It’s an average day on the farm.
Five men dressed in black turtlenecks and bizarre red hats stand around playing New Wave punk music. One of the five carries a whip and cracks it in the direction of a woman dressed like a young Mexican maiden. A beer-guzzling cowboy cheers in approval.
With whip in hand, Mark Mothersbaugh and the other members of Devo — Bob Mothersbaugh, Gerald and Bob Casale, and Alan Myers — made music video history. What sounds like a police report for domestic violence was actually Devo forever making its mark as an icon of the ’80s with “Whip it.”
More than two decades later, ’80s nostalgia has reared its ugly head. The decade that brought us Beta videocassettes and legwarmers has become totally vogue. Twenty years have elapsed, but what has really changed? Conservative politics are still on top, Ohio’s economy is struggling, and underground dance music is shakin’ it back into the mainstream. Sounds like Devo never left.
And indeed, a band considered by some to be a one-hit wonder played eight live shows in 2004.
What you may not know is that Devo got its start right here at Kent State, and the events of May 4, 1970, played a part in the band’s development.
Beginnings
Gerald Casale decided to attend Kent State at the suggestion of a high school teacher. He had grown up around the Akron area in a working-class family. Due to money constraints, attending school out of state was not an option.
After filling out the forms given to him by his teacher, Casale received a scholarship from Kent State and enrolled in the Honors College as an art and English major. He worked summers at the Honors College, helping create the curriculum as a part of his scholarship. It was there that he met Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause, two of the students killed on May 4. Casale, now 56, is the only member of Devo to have graduated from Kent State.
Mike Lunine was the dean of the Honors College during part of Casale’s time at Kent State. He remembers Casale as someone who wasn’t afraid to provoke people.
“I was a great fan of his when he was a raunchy undergrad,” Lunine says. “He was spirited and creative.”
Lunine’s favorite memory of Casale provoking people was what became known as the “Chicken Soup Rebellion.” Casale and several other students made a huge pot of chicken soup one day and began serving it at the Student Center. Lunine recalls the rebellion as an act of protest against bureaucracy at the same time providing a service for fellow students.
“It was a wonderful, creative statement about the uniformity of college life,” Lunine says about the event, which made front-page news on the Kent Stater. “He really thought that as a human, you deserved to be treated fairly.”
The act may have had something to do with the quality of food, too.
“It was kind of both things. The food was really rank,” Casale says. “Just by creating a ‘disturbance’ that had some kind of message or purpose, that’s all it took to be labeled subversive and a troublemaker.”
“I loved the idea that the school was so big. I could be anonymous. I didn’t have to get into confrontations and fights every day.”
Mothersbaugh came to Kent State after 12 dismal years in public schooling. He was at odds with both students and teachers at Woodridge High School in Peninsula. Coming to college was a fresh start for him.
“I loved Kent State, actually,” 54-year-old Mothersbaugh says. “I really disliked all my school years until I got to Kent. I loved the idea that the school was so big. I could be anonymous. I didn’t have to get into confrontations and fights every day.”
And he could spend all the time he wanted in the art department’s facilities. Mothersbaugh started out as a graphic design major in 1968 but eventually decided just to take as many fine arts classes as he possibly could. He was a dean’s list student but to this day is just three classes short of a diploma.
“My dad was like, ‘What are you doing?’” Mothersbaugh says. “I go, ‘You know what, I know I’m not going to be a school teacher, and I’ve gotten so much out of school. But I don’t need the degree for what I’m doing.’”
Would Mothersbaugh ever return to Kent State and finish those three classes?
“I don’t know. I heard tuition is going up, though,” he says with a laugh.
The Burr is produced by students at Kent State University twice per academic year.No part of The Burr may be reprinted without permission.