The intergalactic anomaly known as Devo is due to land at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach on Monday, June 30. It won’t be the first time the band has stormed the shores of San Diego. If you ever get a chance to check out the documentary Urgh! A Music War, you can enjoy a clip of the band playing their classic tune “Uncontrollable Urge” at the now defunct California Theatre. The film was released in 1982, while the footage was shot in 1980.

Devo mainstay Gerald Casale spoke to the Reader via phone about the band’s history with San Diego and southern California.

“(San Diego) was always a city we liked playing. We had a great reaction from the surf-punk crowd all the time, especially after we used some of the skateboarders in the “Freedom of Choice” video who went on to become really famous guys. We had a real following and the crowd was real rabid and exciting.

“[San Diego] is where we met Timothy Leary. We played a show in San Diego and somebody took us over to a radio station and they said, ‘Timothy Leary wants to interview you.’ He was there, and we struck up a friendship. He lived in Los Angeles, he was like 20 minutes from where I lived and about 5 minutes from where Mark [Mothersbaugh, Devo vocalist] lived. He was always having…it was almost like an open house. He had an entourage of infamous people, famous people, hangers-on, and nefarious people coming together from all walks of life. Artists, authors, lawyers, and scientists. That was a fortunate set of circumstances and luck where we interacted with a number of people from an interesting time in the culture. People that were, overall, famous in their own right or who had done something important. It was just better times, frankly. It was a lot of originality, a lot of diversity, a lot of do-it-yourself. People were a lot happier.”

The same era also presented Devo with a dilemma that bands such as the Minutemen, X, and the Meat Puppets faced as they played a suddenly regimented underground circuit. Their no-rules stylistic approach to music did not conform with the cookie-cutter hardcore and punk rock so prevalent in Los Angeles.

“That’s what happens to everything, isn’t it? It’s so funny the whole idea that punk had so many rules. We used to laugh about that. That didn’t sound very punk-y. We were actually, I think, more punk than the punks because we didn’t adhere to any uniform except our own and/or set of predictable viewpoints or movements or chord changes. We were being really original and really, sometimes, confrontational and offensive but not, like, nihilistic. It was more tongue-in-cheek satire and political incorrectness to get people to think. We were not nihilistic, anti-intellectual punks, we were conceptual punks,” Casale said.

“Well, given Devo, we love what makes us cringe,” Casale continued. “We realize that built into Devo from the beginning was this kind of infantilism, political incorrectness, and iconoclasm. So, you listen to a song and you go ‘Oh my god, we really did that? No wonder we pissed people off.’”

Later in the decade, Devo would play a show at another local (now defunct) venue, the Bacchanal in Kearney Mesa. The concert is notable because of the lasting impression Gerald’s brother and bandmate, Bob, made on a local kid who would, soon enough, rise to prominence himself.

Shortly after Bob Casale’s passing in February, a letter from one-time San Diegan and Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder was posted on clubdevo.com. Here is an excerpt:

“There was no way to not see [Devo] as heroes. It was great being in their midst, and one gentleman in particular was extremely kind to me. Here I was, some punk kid working crew who looked up to and said hello to ‘Bob 2’ from Devo. And he was so cool and friendly and kept referring to me all through the night. He asked if I could look out for a couple of his VIP-type friends/family, and they were wonderful as well. It ended up being a night that was memorable for many great reasons, but the top of the list was his being so respectful to a stranger. And quite seriously, nowadays, when I end up being nice to someone I don’t know, it has everything to do with that man Bob I met, all those years ago.”