{"id":1013,"date":"2010-08-29T20:33:18","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T00:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/?p=1013"},"modified":"2010-08-29T20:37:12","modified_gmt":"2010-08-30T00:37:12","slug":"monkey-men-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/2010\/08\/29\/monkey-men-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Monkey Men All"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got a chance this summer to do something I had been wanting to do for 2 decades – go see DEVO<\/a> perform in concert.\u00a0 They’ve always been one of my favorite bands, and I heard early in the year that they’d be releasing a new album and touring, so I was on the lookout.\u00a0 They didn’t end up playing any dates in New England, but they did come to the Albany area, which is only 2 hours drive from where I live, so I jumped at the chance to pay an inflated ticket price (plus nearly another 25% in fees to TicketBastard).<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the show was on a Saturday night, so I drove out there in the afternoon and got some dinner before heading to the venue.\u00a0 They played at a large club called Northern Lights, in the suburb of Clifton Park.\u00a0 The place is in a strip mall – here are some pictures of it that I took after the show:<\/p>\n

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I had arrived there at 6:30 (while it was still light out), and got in line outside, as the doors wouldn’t open until 7:00.\u00a0 While waiting, I had to get a picture of this guy who was just a bit behind me in line:<\/p>\n

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He had an energy dome logo on the hat, as well as heavy, “Oh No, It’s DEVO” eyebrows on his glasses.\u00a0 Fun!<\/p>\n

I got inside pretty quickly, and immediately made my way to the stage.\u00a0 This was a rare opportunity, and I wanted to be right up close.\u00a0 Fortunately, I was early enough to get a spot right in front of the stage, or as close as possible anyway, as there was a barrier between the stage and audience, creating a narrow area for photo and video people to do their thing during the concert.<\/p>\n

I had thought that the band was going to take the stage at 8:00, but it turned out that they weren’t going on until 9:00, so I had 2 hours to stand and wait (spoiler: it was worth it).\u00a0 I talked a bit to some other fans nearby me, and got a pictures of things like this equipment case:<\/p>\n

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Also, the stage was located in a back corner of the club’s one huge room.\u00a0 Just over to the right of the stage was the back door of the building, which was being used as a stage door, with the band getting ready in their tour bus outside:<\/p>\n

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At one point, a car pulled up next to the bus out there, and out of the car emerged the brothers Mothersbaugh.\u00a0 Mark headed into the bus, but Bob1 initially walked into the building, and he was immediately greeted by a fan yelling, “BOB!” with a bunch of cheering from the rest of us.\u00a0 He laughed and went back outside (unfortunately I didn’t have the presence of mind to snap a picture at that moment).<\/p>\n

One interesting feature of the stage was the background screen.\u00a0 They had a video screen actually made up of a bunch of large LEDs.\u00a0 They were difficult to photograph when off, but here’s a close-up of a small portion of the screen:<\/p>\n

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They did take the stage at 9:00 sharp, with intro music and video playing:<\/p>\n

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The band were initially wearing their new light gray outfits with masks.\u00a0 I had seen pictures of the outfits before coming to the show, but I didn’t know that the suits were highly reflective, so when you take a flash picture of the band, they glow:<\/p>\n

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Here’s a picture without the flash:<\/p>\n

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I captured a picture of the setlist before the show, though my view of the first few songs was blocked:<\/p>\n

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Once they played the first 3 songs, they caught up to where I could see the list.\u00a0 Here’s all of the songs they did, in order (the first, third, and fifth are from the new album, Something for Everybody):<\/p>\n