I can hardly contain the excitement!
I heard something about this a while ago on boingboing, and I have only just heard the songs. Devo 2.0 is a project from the warped minds of Devo and Disney, where some kids cover classic tracks by the 70’s/80’s electronic pop band.
I thought, you know, “this is going to be horrible”, and that was a fair assumption, but most of the songs I have heard are really well recorded and produced, and reasonably faithfull reproductions of the originals - only with a kinda snotty teenage Gene Simmons’ “Rock School” vibe (Did anyone see that?).
Listening to the tracks (without the vocals) it makes me wonder whether it’s simply new vocals layed over the original recordings (With the exception of “Through Being Cool” - which has this strange reverse synth…) - but I can’t fault them for that. It’s testamant to the fact that Mark Mothersbaugh wrote some fantastic, timeless, pop songs - and so long as I don’t hear teenage girls on the bus with “Whip It” ring tones then I think it’s the best thing to happen to pop music in the last ten years.
You can hear Devo 2.0’s versions of such classics as “Through Being Cool”, “Freedom Of Choice”, “That’s Good” and, er, “Boy You Want”, as well as others, at disney.go.com.
PS. Whilst I’m on the subject of Devo, you can now get the official Devo action figure set, complete with yellow boiler suit, five young looking interchangable heads and an energy dome. They are $11.99 and you can get them here.
