A Conversation with Devo’s Gerald Casale – HuffPost 5.23.11

Mike Ragogna: Gerald, how are you?

Gerald Casale: I’m great, thanks for having me.

MR: My pleasure. Can we discuss your new video “What We Do,” which was filmed in a 360 degree style?

GC: Well, in the past, we were always known for being first adapters and technological junkies, but that kind of leveled off because technology caught up with Devo and became so expensive that only bands like U2 got the opportunities to utilize those resources. But this time around, we came back with our usual style, and it was exciting for me as a director to be able to use this technology. It’s nine cameras mounted in a circle pointed outward, they shoot in sync, and a computer stitches the images together creating a 360 degree uninterrupted band of visual information, and that’s only the beginning. You, the user, can then use your cursor or mouse to navigate the video in real time. You are the editor, there are no predetermined edits. We let you go where you want–you can go left and right and zoom in and out. Knowing that that was how the video was being shot, what I did was stage 10 events in a circle–almost like hours on a clock–of people doing things that we all do, and they’re all doing it to the beat for the full length of the song. So, if you want to see the girl in her bra and panties in the nine o’clock position, you won’t see the guy taking off his boxer shorts in the other position. You have to navigate the space over and over because whatever you choose to look at causes you to miss something else since it’s all happening in real time during the song.

MR: So, it’s like a scavenger hunt for plots and people can just navigate their way through it?

GC: Yeah. There’s a really great male model and a female model on opposite sides of the room taking off and putting on things as fast as they can and their private parts are masked by flat screen videos that are showing computer graphics that we use live on stage behind us. Then there’s the boogie boy with two girls in maids outfits painting his nipples. There are two macho arm wrestlers competing against each other with a referee. Also, an overweight girl eating Jell-O as fast as she can…all kinds of things.

MR: What was it like assembling all the video footage?

GC: The truth is nothing was edited together. We had to have all of those people doing that in real time and all of them had to do it right for three minutes. If anybody screwed up, the take was no good. We did about 12 takes. The whole day was just these actors doing what they do over and over, just like the song talks about, and we finally got a take where no one made mistakes and that’s the one we used. It wasn’t easy.

MR: Was it the band that scripted this, or was it you?

GC: It was me, and I worked with a great art director whose graphics were all over that set. Behind everyone, there are these huge graphics made by a guy named Kii Arens, he even helped with the casting. Then, Jason Trucco, who owns the nine camera system who is a technical genius sort of acted as our director of photography. I worked with those two and staged all of this with the actors over and over, then we just kinda went for it.

MR: Though 360 has been used, is this the first time this kind of video has been done?

GC: I think so. I am pretty sure someone had used the 360 degree camera system, but until now, I don’t think anyone used them in a way that fully exploited the possibilities of it. So, really, the fact that they used it at all is sort of arbitrary. I thought that staging it in the round and making the entire thing real time was a way to bring out the potential of this system because nothing else would do that, and then you get to decide what to look at rather than having an edit to watch.

MR: Let’s talk about some of your other videos for those who may not know about some of your other directing endeavors. You’ve directed for The Cars, Rush, A Perfect Circle, Foo Fighters, Soundgarden, and Silverchair. Do you feel that each of these artists brought something new to the table?

GC: Oh, yeah. You know, it’s really an interesting problem to be a director for someone else’s songs after you’ve done your own songs because you’re not the primary creator anymore. You’re trying to solve a problem, you’re attempting to help a band do what you’ve already done many times for yourself. So, you have to mess with their mentality, their group of people, their manager, their lead singer and his girlfriend, whatever, and find what it is that’s great about them and bring it out. Each time, it’s a brand new world that you’re stepping into, and I have to say that the most fun people to work for were Soundgarden and A Perfect Circle because they are very much into their videos, they’re very visually oriented, and they’re trusting. They let the director go with it. That’s always a good thing. When people approach the process with a lot of trepidation and paranoia, you’re going down the rabbit hole.

MR: Are you the brains behind all of the visual aspects of Devo?

GC: Yeah, I directed the videos and staged the shows and conceptualized the costumes and everything. Then, I collaborated with Mark on all of the graphics, posters, and record and CD covers.

MR: That’s great, and it’s amazing to me to see that after all these years, you guys have no only retained your musical style, but you’ve also retained your sense of humor and your prowess as performers and visionaries.

GC: Well, we still have the energy. Sometime when people make an album after years of being off the grid, you wish they hadn’t because it sounds really boring and you always know when you’re listening to the new material because they sound half asleep, and I don’t think we had any less energy on this album than we did on Freedom Of Choice. Unfortunately, this record didn’t get a lot of airplay, which is a typical problem for so many bands today because the radio can be so narrow. But when we play live, the crowds can’t really tell which songs are the new ones. We mix up our set and they think the new songs are just songs from our legacy era. It’s great. I wouldn’t have wanted to put out a record now that didn’t have the Devo spirit.

MR: Can you tell us about the 5-track, digital EP of “What We Do” called The Electro-Devo Remix Cornucopia?

GC: It’s great. A DJ by the name of The Static Revenger did a great dump mix of “What We Do.” Then, we held a contest through Beatport and we chose a couple of people’s remixes of our stuff out of about 100 entries, and the remixes are all on there. Carlos Chaivez of the Mexican band Kinky and who is also a remix artist did a mix that’s on there. So, there are four different versions plus the single version on there, and soon, we will be releasing a version in Spanish with the help of Carlos who taught us the song in Spanish.

MR: Jerry, this may be a bit out of left field, and if you’re a Devo fan you already know this, but you were attending Kent State University at the same time as the shootings and were personally involved on the scene, is that right?

GC: I was in the middle of it. On May 4, 1970, students that were anti-war or just activists in general gathered on the commons at noon, which was a common thing to do. That was the place that everyone gathered if there was a protest. This time, we were gathering because Nixon extended the Vietnam Camp into Cambodia by bombing Cambodia over the previous weekend and May 4th was a Monday, the day that everyone came back to school. Of course, we felt that that was an affront to the Constitution. He hadn’t done that with an Act of Congress, he did it unilaterally. Back then, the students knew the law, they knew how America was formed, they knew the Constitution, they knew the Bill of Rights and the branches of government, and how it was supposed to work. So, they were pissed off.

We all gathered and started a peaceful protest, and there were speakers and everything. Suddenly, the National Guard showed up because the governor had gotten wind of the protest, so he sent the National Guard to campus. Then, they surrounded us and started shooting tear gas at us, and, of course, we ran and people chanted back at them and gave them the finger. Suddenly, we looked back and they had stopped chasing us and the first row of officers knelt while the second row stood and they aimed their rifles at us. We thought it was a game, we thought they were trying to scare us, and then they shot. They shot 30 rounds straight into the crowd like a duck shoot. Random. They killed four students and wounded nine others. Two of the students who were murdered were friends of mine–Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause. That day completely changed me. I was more in sync with the popular culture. I was a peacenik and a “live and let live” kind of guy, and that day made me snap. Seeing true violence and people getting shot and also seeing the aftermath and how the right-wing media spun the event to make it seem like the students instigated the entire thing changed me.

Seventy percent of the nation thought that the students deserved to be shot and stood by the National Guard’s actions because all of the information they received was controlled. It made me realize that whoever is telling the story and how they tell it determines the way that it’s perceived in history. And today, it’s how they spin historical events. That’s why we have these 24-hour news cycles on cable stations full of so much disinformation designed to manipulate a gullible public with sound bites and twisted facts, so much so, that smart comics like Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and on down the line have begun noting it and making fun of it. It’s shameless. (laughs) Some networks don’t even attempt to maintain any objectivity in their reporting. It reminds me of a new kind of high tech version of McCarthyism in the ’50s.

MR: Seeing how the skewed reporting by the media affects the nation, how do you think we survived the Bush Administration?

GC: Well, you know, I don’t think we really survived all that well. America is now a sort of invalid. I really think he did a job on us. After he was done, America resembled a pug fighter who had been beat up for 12 rounds. (laughs) We’re reeling from the effects of a diminished presidency and a public who was as gullible as before just doesn’t know what to believe at all. When you get people so traumatized that they don’t even know when to believe things and if they are true, you have a public that is really easy to manipulate. The one half of one half of one percent that own 96% of our wealth just really have to go for it–you know, feed at the trough. There were no raids and protests in the streets because we no longer have a nation that remembers where our moral compass used to point. In other words, to be pissed off about the way things are, you have to first have an idea about how things should be. You have to have a sense that there is justice. But if you eliminate that, there’s no compass left, and I think that’s where we are. People are just so beaten down that they’re passive. That’s where I think we are. And de-evolution is real, don’t you think? If someone showed you in 1980 a picture of 2011 you wouldn’t have believed it. You would have thought it was a really bad cheap sci-Fi movie of a dystopia and that we couldn’t possibly be this dumb. (laughs)

MR: One last question. Do you have any advice for new artists?

GC: Uh, yeah. Wear some “No Rear Entry” shorts because you gotta get ready for the way the corporate world works. (laughs)

MR: (laughs) So true. So, where can folks watch your 360 degree, interactive video for “What We Do.”?

GC: They can find the video at mashable.com because iTunes and Youtube don’t show the interactive version.

MR: Thank you, once again for your time and congrats on the new video approach.

GC: Thanks Mike.

Transcribed by Evan Tyrone Martin