What’s with Devo and donuts?

The video for Freedom of choice features some choc covered rings of mighty flavour (TM), and That’s good features a not very subtle innuendo that flew over my head as a kid. MTV did catch it, though, and Devo got a lot of flack for it. Weirdly enough, I thought that Whip It was the disturbing video. My aunt in Tampico certainly wasn’t a fan of it.

But back to That’s Good. Of course, I liked the music done by weird dudes wearing weird clothes, rocking in front of fancy colours. Whip it was the first song and video of theirs I knew, but That’s Good, with that robotic, taciturn drum machine keeping things copacetic, was a delight. I would dance to it if it was on and there wasn’t anyone around. I couldn’t describe it to kids on the playground, as it wasn’t a band they would listen to at all. I could talk about Michael Jackson or David Lee Roth with them, though.

Devo is a band I come back to a lot of the time, and oddly enough, I don’t own any albums by them. I keep putting it for later, and I don’t know when I’ll correct that. I went into a Devo iceberg during the pandemic, as I got addicted to POV driving videos on California highways, and one of them had That’s Good as background music. No wonder my first trip post-pandemic was to California. Listening to Devo, at full volume of course. California and Devo, bobbing my head like an idiot while blasting music on PCH 101. A bag of treats from DK’s Donuts in Arroyo Grande by my side. Freedom of choice, is what I got.

I threw away most of my stuff from elementary school around ’92, a few months before a kid from my generation killed himself. I had no good memories of those years, and I still don’t have them. I never can quite grasp the concept of people getting along with their friends from elementary or junior high, things change so fast and we drift so wide apart that on the rare occasion one adds me on social media, I look at photos of this weird stranger and wonder who the fuck are they now?

We all change -and that’s good!- but I guess there’s a deep primordial set of personality traits we never quite shake away. I’ll die a shy person, bashful to a fault, willing to always yield. That’s not good, but it’s who I am.

-Sam J. Valdés López