DEVO at Summerstage 7/23/04

I went in to Sum­mer­stage feel­ing pret­ty bad. For what­ev­er rea­son, my stom­ach has been upset since I land­ed on Thurs­day, and Fri­day night was about the worst of it. I felt like some­one had kicked me in the gut. It was get­ting so bad that the thought had crossed my mind that I should seek med­ical attention.

After watch­ing the first band, whose name I for­get and whose best fea­ture was the bass play­er’s rack, I sat down in the bleach­ers and actu­al­ly slept through the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Not an aus­pi­cious start to a con­cert experience.

When the Yeah Yeah Yeahs left the stage, I had to make a deci­sion whether to stay on the bleach­ers or go stand some­where where I could see the stage. I was feel­ing a lit­tle bet­ter, so I got up and fought my way through the crowd to , who was even clos­er to the stage than when I left to sit down.

Xris had said he’d be dis­ap­point­ed if Devo played the exact same set as the night before. That is exact­ly what they did, actu­al­ly. But Run Hit Won­der’s per­for­mance, while a ter­rif­ic show, seemed like a dry run for the Sum­mer­stage show. Their ener­gy was high­er and they had a few more stag­ing tricks, wear­ing their tra­di­tion­al yel­low jump­suits instead of street clothing.

The audi­ence was also a lot more com­mit­ted. Every­one there was will­ing to stand out in the pour­ing rain to see Devo; that ought to tell the sto­ry. Mark com­ment­ed “the Repub­li­cans even con­trol the weath­er now.”

Unlike Thurs­day night’s show, on Fri­day Devo came back for a cur­tain call. Add to the pre­vi­ous show’s set list these songs:

Free­dom of Choice
Beau­ti­ful World (boo­ji boy came out for an extend­ed version)

The show was video­taped and will be shown on ABC some­time. I won­der if it will trans­late to video well, but I plan on record­ing it.