Consumer Guide Album

Devo: Greatest Hits [Warner Bros., 1990]
Just when everybody agreed this new wave novelty act was full of poot, here came Pee-Wee's Playhouse, which was dreamt of in their "philosophy" but not mine. So OK, they were an Important Band, fabricating a minimalist funk of blatant entertainment value and covert sexuality. "Whip It" aside, what "hits" they had are the U.K. singles on the accompanying Greatest Misses, and the socialist cheapskate in me wishes they'd prepared a more economical tour--even if it would mean leaving off, say, the interlocking mechanisms of the ironically entitled "Gut Feeling," which missed me altogether on their first album. Even so, its peaks prove higher and more numerous than I'd have figured. Doody now for the future. A−