Devo Freedom Of Choice by Evie Nagy

Finally, after all that waiting, The Future arrived in
1980. Ohio art-rockers Devo had plainly prepared
with their 1979 second LP Duty Now for the Future,
and now it was go time. Propelled by the new
decade's high-tech, free-market, pre-AIDS promise,
Freedom of Choice would rocket what Devo cofounder
Gerald Casale calls his "alternate universe,
hermetically sealed, alien band" into the arms of the
Earthlings and back to their home planet in one scenic trip.
Before an artistic and commercial decline that resulted in a 20-year gap
between Devo's last two studio records, Freedom of Choice made them
curious, insurgent superstars, vindicated but ultimately betrayed by the
birth of MTV. Through first-hand accounts and musical analysis set
against an examination of New Wave's emergence, this book explores
Devo's peak of success, when the band's hermetic seal cracked open to
let in mainstream attention, lots of cocaine and the occasional violent
Italian dwarf.
"Freedom of Choice was the end of Devo innocence - it turned out to be
the high point before the s***storm of a total cultural move to the
right, the advent of AIDS, and the press starting to figure Devo out and
thinking they had our number," says Casale. "It's where everything
changes."

160 pages, paperback.