NOISE

As a result of me doing my solo record [Jihad Jerry and The Evildoers' Mine Is Not a Holy War] we did collaborate. Bob Mothersbaugh and Mark Mothersbaugh played on most of the tracks, and as a result of that we started talking about actually writing a new Devo record. So it's very possible. I would have never said this in the past, but now it's very possible this will happen.

You were in the thick of the Kent State shootings in 1970. Did that experience push you toward the conceptual ideas that became Devo?

Totally. I'd met Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause—two of the four students who were killed—during the summer. They were part of the honors college, and I became friends with them and helped them with their curriculum. I'd known them all of seven months when this happened. I was standing about 50, 60 feet away from Allison Krause when she got shot in the back. I was more like a free-love, live-and-let-live hippie until then, but then I was no more Mr. Nice Guy. Because I saw what really happens in society and the corrosive power of politics and military might. Do you feel like the past 25 years have given your theory of de-evolution more credence?

Yeah, and we're not really happy about it. If anybody would have told us in a crystal ball in 1978, here's what it's gonna be like, here's the world in 2006, we would have gone, "No way, maybe I'll just check out now. Do I really wanna be alive in that world?" But the world really did devolve, starting with the dumbing down of all thought in the population, the current administration, the idiocy of fundamentalism, morons holding the world hostage and us responding gutlessly, the decimation of the environment, the decimation of the food supply, the rise of AIDS and other new diseases. It's a corporate, futile world. True freedom and democracy are gone; people just live in fear and toe the line and try to keep their jobs. It's no fun. De-evolution is real, so people need Devo more than ever.

Garage-rock titans and horror-psychobilly pioneers The Cramps have been shocking audiences for almost 30 years. While their demanding regimen of drugs, alcohol, horror movies and self-mutilation might doom lesser bands, it fuels founders Lux Interior and Poison Ivy to greater heights.

Case in point: At their show in Vegas in 2004, a drunken Lux Interior tore off his black latex pants, exposing himself to the wild crowd for the last song.

Did I mention that Interior is well into his 50s?

Like all creatures that emerge from the black lagoon of the human psyche, The Cramps will never die.

Only the nuttiest fanboy with Saturday's Mötley Crüe/Aerosmith twin bill circled on his calendar would deny that both bands did their best work long, long ago. Here is a six-pack of classic cuts to remind us of the glory days, before anyone had heard of John Corabi or heard "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing."

1. Mötley Crüe: "Looks That Kill" (Shout at the Devil, 1983) You know you chant along when nobody's looking.

2. Aerosmith: "Movin' Out" (Aerosmith, 1973) Hear how fully formed these guys sprung from the box.

3. Mötley Crüe: "Live Wire" (Too Fast For Love, 1981) Dig around for the even rawer original "Leathur" mix.

4. Aerosmith: "Toys in the Attic" (Toys in the Attic, 1975) Call it punk, metal, rock, whatever. Just make sure it's on your iPod.

5. Mötley Crüe: "Shout at the Devil" (Shout at the Devil, 1983) Vince Neil makes you proud to share a hometown with him.

6. Aerosmith: "Train Kept a Rollin'" (Get Your Wings, 1974) Lots of bands have covered the blues standard—none this well.

Veruca Salt
IV (2 stars)

PAT GREEN
CANNONBALL (3 1/2 stars)

PINK SPIDERS


TEENAGE GRAFFITI (2 stars)