The year 2014 was shaping up to be a banner one for Devo, with two movies on deck, but it now appears only a concert film shot in late June will see a release (in October), while a long-percolating documentary on the band undergoes more editing.
Hardcore Devo Live was filmed during the group’s U.S. tour, which featured songs written and recorded in the mid-1970s. The film, an MVD release directed by Keirda Bahruth, will premiere at October’s CBGB Music & Film Festival in New York. Surviving members of the band will also give a free performance.
The tour raised money for the family of guitarist and founding member Bob Casale, who died in February of heart failure at 61. “It was almost a didactic lesson to the crowd,” says Casale’s brother and fellow co-founder Gerald, 66, of the shows. Bahruth was hired so late in the process that she shot the band after observing one rehearsal. “Fortunately, Devo is a machine,” she says.
Meanwhile, a version of Tony Pemberton‘s Are We Not Men? The Devo Documentary has been completed, partially thanks to $70,000 raised on Kickstarter two years ago. However, Casale feels it needs more work, saying, “It can’t go out the way it is now.”