Wednesday 27 June 2007

Q. Are We Not Men? A. We Are Devo.

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I saw Devo last night at Shepherd's Bush. They were looking a bit older and greyer (and a little fatter in a couple of cases) than they are in the above photo, but their playing was absolutely spot-on. Very entertaining and totally barmy.

Guitars used were a Steinberger bass (strung right-handed but played left-handed), an Ibanez Talman electric, and a couple of early G&L guitars that sounded fantastic. (I say early G&L because they had a simpler headstock design - without the little pointy bit, if you know what I mean).

There was another bizarre carved-up looking guitar that was used by Bob 1 on "Smart Patrol/Mr DNA" for a rather manic solo and then some mechanism was triggered to break all the strings. I didn't quite see how he did that.

Mark Mothersbaugh (the singer) also played guitar on "Satisfaction" - it was left-handed Strat (played right-handed) with effects pedals gaffer-taped to the body. Also, it seemed to have the 2 centre strings missing.

BTW, does anyone know what the strangely-shaped guitar in the above picture is? I'd love to know. (I don't mean the bass - that looks like a Gibson Ripper with a somewhat modified body!)

UPDATE: A little searching on the web has identified Bob Mothersbaugh's current favoured guitar as being the G&L SC-2, a student-level guitar with pro features designed by Leo Fender to be G&L's answer to the Fender Mustang. Judging by what I heard last night, I'd very much like to check out one of these, although they are not particularly common. Devo's Bob 1 was using two of these on stage last night - a hardtail for most of the set, and one with a tremolo on one song. Anyway, all this doesn't answer my question: What is the guitar in the above photo?

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Blue Potato Guitar has been identified! Thanks Nic.

2 comments:

  1. Bob used a 1967 La Baye 2x4 during "Mr. DNA". The bridges used on them could be bent back so far you could snap all the strings of if you tried.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ...as seen elsewhere on this blog. There's even a YouTube clip of Mr DNA somewhere in the archives. Try clicking on "Devo" in the labels under the above blog post.

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