Devo's Whip It is a New Wave classic

Devo : Whip It

[Purchase]

On August 6, 1980 Devo released their most successful single, the US#14/UK#51 "Whip It". While the title might suggest masturbation or S+M, Jerry Casale says he wrote the lyrics as a Dale Carnegie style pep talk for President Jimmy Carter. Casale tells Evie Nagy, author of the 331/3 series book on Devo's Freedom of Choice:

We were afraid the Republicans were going to get in there [in 1980], and they sounded very nasty all the time.They were running this guy, Ronald Reagan, that seemed like a total--he seemed like he didn't even had a brain. We were like, "how could that be our president? That's impossible, that they choose him to run for president". So we were writing this music that was like "You can do it, Mr President". And then, of course, we were doing lots of interview back then, and we'd have to get up at seven so we could go be on a morning talk show while people are driving to work. And we'd be sitting in the other room waiting to go in and talk to the disc jokey, and he's be on the air, going, "You know, I whipped it just the other day, haw haw haw haw" and we're like "What an asshole". We felt very misunderstood. And then it just gave us more reasons to be crabby."

When it came time to do the video, Devo went full board on the S+M theme. Warners provided $15,000. Set on a dude ranch, Mark Mothersbaugh whips a hat, cigarette and finally the clothes off a striking woman as cowboys and girls cheer. The woman, Shaylah Spitz-Kalmus was a 20 year old dancer who worked as a cashier at a bakery in Venice, California. She is still recognized as the woman in "Whip It".

The non LP B-side, "Turnaround" achieved fame ten years after the single's release when Nirvana covered in on John Peel's BBC radio show. 

CREEM Magazine's Top 15 Singles of 1980

1. Devo- Whip It 

 2. Queen- Another One Bites The Dust 

 3. AC/DC- You Shook Me All Night Long 

 4. Bruce Springsteen- Hungry Heart 

 5. Rolling Stones- She's So Cold 

 6. Clash- Train In Vain 

 7. Vapors- Turning Japanese 

 8. Rolling Stones- Emotional Rescue 

 9. David Bowie- Ashes To Ashes 

 10. B-52's- Private Idaho 

 11. Blondie- Call Me 

 12. Pretenders- Brass In Pocket 

 13. Clash- London Calling 

 14. Pete Townshend- Rough Boys 

 15. Van Halen- And The Cradle Will Rock

The Portland punk band that invented the Seattle Sound

The Wipers : Mystery

[Purchase]

In January of 1980 The Wipers released their debut album Is This Real?. Kurt Cobain wasn't the first dirty blond super sensitive punk rock guitar hero the Northwest produced. Ten years earlier, Greg Sage and the band he named after his window washing job broke out of the Portland scene, forming the transition between the garage rock idols of the 60's (The Sonics, Wailers, Raiders, Kingsmen) and the early grunge rock heroes that would culminate with Nirvana. In fact, Nirvana would cover two songs from Is This Real?, "Return of the Rat" and "D-7" and this album would be one of three by the Wipers to make Kurt Cobain's list of 50 favorite albums.

You can say the Seattle sound actually came from Portland.

Is This Real? is full of the buzzsaw-heavy guitar riffs and adolescent anxiety that would be earmarks of the grunge scene. There are even times when the guitar drops out and the bass dominates the proceedings. And Gage gets repetitive, whining "You don't care about it /You don't care about it /You don't care about it /You don't care about it" .

The album wasn't completely ignored despite its origins in the top left hand corner of the United States. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau gives Is This Real? a B+, writing 

Three guys from Portland (Oregon, but it might just as well be Maine) who caught on to punk unfashionably late and for that reason sound like they're still discovering something. Which hardly makes them unique--there are similar bands in dozens if not hundreds of American cities, many of whom send me records. What distinguishes this one is Greg Sage's hard-edged vocals--detached but never silly, passionate but never overwrought--and economical one-hook construction.

Sage remembers the more negative reviews:

 "Is This Real?, that was really poorly received because we weren't considered punk enough and we didn't have black leather coats with chains and the Clash painted on the back. We were very uncool at that time, but 20 years later it's considered kind of the pinnacle of that time," he told Phoenix New Times in 2000.

Sage would have an entirely different rhythm section playing on the follow-up, Youth Of America. After eight European tours and four tours of America promoting a total of ten albums, Sage now lives in Phoenix where he is  producing music at Zeno Recording Sound, his own 24-track studio. 

My Top Ten By Courtney Love

  Courtney Love made a grunge heavy list of her top ten favorite albums for Spin Magazine's Alternate Record Guide, published in 1995, a year after her husband's suicide. That's the same year Hole's second album, Live Through This, went platinum and Barbara Walters named Love one of the year's 10 Most Fascinating People. There are two Nirvana albums, but equally interesting is the Echo and the Bunnymen album which I can imagine her listening to on a walkman as she travelled around Ireland and England in 1982.

1. Echo and the Bunnymen : Heaven Up Here

2. Nirvana : Nevermind

3. Gun Club : Fire of Love

4. Pixies : Surfer Rosa

5. Mudhoney : Superfuzz Bigmuff EP

6. Leonard Cohen : Songs From a Room

7. P J Harvey : Dry

8. Husker Du : New Day Rising

9. Nirvana: In Utero

10. Nine Inch Nails : The Downward Spiral

Fun fact : Courtney played "The Bride" in a 1988 Ramones video for "I Wanna Be Sedated".