When the new wave floodgates opened in the mid-'70s, all sorts of strange things flowed out. From Akron, Ohio came five neurotic overachievers (the Mothersbaugh and Casale brothers on guitars and bass, plus a drummer) armed with an ambitious and effective robotic sound, and a carefully contrived (but intentionally inarticulate) theory about the de-evolutionary state of things to come. Beginning with a pair of groundbreaking 1977 singles on the group's own Booji Boy label, the efficiently organized quintet delivered itself encased in a self-willed pseudo-culture, with industrial uniforms, loopy graphics, promotional films, lingo, merchandise, etc. Whether sharp social commentators on the breakdown of modern life or just canny media marketers selling a total pop package (a distinction that was soon revealed to be essentially meaningless), the spudboys quickly won a revered place in rock's brave new world, serving as a major influence for many.

Produced with energetic precision by Brian Eno, Devo's first album is the most concentrated presentation of the band's nebulous theories. "Jocko Homo," "Mongoloid" and "Shrivel Up" employ a cold, assembly-line jerkiness to drive home their defeatist attitudes and post-modern morality. The same nervous energy fuels more emotional messages like "Uncontrollable Urge," "Gut Feeling," "Sloppy (I Saw My Baby Gettin')," the science-fiction paranoia of "Space Junk" and a hilariously high-strung (and de-sexed) version of the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction," with a mechanical-sounding drum beat that would frizz Charlie Watts' hair. (Collectors note: Devo's UK label also issued the album as a picture disc.)

Be Stiff collects Devo's two indie 45s — four tunes that had been re-recorded for Are We Not Men? — and the third single, done for Stiff.

The second full-length album, Duty Now for the Future (produced by Ken Scott), doesn't score as many bull's-eyes as the first, but includes two Devo anthems of malaise, "Blockhead" and "S.I.B. (Swelling Itching Brain)." Amid disturbing signs of portentousness, Devo turns their bemused eyes to the mating ritual on "Strange Pursuit," "Triumph of the Will" and "Pink Pussycat."

The self-produced Freedom of Choice is the band's most evocative pairing of words and music. Setting aside metaphysical foofaraw, the flowerpot-wearing fivesome contrast choppy keyboard licks ("Girl U Want," "It's Not Right," "Snowball") and ironic but unalienated perceptions ("Gates of Steel," "Planet Earth," "Freedom of Choice"). Their tolerance was rewarded with a subversive hit single from the LP, "Whip It."

Issued to milk the success of "Whip It," Dev-o Live is thoroughly redundant. Five of the six songs, including you-know-what and an instrumental version of "Freedom of Choice," are from the preceding LP; only "Be Stiff" is new to album buyers. Hardly a jamming band, Devo live sounds just like Devo in the studio, except maybe a bit sloppier.

Devo's been soft-pedaling their philosophy (on record, at least) since Freedom of Choice's breakthrough. Musically they're still held back by a stunted sense of melody, although the dance-rock movement created a favorable climate for a rhythmic orientation and probably led to Devo's increasing emphasis on a whomping beat. Unfortunately, the conducive atmosphere coincided with reduced artistic ambition; Devo has never made another album half as good as any of the first three.

New Traditionalists has a couple of attention-getting songs ("Love Without Anger," "Going Under," the extraordinarily attractive "Beautiful World") and, for early birds, a bonus 45 of Lee Dorsey's "Working in the Coal Mine." Most of it, though, is clinical-sounding laissez-faire techno-dance stuff, less-than-compelling lyrics set to a metronomic 4/4 beat.

After wobbling through that uneven effort, Devo went straight to the dogs. Oh, No! It's Devo, pointlessly produced by Roy Thomas Baker, failed to slow the creative slide; the mocking optimism of "That's Good" and the nonsense lyrics of "Peek-a-Boo!" are the sole songs worth recalling from it.

Shout's only memorable contribution is a version of the Jimi Hendrix oldie, "Are You Experienced?" Songwriters Mark Mothersbaugh (guitar/keyboards) and Gerald Casale (bass/keyboards) are evidently going through a dry spell of drought proportions, substituting clichés for the razor-sharp observations that used to keep Devo intriguing as well as danceable. Was Devo succumbing to its own devolution?

Little was heard from the group proper for years after Shout, although Casale and the Mothersbaughs remained active, writing and performing music for films and television (including Pee-wee's Playhouse; in '90, Mark M. reached prime time with the theme to Davis Rules) and producing outside projects. Their Los Angeles (where the group relocated in the early '80s) recording studio has also been busy. Under the Devo banner, however, the only music to surface during this era was the woefully mistitled E-Z Listening Disc — an hour-plus CD containing the group's smugly straightfaced (and barely recognizable) schlocky instrumental remakes of nineteen Devo songs — originally available on the mail-order-only E-Z Listening cassettes.

Returning to active duty in the late '80s, the group made the self-produced Total Devo, the most notable aspect of which (besides the replacement of drummer Alan Myers by ex-Gleaming Spire/Spark David Kendrick) is its simultaneous four-format release: LP, cassette, CD and digital audio tape (DAT). Otherwise, it's little more than a timid and bland imitation of the countless bands Devo inspired. Lost and confused, Devo attempts to sound like Human League, sings of being a "Disco Dancer" with far too little irony and essays a witless cover of "Don't Be Cruel" that reveals a rather profound absence of humor. (The release of a "Disco Dancer" 12-inch with "3 Ivan Ivan remixes unavailable elsewhere" underscores just how far the once-visionary group has fallen.)

Dead in the water and sinking fast, Devo cast out Now It Can Be Told, a three-sided live album recorded in Los Angeles at the end of 1988. Lackluster, impotent performances turn what should have been a holding action into a total waste of time. Kendrick's unimaginatively routine drumming derails "Gut Feeling" and "Satisfaction," while a drastically revised arrangement of "Jocko Homo" turns it into an annoyingly slow, acoustic sway.

The appearance of a song called "Devo Has Feelings Too" on Smooth Noodle Maps might have promised some sort of cathartic statement about the group's mental state, but the lyrics add nothing to the title. Still, the keyboard-heavy album gets back to muscular techno-dance music with less ambition and more success. Although the hi-NRG bounce of "When We Do It" is as numbingly bad as anything in Devo's past, Smooth Noodle Maps is not without its moments. Maybe it's the result of reduced expectations, but "Post Post-Modern Man" and "Spin the Wheel" have some of the melodic freshness and enthusiasm (if not the ironic intelligence) long absent from Devo's records. But why cover "Morning Dew" in sequencers and rhythm machines?

The home-brew 4-track recordings (many of songs that have never surfaced in any other authorized form) from the band's formative years that comprise Hardcore demonstrate how strong a stylistic foundation Devo had constructed before revealing itself to the world. Besides the Booji Boy versions of "Satisfaction," "Mongoloid," "Jocko Homo" and "Social Fools" and a few half-baked duds, this frequently fascinating document reveals such intriguing castoffs as the lyrically twisted "Uglatto" (Gene Vincent meets Marc Bolan in the next century), "Stop Look and Listen," the boogie-happy "I'm a Potato" and "Buttered Beauties."

Serving as both a reminder of Devo's past greatness and the evident futility of its continued existence, a matching pair of compilations was issued at the end of 1990. Rather than assemble one full-fledged retrospective, the band created two halves that don't add up to much, for real fans or casual spuds. Cherrypicking the early albums, finding the few good bits in the later ones and then adding on some token representatives of albums that contain nothing of merit, Greatest Hits (the titular reference obviously isn't strictly commercial) gathers up sixteen tunes, from "Jocko Homo" and "Satisfaction" through a remixed version of Shout's "Here to Go." Except for the overly generous inclusion of three tracks from Oh, No!, the selection isn't bad, but anyone owning the first four albums can skip this package without missing anything significant.

For slightly more serious Devophiles, Greatest Misses puts together early LP tracks (some of which — "Blockhead," "S.I.B.," "Devo Corporate Anthem" — could rationally have replaced later stinkers on the Hits volume), such artifacts as the Booji Boy singles of "Be Stiff" and "Mechanical Man" (a minute shorter than the version on Hardcore) and a rude 1979 UK B-side, "Penetration in the Centerfold." The standard stuff is nice but redundant, and most of the rarities aren't rare enough (a couple of them are on Hardcore) to make this record a necessity.

Far removed from his work in Devo, Mothersbaugh's two Muzik for Insomniaks releases consist of simple synthesizer instrumentals selected from what is evidently a massive cache of similar works. (One presumes the titles' sleeplessness refers more to the artist than the listener.) That many of these peppy exercises basically sound alike — some on Volume 1 pointedly suggest Asian musical styles and others take a jazzy turn, but none would sound awfully out of place accompanying the Pee-wee's Playhouse credits — isn't really a hindrance, although two volumes is really one too many. Most of Mothersbaugh's non-verbal haikus are pleasant and relaxing, with enough compositional backbone to warrant attention. Each volume ends with an audio index: a brief snippet of each track.

The Devotees Album is a compilation of goofball cover versions, parodies of and tributes to Devo submitted to an LA radio station by a motley assortment of local amateur musicmakers.