"
Jocko Homo" is the B-side to
DevoDevo , often spelled DEVO or DEV-O, is an American New Wave band formed in Akron, Ohio in 1973. They are best known for their 1980 hit "Whip It", which made it to #14 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart...
's first single, "
Mongoloid"Mongoloid" is the first single released by Devo in 1977, on the "Booji Boy" label. It was backed with the song "Jocko Homo." "Mongoloid" also had one of the first music videos made using collage. "Mongoloid" would later be re-recorded by Devo and appeared on the album Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are...
." Based on a chant from the movie
Island of Lost SoulsIsland of Lost Souls is a sci-fi/horror film starring Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi. Produced by Paramount Pictures in 1933 from a script co-written by science fiction legend Philip Wylie, the movie was the first film adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, which Wells...
, "Jocko Homo" is considered to be Devo's anthem. The title is taken from an
anti-evolutionCreationism refers to the religious belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe were created in some form by a supernatural being or beings, commonly a single deity...
tractA tract is a literary work, and in current usage, usually religious in nature. The notion of what constitutes a tract has changed over time. By the early part of the twenty-first century, these meant small pamphlets used for religious and political purposes, though far more often the former. They...
called
Jocko-Homo Heavenbound by B. H. Shadduck. The song revolves around an idiosyncratic descending guitar riff and absurdist lyrics. The song peaked at #62 on the
UK Singles ChartThe UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record industry. The full chart contains the top 200 singles based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 of this list...
.
The song's verses primarily concern themselves with the satirical view of devolution, noting foibles in human society.
"
Jocko Homo" is the B-side to
DevoDevo , often spelled DEVO or DEV-O, is an American New Wave band formed in Akron, Ohio in 1973. They are best known for their 1980 hit "Whip It", which made it to #14 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart...
's first single, "
Mongoloid"Mongoloid" is the first single released by Devo in 1977, on the "Booji Boy" label. It was backed with the song "Jocko Homo." "Mongoloid" also had one of the first music videos made using collage. "Mongoloid" would later be re-recorded by Devo and appeared on the album Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are...
." Based on a chant from the movie
Island of Lost SoulsIsland of Lost Souls is a sci-fi/horror film starring Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi. Produced by Paramount Pictures in 1933 from a script co-written by science fiction legend Philip Wylie, the movie was the first film adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, which Wells...
, "Jocko Homo" is considered to be Devo's anthem. The title is taken from an
anti-evolutionCreationism refers to the religious belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe were created in some form by a supernatural being or beings, commonly a single deity...
tractA tract is a literary work, and in current usage, usually religious in nature. The notion of what constitutes a tract has changed over time. By the early part of the twenty-first century, these meant small pamphlets used for religious and political purposes, though far more often the former. They...
called
Jocko-Homo Heavenbound by B. H. Shadduck. The song revolves around an idiosyncratic descending guitar riff and absurdist lyrics. The song peaked at #62 on the
UK Singles ChartThe UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record industry. The full chart contains the top 200 singles based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 of this list...
.
Song lyrics and themes
The song's verses primarily concern themselves with the satirical view of devolution, noting foibles in human society. Most versions include a bridge that begins with "God made man, but he used the monkey to do it." The song also contains several call and response choruses, including the repeated chant "Are we not Men? / We are Devo!" "Jocko Homo," in its variations, has also contained other chants between the main verses and the closing chant. These include "We Accept You / We Reject You / One of us! One of us!" (a reference to
Tod BrowningTod Browning was an American motion picture actor, director and screenwriter.Browning's career spanned the silent and talkie eras...
's
Freaks Freaks is a horror film about sideshow performers, directed and produced by Tod Browning and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with a cast mostly composed of actual carnival performers. The film was based on Tod Robbins' short story "Spurs"...
) and "I've got a rhyme that comes in a riddle / O-Hi-O! / What's round on the ends and high in the middle? / O-Hi-O!"
The song usually begins in the unusual time signature of
7/8 time, but switches partway through to common 4/4 time for the call and response sections.
The original version of "Jocko Homo" lacks all call and response choruses except "Are we not men?", as well as the "God made man" bridge. This demo version appears on the
Hardcore Devo: Volume OneHardcore Devo: Volume One is the first of two collections of demos released by the post-punk/new wave band Devo. It is currently out of print.-Overview:...
compilation. The "Booji Boy" single version contains both the "O-Hi-O!" and the "God made man" bridge. The version on
Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO!Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! is the debut album by the American new wave band Devo. Produced by Brian Eno, it was primarily recorded in Cologne, Germany and released in the U.S. on Warner Bros. Records in 1978....
only includes the "God made man" bridge.
Mothersbaugh attributes the line "Are we not men?" to the 1932 film
Island of Lost SoulsIsland of Lost Souls may refer to* Island of Lost Souls , a movie featuring Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi* "Island of Lost Souls" , a song from Blondie's album The Hunter...
, saying "There were like, watered down, wussy versions of it in the later
Islands Of Dr. Moreau stuff, but that was a really intense movie." (
Island of Lost Souls is a film adaptation of the 1896 H.G. Wells novel
Island of Doctor Moreau, from which the line originated.)
Music video
A
music videoA music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music/song. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Although the origins of music videos go back much further, they came into their own in the...
for the song "Jocko Homo" was part of Devo's first short film,
The Truth About De-EvolutionThe Truth About De-Evolution was the first music video created by the band Devo. Filmed in 1974, it contains two separate songs: Secret Agent Man and Jocko Homo...
. It begins with an
interstitialGenerally, an interstitial space or interstice is an empty space or gap between spaces full of structure or matter.The term may refer to:Physical sciences* Interstitial defect, a crystallographic defect, atom outside regular crystal lattice sites...
scene of
Booji BoyBooji Boy is a character created in the early 1970s by American New Wave band Devo. The name is pronounced "Boogie Boy"—the strange spelling resulted when the band was using letraset to produce captions for a film, and ran out of the letter G...
running through an
AkronAkron is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Summit County. In 2008, its population was estimated to be 207,510. The municipality is located in northeastern Ohio on the Cuyahoga River between Cleveland to the north and Canton to the south, approximately 60 miles west of...
parking lot, up a
fire escapeA fire escape is a special kind of emergency exit, usually mounted to the outside of a building or occasionally inside but separate from the main areas of the building. It provides a method of escape in the event of a fire or other emergency that makes the stairwells inside a building inaccessible...
, and into a building. There, he meets with
General BoyGeneral Boy is a character created around 1975 by New Wave band Devo. He is usually seen portrayed by the father of lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh, Robert Mothersbaugh, Sr.. General Boy is the father of the fictitious character Booji Boy. This character was introduced in the movie The Truth About...
, who is played by Mark Mothersbaugh's father, and hands him papers. After an announcement from General Boy, there are a series of rapid fire cuts of the letters "D-E-V-O" set to the intro of the Devo song "Mechanical Man," and then the main video begins. In it,
Mark MothersbaughMark Allen Mothersbaugh is an American musician, composer, singer and painter. He was a member of the new wave band Devo for many years. His other musical projects include work for television series, films, and video games.- Career :...
plays a professor, lecturing to a class of students in surgical masks, caps, and
3-D glassesAnaglyph may refer to:* Anaglyph image, a method of encoding a three-dimensional image in a single picture by superimposing a pair of pictures* Ornament carved in low relief...
. As the song progresses, the class begins to riot. The film was directed by Chuck Statler and appears on
The Complete Truth About De-Evolution.
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. 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 YearsDEVO Live: The Mongoloid Years is a live album consisting of recordings from three early Devo performances.-Overview:The album presents parts of three Devo concerts from their early days, presented in reverse chronological order: Max's Kansas City in November 1977 , The Crypt in Akron in December...
. When asked to open for
Sun RaSun Ra Sun Ra Sun Ra (birth name: Herman Poole Blount, legal name Le Sony'r Ra; (b. May 22, 1914 - May 30, 1993) was born in Birmingham, Alabama. He was a prolific jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy," musical compositions...
, 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."
Other versions
On the 1988 and 1990 tours, as well as at the 1996
Park City, UtahPark City is a town in Summit and Wasatch counties in the U.S. state of Utah. It is one of two major resort towns in Utah, the other being Moab. It is considered to be part of the Wasatch Back and a part of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area...
show and the 2002 Hollywood, CA show, Devo performed a drastically re-arranged and slowed down acoustic version of "Jocko Homo" (known as the "Sad" version). On the 1990 tour, the band would finish the "Sad" version and switch into the regular performance version of the song. The "Sad" version can be heard on
Now It Can Be Told: DEVO at the PalaceNow It Can Be Told: DEVO At The Palace is a live album released by American New Wave band Devo, recorded during their "comeback tour" in promotion of Total Devo. It did contain several cuts from the album, but largely focused on earlier material Now It Can Be Told: DEVO At The Palace is a live...
.
An "E-Z Listening" version was recorded in a Caribbean style for playback before shows. This appears on the 1987
E-Z Listening DiscE-Z Listening Disc is the 1987 release by Devo. It is a disc of instrumental versions of classic Devo songs performed in the style of easy listening Muzak or New Age music...
.
In 1979, novelty group Lonnie & the Devotions recorded a cover version, in a barbershop quartet style, for Rhino Records' early Devo tribute album
KROQ's Devotees.
Parodist
"Weird Al" YankovicAlfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic is an American singer-songwriter, music producer, actor, comedian, and satirist. Yankovic is known in particular for his humorous songs that make light of popular culture and that often parody specific songs by contemporary musical acts...
included a portion of this song in his first polka medley titled "Polkas on 45".
The opening sounds of the song that are similar to a torque wrench are used in
JusticeJustice is a French electronic music duo consisting of Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay . The duo is one of the most successful groups on Ed Banger Records and is managed by the label's head, Pedro Winter...
's song "Stress" off their first album
††, alternatively known as Cross, is the debut album of the French electro house duo Justice, released on June 11, 2007.-Recording history:...
.
Chart positions
| Chart (1978) |
Peak
position |
| UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record industry. The full chart contains the top 200 singles based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 of this list...
|
62 |
External links