ateolf | D-E-V-O in T-E-X-A-S

Now it's late in the afternoon and we're walking in downtown Austin to see Devo! We're a little early and not many people are waiting. At least at the side of the building we're on. Finally they let us come up to stand in another line to get in upstairs. While waiting and the bouncer guy's being a dick, I picked up some shirts: one for the Hardcore tour and one for Bob 2: 1952-2014. We got in and got a pretty good spot right by the stage, though off to the side (almost in front of Mark's synths). Devo were the only ones who played. The show was good. They took a chronological storytelling approach to the whole thing. They started off with the earlier material and the pretext they were playing in the basement (the stage set was made to resemble a basement). They opened with "Mechanical Man" which was awesome. Though they leaned towards the jokier stuff in this era. Their playing was a bit reserved and they seemed not terribly into it. I'm sure this was on purpose, while they were "in the basement" they were even sitting in chairs. But as time progressed they got more and more energetic. At one point a package arrived with their jumpsuits so they changed into them (the janitor coveralls from the period). They leaned towards the rockin' and more familiar stuff from Hardcore and they even cheated just a little bit when they played "Uncontrollable Urge" and "Gut Feeling." but it was allowable because, yeah, it was pretty awesome. The highlight song-wise was "Ono." It fuckin' ruled. During "Jocko Homo" Mark did some audience interaction with the mic and when he climbed off the stage, the first time he went over the barrier he crawled right on top of Mary Beth! It was awesome. She shrieked and ducked down. The first encore song was "U Got Me Bugged" which is my favorite from Hardcore, but since it's all synth it was a karaoke version with Mark singing over it as Booji Boy. It was a glaring omission that they didn't do "Uglatto," but it was pretty awesome all said and done. I think now I'd go see Devo even if they weren't touring for Hardcore, even if it was for some lame new album. I wouldn't travel as far, but no matter what, it'd be a damn fun show. Oh, some more random bits. Guy next to us changing into a jumpsuit before they played. During the banter when Devo first came on stage, they threw packs of defunct cigarette brands into the audience. Not sure what they really were that they threw, but it was entertaining and all.

Okay, we're gonna leave the venue and that experience and, since it's still very early, go do some stuff. We first went to this bar that's in this little offshoot area near downtown called The Blackheart. Then we went to get food at Kerbey Lane Cafe. We went to the original one that we'd been to before, but it had just closed. It's only open 24 hours some days. So we went to the one on Lamar way south. We had some awesome food. Maine Root on tap, damn good.

The next day in Austin! Wednesday to be exact. We start off with kolaches at Kolache Creations. We were actually trying to find this one Tacodeli location, but it didn't seem to exist and we ate at one back down on Lamar. Then to this liquor store for Mary Beth to find stuff. Oh crap, and on the way somewhere in there we stopped off at an H.E.B. It was pretty awesome. We snagged a bunch of soda and barbecue sauce. A whirlwind of running around doing cool stuff. Now we're back on the southern side to go to End of an Ear. It did not disappoint. Well, this cd is ending so I'll get into what I picked up in my next post. I'm SURE the suspense is killing you.