Q: Are we not men?
Posted on November 30, 2006
Filed Under music, travel | Comments
A: We are DEVO. D-E-V-O
I am turning into a bad traveller.
I cannot seem to sleep in strange beds. In NYC right now. Woke up at about 3:30am EST (which is 1:30am PST, still my biological time.)
But tonight I am happy. Turned on the TV… Not just the TV, but the very very nice 40″ HDTV (which is a Samsung model that appears close to the LTN-406W for those that care)… And on HD-NET saw this concert: Devo and the yeah yeah yeahs in Central Park on July 22 2004.
We used to love Devo. But I haven’t intentionally listened to Devo in nearly 20 years. It was fun watching myself sing along with every word.
Being up late watching Devo reminded me of the first time I saw the Beautiful World video, probably on Night Flight. From their Wikipedia entry “Devo created and directed many of their own videos, and the band has cited the video for the song “Beautiful World” as their favorite example of their video work.”
The video works at an entirely different level than the “song.” Over the course of a few minutes you see the sweet, sacharine images of our “beautiful world” unraveling into perverse carny devo funkiness… And only in the final moments do they deliver the punchline: “It’s a beautiful world… (for you… BUT NOT FOR ME!)” Per the comments on YouTube: “devastatingly poignant irony that probably changed a few lives.”
Both the yeah yeah yeahs and Devo were just so damn good. I’m glad I can’t sleep.
Comments
8 Responses to “Q: Are we not men?”
Leave a Reply
right on bradley - devo rules
i saw them at a small venue in ohio in the late 70’s prior their mass popularity and have loved them ever since…
hey - if you’re still in nyc tomorrow ping me if you want to have lunch at the tower…
Isn’t this video copyrighted? Just pointing it out because in addition to streaming cools videos, it might be worthwhile to have a discussion about what the rules are (you have to get permission from performers and license holders) and whether they are working in today’s brave new digital world…. on a different topic, I’d like to continue a conversation we started at the beginning of this year about searching information that is stored in people’s heads as opposed to on Web sites. I’ve already put in a request with Yahoo pr.
I dunno if the video is copyrighted… That query would best be lodged with the service that is hosting it and enabling / encouraging its sharing, i.e. youtube.com recently acquired by Google.
Actually, newspapers have been advised not to stream photos that are posted on Flickr –even when the photographers/copyright owners have given explicit permission. Apparently, you don’t necessarily get off the hook just because another service is hosting the material. It seems this gets even more dicey with YouTube. Also, everything is copyrighted the moment it’s created in a fixed format. So the video would definitely be copyrighted and the performers would also have a performance copyright, the sheet music would be copyrighted, etc.
In that case, the YouTube ecosystem is in big trouble!
On a more serious note, I am utterly confident that YouTube stands between me and the copyright owner. Their entire badge model is based on this. It would be absurd for an IP owner to pursue the umpteen sites that have badged content when they could issue a single takedown notice to the provider who is actually hosting the bits.
And by way of precedent, there are literally millions of YouTube badges around the ‘net. Sue me!
When a problem comes along.
You must whip it.
Before the cream sits out too long.
You must whip it.
When something’s going wrong.
You must whip it.
now whip it.
into shape.
shape it up.
get straight.
go forward.
move ahead.
try to detect it.
it’s not too late.
to whip it.
whip it good.
“Beautiful World” showed up first out our way on Videowest, along with Commander Cody, The Residents, and much other wierd stuff. Dunno about Night Flight; we didn’t have cable.
DEVO was my back-up choice for Hack Day if Beck couldn’t come … I still think they’d be awesome.