Love, Give Me Peace On Earth'. His second US No.1, a No.8 hit in the UK was the opening track on his 1973 album Living in the Material World.

1976 - Neil Diamond

Police raided the home of Neil Diamond searching for drugs, they found less than one ounce of marijuana.

1976 - Adam Ant

Stuart Goddard, (Adam Ant), placed the following ad in the classified section of the Melody Maker, 'Beat on a bass, with the B-Sides.' Andy Warren answered the ad and the pair went on to form Adam and The Ants.

1979 - Tubeway Army

Tubeway Army started a four-week run at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Are 'Friends' Electric'. The song by Gary Numan was the first electronic/synthesizer-based record to become a hit in the post-punk era.

 Bought this when it came out and still like it's atmosphere . . . 

1984 - Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen's 'Dancing In The Dark' peaked at No.2 on the US chart, the first of six singles from his seventh studio album Born In The U.S.A. which all hit the US Top 10. The video was shot at the Saint Paul Civic Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and shows Springsteen pulling a young Courteney Cox from the audience to dance along with him on the stage.

1995 - Phyllis Hyman

American soul singer Phyllis Hyman committed suicide by overdosing on pentobarbital and secobarbital in her New York City apartment aged 45. She was found hours before she was scheduled to perform at the Apollo Theatre, in New York.

Phyllis' note read "I'm tired. I'm tired. Those of you that I love know who you are. May God bless you"

2001 - Lady Marmalade

Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya and Pink were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Lady Marmalade.' A hit for LaBelle in 1975; then it was at No 1 in 1998 for All Saints. This version was from the Baz Luhrmann film Moulin Rouge.

2001 - Al Jardine

Beach Boys member Al Jardine went to court in a bid to sue his former band mates, claiming he had been frozen out of the Beach Boys. The $4 million (£2.35 million) suit was filed against Mike Love, Brian Wilson, the Carl Wilson Trust and Brother Records Incorporated in a New York Superior Court. In 1998 a US judge temporarily barred Jardine from performing under the name Beach Boys Family And Friends after representations from Mike Love and Brother Records. Jardine lost the case in 2003. Not so much 'fun, fun. fun,' now eh? 'Not since Daddy took the T-Bird away' . . . . . . . 

2001 - Chet Atkins

American guitarist and producer Chet Atkins died in Nashville aged 77. Recorded over 100 albums during his career, produced records for Perry Como, Elvis Presley, Don Gibson, Jim Reeves and Waylon Jennings. He was a major influence on  George Harrison and Mark Knopler.

2004 - Dave Davies

Kinks founder member Dave Davies was left paralysed on the right-hand side of his body after suffering a stroke. The 57-year-old guitarist and brother of fellow Kinks star Ray Davies had been promoting his solo material when he collapsed.

2007 - R.E.M.

R.E.M. played a five-night series of shows at Dublin's Olympia Theatre. Dubbed ‘working rehearsals’ by the band, many songs from their forthcoming album ‘Accelerate’ were debuted, with many of them still as works in progress.

2014 - Ed Sheeran

Ed Sheeran's second album X became the fastest-selling UK album of the year so far after selling 182,000 copies in its first week, 14,000 more than Coldplay managed with Ghost Stories which was released in May.

Play someone's music to death and boy can we be fickle! I still like him!

BIRTHDAYS

1967 - Peter Camell

The La's in 1990 - Camell second from the left

Peter James Camell, guitarist with Liverpool group The La's, who scored the 1990 UK No.13 single 'There She Goes'. Camell was part of the band at it's most stable and played guitar on the ubiquitous hit (The La's at one time or anther having featured 26 seperate individuals! sic)  Largely thought to be originally a love song to a woman the story quickly spread it was a song about heroin. Awright La!? Except that later Lee Mayers the writer and singer admits to trying heroin in 1990. The song therefore predated his experience as it was originally released in 1988. As Rolling Stone commented 

"Whether about heroin or just unrequited love, the La's single "There She Goes" off their self-titled debut has endured as a founding piece of Britpop's foundation."

1936 - Dave Van Ronk

Born on this day, American folk singer Dave Van Ronk who was a central figure in the American folk music revival and New York City's Greenwich Village scene in the Sixties, he was nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street". Bob Dylan recorded Van Ronk's arrangement of the traditional song ‘House of the Rising Sun’ on his first album, which The Animals turned into a No.1 UK single in 1964, helping inaugurate the folk-rock movement. The biography of Van Ronk 'THe Mayor of MacDougall Street' is used largely as the direct inspiration for the film Inside Llewyn Davis 

Van Tonk died on 10 February 2002 aged 65.

ON THIS DAY IN MUSIC

1968 - Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd released their second album A Saucerful Of Secrets in the UK. It is both the last Pink Floyd album on which Syd Barrett would appear and the only studio album to which all five band members contributed. The album sleeve was designed by Hipgnosis, a new company formed by the band's friends Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey 'Po' Powell, who were paid £110 for their efforts.

1968 - The Beatles

Working at Abbey Road studios The Beatles recorded ‘Good Night’, John Lennon’s lullaby for his 5-year-old son Julian with Ringo singing the lead vocal. The track appeared on The White Album.

1969 - The Bath Festival of Blues

Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, The Nice, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Ten Years After, Taste, The Liverpool Scene and Chicken Shack all appeared at The Bath Festival of Blues in England, with DJ John Peel. Tickets cost 18/6. The festival proved very popular, selling out all 30,000 tickets in the first week, surprising both the townsfolk and the promoters. The only major problem occurred when the Nice's use of bagpipers caused the stage to collapse.

1975 - Wings

Wings went to No.1 on the UK chart with their fourth album 'Venus And Mars'. The follow up to Band On The Run featured the US No.1 single 'Listen What The Man Said'.

1975 - Tim Buckley

American singer songwriter Tim Buckley completed the last show of a tour in Dallas, Texas, playing to a sold-out crowd of 1,800 people. This was Buckley's last ever show, he died the following day of a heroin and morphine overdose aged 28.

1980 - Paul McCartney

The Paul McCartney single 'Coming Up' became one of the few 'live' recordings to reach the top of Billboard's Hot 100. American disc jockeys preferred it to the studio version on the flip side of the record.

1997 - Pink Floyd

The Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of The Moon spent its 1056th week on the US album chart. It was rumoured at the time that if the album was played while watching The Wizard of Oz movie, and started exactly when the MGM lion roared the third time during the movie's intro, very interesting connections could be made between the two. The first album by the Floyd I openly avoided, my brother bought it who thought it wonderful, I thought it was horribly clichéd and cloying with obvious schoolboy devices and totally beneath them . . . . . . . . only surpassed by The Wall. Truly awful!

1997 - Radiohead

Radiohead went to No.1 on the UK album chart with their third album OK Computer. The British groups first self-produced album later appeared in many critics' lists and listener polls for best album of the year and also won a Grammy for Best Alternative Music Performance.

2016 - Scotty Moore

Scotty Moore, Elvis Presley's longtime guitarist died at his home in Nashville, aged 84. Moore had been in poor health in recent months. He formed the Starlite Wrangers with bassist Bill Black and in 1954, Sun Records impresario Sam Phillips paired Moore with a teenaged Elvis Presley. Together, along with Black, they recorded Presley's first single, 'That's All Right (Mama).' The recording session was only meant to be an audition; instead, the trio made music history.

Scotty with Eric . . . . . . 

BIRTHDAY

1965 - Saul Davis

Saul Davis, guitar, violin, from English rock band James who scored the 1991 UK No.2 single 'Sit Down' and the hits 'Laid' and 'Come Home'.