Live Performances
When performed live, "Jocko Homo" is often the centerpiece of the show. During most tours, Devo strips off part of their stage costumes during the bridge, removing their iconic jumpsuits to strip down to T-shirts, shorts, and knee and elbow protectors, and when possible Mark Mothersbaugh descends into the audience to lead them a call-and-response of "Are We Not Men?/We Are Devo!" which degenerates into monkey noises. The first performance of "Jocko Homo" in 1975 went on for over twenty minutes. A portion of this appears on the album DEVO Live: The Mongoloid Years. When asked to open for Sun Ra, as a joke they performed a half-hour rendition of the song to annoy the crowd, according to Mark Mothersbaugh in an interview in 1997: "We'd play "Jocko Homo" for 30 minutes, and we wouldn't stop until people were actually fighting with us, trying to make us stop playing the song. We'd just keep going, "Are we not men? We are Devo!" for like 25 minutes, directed at people in an aggressive enough manner that even the most peace-lovin' hippie wanted to throw fists."
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Famous quotes containing the words live and/or performances:
“To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“At one of the later performances you asked why they called it a “miracle,”
Since nothing ever happened. That, of course, was the miracle
But you wanted to know why so much action took on so much life
And still managed to remain itself, aloof, smiling and courteous.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)