This page is for anyone who may want the full, long, boring story of Devo Spice. Maybe you're a mega-fan who wants to soak up as much Devo as you can. Maybe you're writing an article on Devo and need to do some research. Or maybe you're just bored at work one day and have nothing better to do. Regardless, this is the full story, from the beginning, right up until the last time this page was updated.
Tom Rockwell grew up in Trumbull, Connecticut not caring too much about music. The few songs that appealed to him were songs that were funny for one reason or another, such as "Onomatopoeia" by Todd Rundgren. It wasn't until he discovered rap music that he found something he actively enjoyed listening to. Tom was in his basement listening to a radio station out of New York City when a song by Melle Mel came on and Tom was transfixed by the rhythms, the vocals, and the rappers ability to seemingly flow for minutes on end without breathing. Tom quickly sought out as much rap as he could find, becoming a fan of Run-DMC, The Fat Boys, Whodini, and other big names of the day. On those rare occasions when he found a funny rap song it was like finding a golden ticket. "The Square Dance Rap" by Sir Mix-A-Lot and "Monster Rap" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett quickly became some of his favorite songs.
Tom's family picked up on his love of comedy-music and shared whatever they found with him, such as when "Weird Al" Yankovic's video for "Ricky" came on a UHF station that was playing music videos. Tom's mother then dug out one of her old Allan Sherman records (For Swingin' Livers Only) and the first track—"Grow Mrs. Goldfarb"—left Tom, literally, rolling on the living room floor laughing.
One Christmas Tom's mother was walking around the house singing "I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas" and everybody else in the family thought she had made it up. Nobody believed that was a real song. So she made it her mission to find that song and a few weeks later, while the family was shopping at a nearby mall, she found the album Dr. Demento Presents the Greatest Novelty Records of All Time, Volume 6: Christmas. The ride home was filled with laughter at all the comedy songs on this album, including "I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas" by Gayla Peevey, and the family never doubted Tom's mother again. That Christmas she received the full Dr. Demento box set on vinyl and Tom quickly made off with it to examine and study in every detail.
As a kid Tom always loved building and creating things. All kids do, but it wasn't until much later that Tom realized what was different about him. Tom had a creative drive that made him want to do things when he saw them being done well by other people. When he saw his classmates developing their artistic ability he taught himself how to draw. When he discovered The Fat Boys he was fascinated with Darren Robinson, aka Buffy, The Human Beat Box, who made beats with his mouth and Tom quickly learned how to do that. As he improved he expanded into making other sound effects emulating much of what Michael Winslow was doing in the Police Academy movies.
So when Tom started hearing funny songs he began singing some himself. He used to sing parodies in school that, in this day and age, would get him expelled, but this was the 1980s and nobody thought blowing up the school was something a 4th grader might actually do. It was a simpler time.
Tom also began writing his own rap songs. However, being a kid, he didn't really have much to rap about and the lyrics were lame. Even he knew this. It wasn't until he actively tried to be funny with his raps that things clicked and he felt like he was on the right track. However, thinking that he wouldn't be able to do this himself, he began thinking of ways to get some of his friends involved.
Two of Tom's best friends in 7th grade were David Floeting and Scott Usilton. They seemed like as good a posse as any so one day while they were riding home on the bus (Devo insists the date was April 23, 1986 but there's no way to verify that) he turned to the guys and said "Hey, we should form a rap group." And they half-heartedly said "OK!" And a rap group was formed.
Forming an actual group that was actually productive turned out to be far more difficult than they realized. They had no musical instruments, no recording equipment, and no real idea what they were doing. It was a full year and a half of bouncing ideas off each other, attempting to write songs, and finding ways to record anything before anything resembling a song happened. During this time was when they came up with their nicknames. Dave went through a few iterations but finally settled on MC Squared. Scott became Boksai Nok for reasons he was never able to explain. And Tom became Devo Spice. "Spice" was a slang word that he had heard while in Florida watching some kids breakdance (another thing Tom saw people doing and then taught himself how to do). There was a beatboxer on the side and someone else talked about his "spice," referring to either his sounds or his general skills. Devo was short for "devastating," originally because he didn't know how to spell devastating, but it's just as well because Deva Spice has an entirely different connotation.
Originally Tom pictured the group to be structured like Digital Underground, where there was a large group of mostly serious rappers, and Tom would be the comic relief of the group; the Humpty Hump. But getting the other two guys to write anything was a challenge. The outlines of a song were thrown around and parts were asigned. Tom wrote his verse, then while waiting for Dave and Scott to write their respective verses Tom rewrote his, then rewrote his again, then again. That song never materialized and the boys moved on to high school, with Scott going to a different school.
One day in Algebra class with Dave, Tom had an idea for a parody. Run-DMC's album "Raising Hell" had been out for a bit and Tom began singing the word "infection" to their song "Perfection." This seemed like a funny enough idea and Tom began writing it. It was a short song so it came quickly and once it was done the group began making plans to record.
However, they still had no instruments nor recording equipment. Thankfully a few years earlier Tom's father had gotten his mother a boom box as an anniversary gift (another of his mother's gifts that Tom absconded with) and at some point he realized it had a microphone. Put in a tape, hit record, and talk. Presto! Instant recording. It even sounded pretty good. And since the music for "Perfection" was pretty much just a drum beat Tom figured he could beatbox his way through the song. Finally, some time in October of 1987, Tom, Dave, and Scott sat on the floor of Tom's basement reading the lyrics off a dot-matrix print out with each respective part highlighted, and recorded their first song. "Infection" is included (for historical purposes only) on Rhythms from the Crypt: The Best of Sudden Death.
Once that first song was recorded it became easier to do additional songs. Scott's sister had gotten a Yamaha keyboard as a gift and the group asked if they could borrow it to make music. She obliged and the next few Sudden Death songs have background music that sounds like a cheap 80s keyboard because they were, in fact, produce with a cheap 80s keyboard. The keyboard was played into the boombox's microphone to make an instrumental tape. That tape was then played on Tom's stereo behind the boys as they rapped into the boombox's mic. It did not sound good, but it was the best they could do at the time.
At some point Dave got a simple drum machine and Tom saved up some money to buy a "decent" cheap 80s keyboard and that equipment was used for the next several songs. The group continued like this until they got their first taste of success in 1990.
In 1989 the Trumbull Nationals—the Little League team from Tom's home town—beat Taiwan to win the Little League World Series. This was a big deal. They were featured in Sports Illustrated (maybe on the cover, but that's unclear as no historical pictures are readily available) and the pitcher, Chris Drury, later went on to become captain of the New York Rangers. Tom knew several of the kids on the team as they were in his sister's grade and they were friends. So when they announced there was going to be a big celebration at Trumbull High School Tom and Dave happily attended.
It turned out to be one of the most boring, drawn out events that either had ever been to. The governer spoke. The principal spoke. The town's First Selectman spoke. Their teachers spoke. It took forever for the kids to actually make an appearance and that's really all the crowd wanted. To pass the time Tom and Dave began riffing on a song about being bored and wrote several of the short verses of that song right then and there. Since they had nothing to write with at the time they kept going over the lyrics to memorize them. When they got home Tom called Scott, told him about the song, and asked him to write a short verse for it. They made plans to get together the next day to record it.
The next morning Tom found a pattern on his keyboard that fit the bill and quickly came up with some simple but catchy music. Dave and Scott showed up shortly after lunch and, after helping Scott write his verse, a song was recorded. That Monday a tape was in the mail to Dr. Demento.
Since the beginning Tom had been sending tapes to Dr. Demento. After getting the box set Tom joined The Demento Society which got him an autographed picture, a button, a bumper sticker, and got him subscribed to The Demento Society News. In this newsletter one day was an ad that said "The Funny Five Wants You" with an address to where you can send your tapes. Thinking back, it's remarkable that a nationally syndicated radio show would solicit songs from its audience, let alone actually reply, but reply he did!
Tom never sent "Infection" to Dr. Demento because he wasn't clear about the legalities of recording or distributing parodies at the time, but every non-parody after that was submitted and each one received a personal reply from Dr. Demento. Rather than the standard form-letter rejection that one would expect, Dr. Demento's letters were encouraging and filled with constructive criticism. He spoke about getting the performers to emote more, ways to improve the recording quality, and pointed out funny or otherwise enjoyable parts of the songs. Tom took this criticism to heart.
So when Dr. Demento wrote back and said that "I'm Bored" was a "masterpiece" Tom was absolutely thrilled. Dr. Demento asked if there was a way to improve the recording quality to make it more suitable for airplay and Tom, Dave, and Scott got back together to re-record the song. This time, instead of sending him a second-generation copy of the song on cassette, they sent him the original. "I'm Bored" aired on The Dr. Demento Show on April 15th, 1990. Dr. Demento was nice enough to send Tom a vinyl pressing of the entire show which contained this song, a memento that Tom still has and holds dear.
Getting played on a nationally syndicated radio program was enough for Tom to start taking this more seriously. He went out and bought a mixer which helped improve their recording. No more open-air microphones for them! Now they could use the boombox's line-in feature! Tom also asked the group if he could take the lead and let Dave and Scott fall to the background.
Dave was fine with the idea. Tom had been doing the majority of the work anyway on all the songs up until this point so to him it made sense. Scott's heart was never really in the group, so he took this opportunity to step down altogether. Although he did say they could call on him if they needed another background vocalist. As a side-effect of this move, it opened the group up to new members. Some of Tom and Dave's friends from high school began to get involved in the group, including Jeff Cots, Steve Fernino, Thom Uliasz, and several other people who helped out now and then. Tom foolishly didn't want to drop the name Sudden Death and just perform as Devo Spice at this point because he figured since he had been played on nation-wide radio he should stick with it. Looking back, this would have been the perfect opportunity to let the name go, but that wouldn't happen for some time.
Tom continued recording songs and sending them to Dr. Demento over the next year or so, continuing to refine his craft and get better sound and performances out of his music.
In late 1990, while Tom was a senior in high school, the local Top 40 station KC 101 had a rap contest. Contestants would call in, perform their rap over the phone, and then listeners would call in and vote for their favorites. If a contestant won five days in a row they would go on to the finals which was a live performance at a local club with celebrity guests. Tom called in as Devo Spice and performed a rap that impressed the person on the other end, but was told he probably wouldn't make it on tonight and to try again the next night. So he did. The next night he not only made it onto the radio but he won. And he continued to win. After five nights Devo's rap was retired and he had made it to the finals.
The finals took place at an under-21 club in Orange, Connecticut called Nick and Neil's. The celebrity judges were a woman who wrote for a hip hop magazine, a talent agent with connections to some record labels, and Fab 5 Freddy, the host of Yo! MTV Raps' Saturday edition. The event was hosted by KC 101's on-air talent Kelly Nash. For this event Devo wrote a "serious" song called "That's How I Like It" with music provided by Steve's older brother Mike who was a professional mobile DJ.
The plan was to put on a full show. Tom worked with a couple friends who were dancers to work out a routine for the song, and the rest of the Sudden Death gang would show up as his posse on stage in trench coats and sunglasses. Few things went as planned at this event, though.
Being an under-21 crowd they would not let Tom's parents into the club to watch him perform. However, other contestants did have their families there. They also wouldn't let him video tape his performance, however, he later saw someone else video taping the event from the back of the room. Then, as Devo was backstage rehearsing his song he was roughly shoved aside by someone. He turned around to see a very large black man shoving people aside to make room for Fab 5 Freddy. No "excuse me" or even a "get out of the way" just pick-up-and-push. Freddy was there in a full-length fur coat with a scantily-clad model on each arm. He walked through the crowd of rappers, careful not to make eye contact with any of them, and then took his spot at the judges' table moments before the first act went on stage.
Since KC 101 was a Top 40 station Tom was expecting the audience to be mostly white with the contestants being mostly black. In fact it was exactly the opposite. All six contestants were white and the audience was 90% black.
The first act was good. He rapped over a beat provided by his partner on a drum machine. At the end of his song they asked the judges for feedback. The writer and talent agent each gave some constructive feedback. Freddy said "Yeah, kinda cool. I could dig it."
Devo was second. He got on stage, posse and dancers in place, the music built to a crescendo, and Devo started rapping. By the second line of the song the audience was sold. They loved him. Unfortunatley one of the speakers blew during the break between the first and second verse, which shut off the microphone. So the second verse was not heard by anyone. Between the second and third verse Devo fiddled with the microphone and got it to come back on, but the fiddling distracted him and he started the third verse late. Thankfully there were four extra bars at the end of the song and Devo finished rapping just as the song stopped, so that worked out. The crowd cheered, Kelly Nash asked the judges what they thought, and Devo eagerly awaited their response.
The writer and agent were impressed, saying Devo had good energy and rhymes. Fab 5 Freddy said "Yeah, kinda cool. I could dig it." In fact, he said that for every performer.
Most of the rest of the acts were pretty good and Devo figured he had a solid chance of winning, save for maybe that first act. The one act that stood out as not good was MC Loud. This was a kid who had to be 9 or 10 years old with a Vanilla Ice haircut. He was actually OK for his age, but there was no way he could compete with the rest of the contestants. His lyrics were cheesy. His delivery was stagnant. His music was weak. But if he stuck with it he may have had some potential. That may be what the judges were thinking because they awarded him first place. Devo came in second.
Devo was crushed and the rest of his posse was pissed. They actually approached Kelly Nash to talk about the technical problems, which Devo discouraged, as 5 high schoolers in trench coats can be pretty intimidating, even if they are the nicest guys in the world.
After the event the agent gave Devo his card and asked for a demo. The owners of the club invited Devo back to perform a full concert. The demo lead to a record deal with a scammy label that produced an absolutely terrible version of "That's How I Like It" for a compilation called Music of America. Unfortunately the follow-up concert at Nick and Neil's never happened as the club closed down shortly thereafter.
Caught up in the near-success of these happenings Devo began trying his hand at writing traditional and serious rap songs, instead of the comedy. This lead to a song about the rap contest dissing MC Loud called "Loudmouth," and one attempt at ultra-serious writing—an ill-advised and absolutely terrible song about abortion from the fetus' point of view. After going through this brief phase Devo decided writing funny songs was much more fun and quickly turned back to that.
In February of 1991 Tom turned 18 and his parents bought him a 4-track recorder. This allowed Devo to actually improve his recording quality and capabilities significantly. However, the 4-track was used and didn't come with an instruction book, so Devo wasn't able to figure out everything he needed. Luckly, during his freshman year in college he met a fellow student who happened to have the exact same model and showed him all the ins and outs of the device. It was a Yamaha MT-100, if you're curious.
That fall, while in college, one of Tom's friends from high school released a demo tape for his band Nothing Sacred. They asked Tom to do the artwork for the cassette and Tom happily obliged. It was a 4-song demo that looked and sounded great. The band went into a studio to record the songs and got the inserts printed with the help of their guitarist who worked at a print shop. They were not only shopping the demo around to record labels but selling it at shows for $5. In another one of those "see someone do something cool and want to do it yourself" moments Devo realized he could do that too.
During his Thanksgiving breatk from RIT Devo re-recorded 11 of what he felt were the best Sudden Death songs, wrote and recorded two new ones, and pulled the recording of "I'm Bored" off the Dr. Demento record. This became the first Sudden Death release, Dead Things Can Rap Too.
This album, originally pressed as a run of 40 cassettes, was sold to friends and classmates at RIT for $5. The response was overwhelmingly positive, despite the low-fidelty sound, and Devo quickly sold through all those tapes and had to have more made.
This release also resulted his is second ever airing on the Dr. Demento Show, as an edited version of "Dead Rubber Chickens" was aired on February 23, 1992.
Bolstered by the results of the first release Devo quickly began writing new songs for a quick follow-up. To help promote this release he became part of a project in 1992 to produce a compilation album of bands from RIT where he was attending school. Tom designed the cover for the 1992 RIoT Bands Tape and submitted one of the songs. He was also getting involved in the internet, having discovered the alt.rap newsgroup and began posting their regularly. When someone suggested a compilation tape of alt.rap artists Devo offered to do the cover and submit a couple songs. A rapper named T-Dub of SHYGUY Productions—coincidentally also a student at RIT—helped produce the album. Devo had two songs on this release: "P.M.S.," a parody of "O.P.P." by Naughty By Nature, and an original song called "Praying to the Porcelain God." Reviews were mixed, but most people enjoyed the comedy, despite the lack of production quality.
By the spring of 1993 Devo had enough songs ready for a second release and Noise Pollution came out. The title—which is the only Sudden Death release to NOT be a death joke or pun—was the result of Sudden Death member Jeff actually getting a ticket for noise pollution because the cop heard his car coming from three blocks away.
Noise Pollution was reviewed mostly positively by a few online blogs and publications. The running theme was that the production quality needed to be improved but it was "funny as shit."
There was actually a release party of sorts for this album, too. Tom, Steve, and Thom performed at Club Choice, an under-21 club in Ansonia Connecticut that was being DJ'd by Steve's brother Mike. He agreed to give the guys 15 minutes to do three songs from the album. This is another event that didn't exactly go as planned. Originally the group wanted to perform "It Sucks to Be You," but because of the abrasive nature of the song and some mild profanity the owner of the club asked them not to do it. So instead Devo performed a serious song called "Show 'Em How It's Done" (which wasn't even on Noise Pollution), followed by "Praying to the Porcelain God," which mostly confused the audience, followed by "P.M.S." which the audience enjoyed.
Devo did the main rapping with Steve and Thom backing him up, although there were only 2 mic inputs on the board so Thom's microphone wasn't even plugged in. And afterwards nobody bought any of the tapes. This was when Devo learned he is not good at marketing.
While in the rec.music.dementia newsgroup Tom ran across a guy named Tony Mason who was producing quirky comedy songs under the name None of the Above. He was also giving away his music because he didn't think it was good enough to charge for. This was before MP3s existed so giving away music meant literally mailing a tape to someone. The result of this was he was making a name for himself on the newsgroup and gaining fans. Tom decided to give this a try as well.
While planning his next release, which he knew was going to be called Brain Dead after one of the new songs he had recorded with Thom, he decided to give away 100 copies of an EP to promote it. He got addresses off of rec.music.dementia and alt.rap and sent them each a copy of a 4-song EP called Brain Damage. It featured "Do You Piss in the Shower?," "Smoker," "Godzilla," and "The Psychic Enemies Network."
When Brain Dead was finally released only two people out of the 100 he had previously sent tapes to returned to purchase it. Devo was very discouraged by this result, but actually found out years later this is a pretty standard return for this kind of marketing technique.
Always striving to improve his product, Brain Dead was the first insert that featured a color cover. The image shows Devo with his skull cut open, holding his brains, and with his testicles hooked up to a car battery with jumper cables. The image was photographed with Dave and Steve in Tom's house using his father's computer as a prop and was heavily Photoshopped. The brain was real, though. Tom purchased a package of calf brains at a local butcher shop for the shoot. The rest of the layout was done by Tom's then-girlfriend-and-now-wife Jennifer. The jumper cables are real and were really attached to his crotch, which was stuffed with socks to prevent injury.
This was also the first album that featured songs recorded on a computer, at least partially. Several of the latter songs recorded for this album had their music recorded on Devo's first computer, a PowerMac 7100/66. Once the music was done he would mix it down to one track on the four track recorder and then use the remaining three tracks to record the vocals. This substantially improved not only the sound quality but what could actually be done, as adding samples and sound effects became much easier.
While the breakout hit on this album was "Masturbate," a parody of "Regulate" by Warren G. and Nate Dogg, that song was too explicit for Dr. Demento to air, so only one song from this album made it onto the radio. "The Psychic Enemies Network" aired once in 1993, although Devo didn't find out about the airing until a few years later while he was searching the new online Dr. Demento playlist archive.
The other newsgroup that Tom frequented in his spare time was alt.music.weird-al, a group devoted to the works of "Weird Al" Yankovic. In 1998 a woman named Amanda Cohen decided she was going to throw a fan convention called AlCon. Tom emailed her asking to perform, saying he had been played on the Dr. Demento Show a few times. Amanda agreed to give Sudden Death a short set performing and suggested they perform "The Psychic Enemies Network" since it had been played on Dr. Demento. Tom decided that if he had a new album out by AlCon he might be able to make some new fans and maybe finance the trip, so he set to work on a new batch of songs.
In 1997 Tom's friend from college Tim Winkler (known affectionately as TWINK) managed to get a slot on RIT's radio station WITR and devoted his entire show to comedy music. He had a two-hour slot, originally on late Thursday/early Friday from 1-3am, that he kept getting erased from. Finally one day he wrote "TWINK! FRIGGIN' HERE!" on the white board, and that's how the show got it's name. At some point he invited Devo to co-host the show with him, mostly because he wanted access to Devo's music collection. While Tom was never officially a member of the radio station (he had tried freshman year and had gotten the runaround) he co-hosted this show with TWINK until he left Rochester in late 1999. Devo has many of these shows recorded and has plans to make them available at MadMusic.com
1997 was also the year South Park began airing on Comedy Central. Tom's roommate quickly became a fan of the show and turned Tom onto it as well. Tom went to a Christmas party that year dressed as Kenny with simple cardboard costume attached to his glasses. Then one day while Tom was waiting in his car for his girlfriend to get out of work he was listening to the radio and heard the classic song "South Bronx" by Boogie Down Productions. He jokingly started singing "South Park" to the chorus and chuckled at the idea, but didn't think it was a good idea to parody such an old and obscure song. However, he later decided that he was his own target audience anyway and as long as the song made him laugh that's all that mattered, so he proceded with the song.
Around this same time Tom also became aware of another comedy artist who went by the name the great Luke Ski. Luke had recently had a hit on The Dr. Demento Show with his Cypress Hill parody "Insane and the Brain," about the cartoon Pinky and the Brain, which Tom enjoyed. However, TWINK interviewed Luke for the radio show and Luke mentioned that he was working on a song about South Park. This made Tom nervous because having just come off a hit song it was very likely that Dr. Demento would play his song. So if Devo stood a chance at his song getting played he would have to beat Luke to the punch. With this in mind he quickly finished his parody, titled it "South Park Junkie" (using TWINK for background vocals since he couldn't get back to Connecticut to record with the other guys) and sent it off to Dr. Demento. He beat Luke's song to Dr. Demento by one day.
"South Park Junkie" not only got played on the Dr. Demento Show but it was a hit. It first appeared on the Funny Five on March 29th at #4 then spent two weeks in a row at #1, with multiple recurrences throughout the year. It ended up the 4th most requested song of the year on the year-end countdown. (Luke's South Park song "Kenny Was a Kid from South Park," a parody of "Jerry Was a Racecar Driver" by Primus was also a hit, ending up at #6 for the year.)
Tom performed at AlCon with Dave backing him up, and that day they released Unplugged, the fourth Sudden Death album. This was the first Sudden Death album available on CD (home-burned on the nights leading up to AlCon). The performance was amazing. They ended their set with "South Park Junkie," received a standing ovation, and then were mobbed at the merch table with people looking to buy the album. At this event Devo met Luke Ski for the first time, along with Chris Mezzolesta of Power Salad, Chris Waffle of Hot Waffles, Grant Baciocco of Throwing Toasters, and many more people who he is still friends with and still works with to this day.
AlCon lead Devo to look for similar events where he could perform, but at the time there weren't many available. Devo returned to perform at AlCon 2000 and again at AlCon III in 2002.
When Devo was a kid his father took their family to their first science fiction convention. It was a mostly Doctor Who-focussed convention called I-CON that took place on Long Island. Devo and his father went back every year until Devo went to college and couldn't attend anymore. In late 1999 Devo and then-girlfriend Jennifer moved to New Jersey and in 2000 he started making plans to go back to I-CON for the first time in many years. By sheer coincidence, one of their guests that year was Dr. Demento. Devo had recently just met Dr. Demento in person for the first time at a show he did in New York where he invited Devo up to perform "South Park Junkie." At I-CON Dr. Demento was slated to host the Cabaret.
The Cabaret was a live performance where some of the guests, and some select amateurs, were invited up on stage to do their thing. At the first one Devo attended Michael Dorn (Worf from Star Trek) made an appearance. And author Peter David and radio show host Dr. Howard Margolin performed a parody of Billy Joel's "The Longest Time" called "A Lord of Time." That part was great. The amateur part of the show was terrible. So after that first year Devo and his father didn't bother attending future cabarets. But with Dr. Demento hosting Devo thought this could be a good opportunity so he contacted the con about performing. Luckily there was an opening and they let him in.
2000 was also the year Devo made some serious upgrades to his recording equipment. He bought a really nice keyboard as well as a digital 8-track recorder and spent a good week studying MIDI and figuring out what exactly it was an how to use it. Previously, MIDI was this "magical computer thing that makes music" and Devo never understood it. Once he figured it out it became a practical thing that could be u sed to actually help him record.
One of the first songs recorded with the 8-track and the new keyboard was a parody of "Hard Knock Life" by Jay-Z called "Star Trek Life," about being a Trekkie/fanboy/nerd. Devo performed this song at the Cabaret at I-CON and the crowd loved it. His performance was followed by the first I-CON performance by Voltaire who said "And to think I decided not to do my Klingon rap because I thought no, that'd be silly."
Devo gave Dr. Demento a copy of "Star Trek Life" and he brought it with him to his interview on Destinies, The Voice of Science Fiction; a weekly science fiction radio show hosted by Dr. Howard Margolin. They debuted the song on the radio that night.
During the weekend Devo watched several other concerts including ones by Voltaire, The Brobdingnagian Bards, The Boogie Knights, and a few other acts, and began wondering what it would take to get booked as a guest at I-CON. So starting in 2001 he contact them and thus began performing regularly at I-CON. He also began looking for other performance opportunities.
In September of 2001 Tom and Jen got married on the beach at his parents' beach house in Old Lyme, Connecticut. The entire Sudden Death gang was there (Dave was best man, plus Jeff, Steve, and Thom), proving once and for all that the universe would not end if all five of them were together at the same place at the same time.
In late 1999 when Tom took a job at an ad agency in New Jersey he drove past a giant sign in Jefferson Township, NJ that read "FATAL ACCIDENT ZONE AHEAD! DANGER! SLOW DOWN!" After getting his laughing under control he decided that this was going to be the cover of the next Sudden Death album.
Fatal Accident Zone was released at AlCon III in 2002. The sound quality of this album was a noticeable improvement over Unplugged, having been recorded entirely digitally. Although Devo still didn't know how to master songs, let alone entire albums, so there was still room to grow. This was also the first CD that was professionally produced. Devo made 1000 CDs and 300 cassettes in this run. It was this run that made him realize cassettes were a dead format as he sold only one.
Over the years, in yet another "I want to do that too" move, Devo taught himself how to program. The original intent was to program video games, but this lead to him programming multimedia presentations at his day job. As a result, he decided to include a multimedia presentation on this album. It featured three additional songs, the lyrics to each song with accompanying illustrations, and a screen saver.
To try to promote this album Devo began working on a video game figuring if he featured the music in the game it would be a good promotional tool. The idea was to be a side-scrolling platform game (similar to Super Mario Bros.) where you play Devo trying to find the other members of Sudden Death, with a lot of in-game jokes related to the music, such as a "Jersey Native," (a bald guy with a beer belly in a wife-beater). Devo got the game to a playable state but needed to design and produce the levels and by the time he got the game to this point the album was already almost a year old and he scrapped the idea.
After scrapping the game Devo decided to take a long look at what he had accomplished and what he wanted to do. He was about to turn 30 and figured if he ever stood a chance at making a career in music that he had better do it now.
To that end he set out re-doing the Sudden Death web site. He taught himself PHP and MySQL and made a much more functional and interactive web site with news, tour dates, and a store. He also started looking for additional gigs. He contacted other conventions besides I-CON to try performing at. He even went so far as to try to start his own AlCon-like comedy music event. In 2003 he produced an event called The Oddfest where he performed along with Worm Quartet and Eric Schwartz. He began attending local open mics in the hopes of making some contacts with other local artists. He began submitting to festivals and using SonicBids to try to find some additional gigs.
He also spent some time refining his stage show. He decided to use a projector to show videos to accompany the songs to try to emphasize some of the jokes and set him apart from some of his peers. As a result Devo performed twice in 2002, five times in 2003, and 27 times in 2004. However, he missed 2004's MarsCon event, which was the beginning of the Dementia Track there, because his wife was 8 months pregnant at the time and he didn't want to be away from her.
The stage show evolved over the years. He started out using his laptop hooked up to a projector that he borrowed from his boss. Later he bought his own projector and built a wooden, felt-covered box to house everything. Then he replaced his laptop with a Mac Mini and built a smaller box. Eventually he replaced his Mac Mini with an iPod Touch. The technology behind the show continues to evolve.
All that hard work paid off in 2005 with the release of Die Laughing. The production of the metal-rap parody "Ozzman," a parody of "Iron Man" by Sir Mix-A-Lot, forced Devo Spice to learn how to master songs and albums. He had sent that song to Dr. Demento in 2003 where it became a hit, but was never happy with the sound. It wasn't until he learned about audio compression and was able to bring out the guitars without overpowering his vocals did he realize what his music was missing all these years. Regardless, "Ozzman" was the 6th most requested song of 2003 on The Dr. Demento Show.
The real hit, though, was "Inner Voice" which he did with Worm Quartet. Tim Crist, aka Shoebox, does synth-punk-comedy music under the name Worm Quartet and the two became friends after Luke Ski's song "Peter Parker," which features Devo Spice on vocals, beat out Worm Quartet's song "Frank's Not in the Band Anymore" for most requested song of 2002 on Dr. Demento. Shoebox has a very random and bizarre sense of humor, so when Devo came up with the idea for "Inner Voice" he knew Shoebox would be the perfect person to play the part. The result was a song that spent 12 weeks on the Funny Five—7 of those at #1—and was the #1 most requested song of 2005.
Devo produced another hit in the form of a song called "Spam" which also hit #1 on the Funny Five and was the 10th most requested song of 2005.
2005 also saw the start of Devo's weekly podcast Manic Mondays. Several of the early episodes feature songs from Die Laughing, including one which is a virtual listening party.
2005 was also the beginnings of Cirque do So What? This was a sketch comedy team created by Shoebox of Worm Quartet. He initially approached Luke Ski about it and the two recorded a brief sketch together. Later they invited Devo Spice to join and over the next few years wrote numerous sketches that they planned to record eventually. Some time later they also invited Chris Mezzolesta of Power Salad to join the group, but it wasn't until 2010 that the four of them got together and recorded anything. Procrastinators of the Apocalypse was released in 2010. This was followed up by Stupid Cowboy Thing Volume 1: GRANDMOTHER! in 2011 and Stupid Cowboy Thing Volume 2: Additional Squid in 2012.
Back in the 90s Devo was also interested in producing video games. However, since he wasn't a programmer he decided to look for a programmer to work with on a game so he could go the game design and graphics. He found one, and for the better part of a year the two worked on a Connect Four-like game called InsectiSide. But as time went on updates from the programmer became farther and farther apart until finally they stopped altogether. Unfortunately, there was one show-stopper of a bug that needed to be fixed and the game couldn't be released as it was. Furious that this game was never going to be released Tom screamed "Fine! I'll do it myself!" and taught himself how to program. This resulted in a string of shareware games being released for the Mac under the company name FIDIM Interactive.
After moving to New Jersey Tom kept FIDIM Interactive running and released several more games, and even licensed some to major publishers. One of his games, an Othello parody called Chromosomethingorother, was the first game available to play over AOL's Instant Messenger platform.
In 2003 Devo decided to put the video games on hold and focus on his music, but he still owned and used the name. He decided that FIDIM could also be his record label, so Fatal Accident Zone and Die Laughing were "produced by FIDIM Interactive, LLC."
It was in 2006 that Devo considered turning FIDIM Interactive into a "real" record label. The first project he conceived was a compilation album of comedy songs. Since marketing was not his strong point he actually started this project with a marketing gimmick in mind. Devo had begun listening to a podcast called This Week in Tech, which was becoming very popular. It was hosted by Leo Laporte, formerly of The Screensavers. Before Leo began accepting advertisements people would just send him stuff to give away. He would always give the product a plug on the show and thank them for the merchandise. Devo's plan was to do this with a technology-themed comedy album.
Technobabble was released in 2006 and featured songs by DaVinci's Notebook, Tom Smith, The Gothsicles, Logan Whitehurst, The Arrogant Worms, Luke Ski, Worm Quartet, and a brand new song by Sudden Death. Devo contacted Leo and plans were made to ship 30 CDs to the show. Devo waited with baited breath for the episode where the CDs would be featured, hoping he would maybe end the show by playing a song, but it never came. The show after the CDs arrived has gone down in history as one of the worst, most unlistenable episodes of TWiT ever. It was recorded live in an Apple store and there was so much background noise that it was hard to listen to the panel. Leo never mentioned the CDs and never played a song. While Tom doesn't hold a grudge and continues to listen to TWiT it was disappointing. Regardless, the album did fairly well in the comedy-music circles.
No one seems to remember the origin of the phrase "God hates comedy musicians" but the standard example that Devo shares is the story of the second Oddfest.
The first Oddfest took place in 2003 as mentioned above, and was not exactly a resounding success. The show drew only 17 people to the event, yet with a supportive audience and strong merch sales the bands all walked away with a little money in their pockets. In 2006 Devo decided to try to do it again.
Devo found a venue in New York City that was open to the idea of having the event there. It was a restaurant with a small stage in the back. Devo went there ahead of time to hand out post cards promoting the event. Worm quartet returned for a second round and Devo also invited comedian Joshua Grosvent to perform. And to top it off he got Red Peters to host the event.
The day of the show there was a foiled terrorist attack. Agencies in the US and Great Britain stopped a plot to blow up multiple planes as they crossed the Atlantic. As a result planes were grounded, traffic was a nightmare, and nobody left their houses. Then, shortly before the show was to start, the biggest thunderstorm Devo had ever seen ripped through New York City and the streets cleared. When the dust settled the acts ended up performing in front of the just seven people who happened to be in the restaurant anyway. Nobody came to the show and Devo vowed never to produce another live event, a vow he would break in 2014.
Earlier in 2006 Devo Spice and Worm Quartet were both booked at a convention in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania called CONvergence. Comedy-musician and web comics author Rob Balder was also booked, as was Jonathan Coulton, who was about half-way done with his Thing-A-Week project.
At one point during the weekend Devo, Rob, and Jonathan were sitting on a panel and nobody showed up. So the three of them took the hour to talk about their crafts and their plans. Being a web comics author, Rob was familiar with the free content model—the idea that you give away some content for free, build an audience, and figure out how to monetize it later. Web comics had been doing this successfully for years. During the discussion it occurred to Rob that Jonathan Coulton was successfully doing this with music. He was writing and recording a new song every week and releasing it for free. He was gaining fans and building and audience which he would later monetize very successfully.
After CONvergence Rob began making plans for a web site that would mirror Coulton's business model, but instead of just being one artist it would feature multiple comedy musicians. Knowing that Devo had the know-how to create and run the web site Rob invited him to be a part of it later that year. Devo stepped into the role of project manager for the site, designed and programmed the web site, figured out the monetization, and set up all the back end to make it work, including CD production, accounting, royalty payments, etc. Other artists were also invited including Luke Ski, Tom Smith, Raymond and Scum, and Worm Quartet.
After tossing around several ideas for this web site Tom Smith finally suggested "The Funny Music Project" and once the group realized the name could shorted to "The FuMP" they decided it was the perfect name and on January 2, 2007 The FuMP was launched.
The original idea behind The FuMP was to have a Core group of artists (the ones listed above) who would take turns submitting songs to the site. There would be additional Auxiliary artists who would fill in any gaps in the schedule, but initially the Core artists were supposed to be submitting one new song to the site every month. With this new series of deadlines under his belt Devo Spice went to work and asked his old Sudden Death partner Thom if he'd be willing to help out more often with the music. His first song was "Cellular Degeneration," a song he had premiered at a performance at Dragon*Con a few months before.
That year saw a new Sudden Death song almost every month for the entire year and many of them were hits. Big hits. "Cellular Degenration" hit #1 on the Funny Five in March. "Pillagers" hit #1 in July. "Getting Old Sucks" also hit #1 in July, and "Blood, Guts, and Boobs" hit #2 in July. "World Robot Domination" was featured on the This Week in Science compilation, and "My Atari" became a hit on a popular podcast called The Awful Show. At the end of the year Sudden Death had the #1 most requested song of the year ("Cellular Degeneration"), the #2 most requested song of the year ("Getting Old Sucks"), the #4 most requested song of the year ("Pillagers"), and Devo Spice was a featured vocalist on song #5 ("Anorexiac" by Seamonkey). Devo just missed having the #1, #2, and #3 song of the year by one week when "99 Words for Boobs" by Robert Lund and Spaff.com (another FuMP song) squeaked in at the last possible minute and gave that song enough points to take the #3 slot.
By early 2008 Devo had enough songs to release another album and Fatal Error was released in March. This album was widely heralded as Devo's best album to date. However, with the increased popularity came an issue that Devo could no longer ignore. The name Sudden Death was beginning to hold him back.
Some time after the release of Fatal Error Devo found a very confusing review online. Someone had asked if this was the same band that had done another release. The other release was a heavy metal album, so obviously it wasn't, but both groups used the name Sudden Death. Devo also knew of at least one other band using the name Sudden Death as they had friended him on MySpace a few years earlier. They were a death metal band from Florida and they and Devo quickly became fans of each other's work and joked about going on tour together. Additionally, as Devo performed out more and sent around press kits showing photos of other people besides Devo he began to get some push back by club owners and bookers who were expecting a group to show up instead of just Devo and a laptop.
In 2008, coming off of his biggest year ever, he contemplated dropping the name Sudden Death and just moving forward as Devo Spice. At this point he began kicking himself for not doing this back in 1990 when he had the chance. Having one song played on The Dr. Demento Show is one thing. Having the #1, #2, and #4 song all in one year is another. And throwing away all that branding really hurt. Devo asked his fans and peers for advice with the matter, with the overwhelming majority of them agreeing that he should go forward with the change. Even Dr. Demento weighed in and said he thought it was a good idea. So in August of 2008 he made it official. The web site was updated, the URL was changed to DevoSpice.com, and everything was rebranded. Devo had previously released three songs to The FuMP since the release of Fatal Error and decided to rebrand those too. All songs after Fatal Error would be credited to Devo Spice. And thus, he basically started over.
Throughout 2008 Devo continued to release songs to The FuMP and, as he describes it, things just clicked. He went from "Yeah, we're a group but it's really just me, there are guys who help with music and background vocals and stuff but I perform solo and do most of the work" to "I'm Devo Spice and I do comedy rap." It was much easier to explain and to brand. He felt as though a weight had been lifted off of him.
Devo continued to tour aggressively through 2008 and worked through the name change seemlessly. Unfortunately in 2009, the shit hit the fan in his personal life.
Despite Devo's relative success in comedy music, he never made enough money to quit his day job. Thankfully his jobs were amenable to giving him time off for shows and he was often able to work on songs on lunch breaks. In 2004 he began working for a small pharmaceutical marketing agency in New Jersey and was still there in 2009 when things got bad. The housing market crashed and a major recession hit. As a result Tom's boss at his day job had to cut his hours. Additionally, they had found an error in his deductions that resulted in them not taking enough money out of his paycheck for the health insurance premiums. In one paycheck Tom's pay dropped 45%. The Rockwell family went from "Getting by, but not having much extra money" to "oh crap."
Tom and Jen immediately put their house on the market and he began looking for a new job, but both the housing market and job market were terrible. It was over a year before Tom found another job that restored his income to what it was before the cut, and it was a full 2 1/2 years before they were able to sell their house. They are still paying off the debt incurred during this period.
The stress of the whole situation took its toll on Devo's music production which slipped considerably. However, he still managed to score a hit in 2009 when he teamed up with Luke Ski to record "Platform Wars." This was a battle rap between the I'm a Mac and the I'm a PC guys from Apple's popular series of commercials. This song hit #2 on Dr. Demento's monthly countdown in August and ended up the 4th most requested song of the year. (Dr. Demento changes from a weekly countdown to a monthly countdown in 2008. Devo likes to say it's because Sudden Death broke the countdown in 2007.) You'll note it was in 2009 that Devo recorded "Lean Christmas," a highly autobiographical song about trying to provide a memorial Christmas for your kids when you don't have any money.
It wasn't until 2011 that Devo was able to get another album done. Gnome Sane? was released on April 1, 2011, and in an attempt to try to promote the album Devo took a page from some of his author friends.
Years of attending science fiction conventions allowed him to become friends with some authors, including Mur Lafferty, J.C. Hutchins, and Christiana Ellis. They all podcasted their work, as did Devo, but they also did what they called "Amazon rushes." The idea was if all their fans bought the books on Amazon on the same day it would go up the charts and be more visible for people who are just browsing. Devo decided to try this with his album and the iTunes charts. He offered a free bonus album called Nah Meen? to anyone who purchased Gnome Sane? on iTunes on the day of its release. Devo wasn't expecting it to work, but it did. Gnome Sane? climbed the Hip Hop charts and peaked at #28. Devo managed to grab a screenshot showing the brief moment in time when he was higher on the charts than Kanye West, a screenshot he shows off with pride.
In 2012 Devo Spice decided he wanted to go back and revisit his Sudden Death catalog and put out a Best Of compilation. The idea was a 2-CD set. CD 1 would be songs from the most recent 3 albums and CD 2 would be songs from the first four. To fund this project he turned to Kickstarter to raise the $1500 needed to produce the CDs, bonus materials, and have some of the old songs remixed and remastered. The campaign was a much bigger success than he had anticipated, raising over $4800 for the project.
Rhythms from the Crypt - The Best of Sudden Death was released in June of 2013 after a few production delays. It turned out working with old technology was harder than anticpated.
Songs from the last two albums, Fatal Error and Die Laughing, were untouched from their released versions with one exception. "Ozzman" was completely re-recorded from scratch with the help of comedy musician Steve Goodie. Since the songs on Fatal Accident Zone had never been properly mastered Devo decided to take this opportunity to do new mixes and a proper mastering for the album, but the universe had other ideas. Those songs were recorded on the digital 8-track and then backed up to an external drive. This drive was dead. Attempts to recover any data were unsuccessful, and as a last resort Jeff Morris—who was helping Tom with the old files—handed the drive over to a professional recovery service. They quoted $3500 just to attempt to recover the data with no guarantee they would be able to get anything, so Devo decided to cut his losses and move on. The songs from Fatal Accident Zone were mastered from the final mix downs, but that's all that could be done with them.
Devo still had the original 4-track tapes from all the old Sudden Death recordings, plus the original "masters" of the pre-4-track tapes, so he was able to work with these more. Jeff digitized all the tapes for Tom who then mixed and mastered them, cleaning them up as much as possible in the process. Still, there's only so much that can be done with a poorly-recorded audio cassette from 1992, but the songs sound as good as they ever will.
Additionally, a few songs were updated for the new release. Besides "Ozzman," "South Park Junkie" was also updated. When that song was first released there were only 6 episodes of South Park in existence. At the time of this writing (November 2018) the show is still in production making new episodes. Devo figured it was a good idea to add another verse to the song to reference some of the more recent South Park developments. Oddly, Devo swears he remembers hearing a mix of "South Bronx" that contained a third verse but he was never able to find it, so he just added a third verse.
"The Mouth," which was featured on Dr. Demento a few times in 1998, was extended to include some additional rants. This song features Mr. Zipp rambling on and on throughout the song. When the song was originally made Mr. Zipp sent Devo more verses than he had requested so he could pick and choose what he wanted. Devo still had the tape so he included some extra rants in this extended mix.
Finally, "My Doctor's a Quack," a parody of "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-A-Lot, was completely redone. The reason for this was the original music on the 4-track tapes was damaged due to some erroneous back masking that was being done for another song. On the original you can hear the music drastically change because the valley girl's voice had already been mixed in with the music before it was damaged, and then the music had to be recreated from scratch, so it didn't sound the same.
Certain Kickstarter backers also got an exclusive digital Volume 3, which featured songs Devo wanted to include on volumes 1 and 2, but couldn't because there wasn't room. This included a newly updated version of "I'm Bored" called "I'm Still Bored," which was recorded with his cohorts from Cirque du So What. As a joke, Devo also redid a very early, very cheesy Sudden Death song called "That's the Type of Pie," a parody of "I'm That Type of Guy" by L.L. Cool J. Luke Ski also parodied this song and lent Devo the use of his backing track for the updated parody because they were amused by the idea of producing a really good version of a really bad song.
For a period in 2012 Devo found himself unemployed and took the opportunity to focus on more music. He began a project he referred to as his Ridiculous Raps. He would ask on social media for a ridiculous song topic, pick one that inspired him, write a song, and film himself recording it. He did one every week for about two months in late 2012 and came up with several very amusing songs including "CUPCAKES!" (suggested by Carrie Dahlby) and "Shaving Desires" (suggested by TV's Kyle, whose original suggestion was "There's a blueberry flavored marmot who lives in my kneecap and grants my shaving desires.)
Devo did about ten of these before he returned to the workforce and his new two-and-a-half-hour-each-way commute really ate into any time he had to do anything else.
As a child Devo Spice was a huge fan of the British science fiction show Doctor Who. He discovered the show when he was around 10 and became fascinated with it, as did his father. Devo had done one Doctor Who song in 2005 when the show came back but wanted to do another one since the show had become a hit and was going so well. So in late 2011 he released a song titled "I Am The Doctor." Shortly thereafter he realized that the 50th anniversary of the show was coming up and he came up with the idea of a Doctor Who concept album.
The plan was to do one song for each incarnation of The Doctor, and then use "I Am The Doctor" as the title track. And since the previous Kickstarter had worked out so well he turned to Kickstarter again to produce this album. That campaign ended just shy of 200% funded.
As the album was being produced Devo Spice was booked as a guest at a convention in Virginia called MystiCon where Sylvester McCoy—the actor who played the 7th Doctor—had also been booked. At some point the chair of the con emailed Devo and the other musical acts who were performing to say that Sylvester wanted to do something with the bands at opening ceremonies. Sylvester is well-known for playing the spoons, and the possibility of getting an actual Doctor on the album ran through Devo's mind. So preliminary arrangements were made to do a song of some kind during opening ceremonies. Unfortunately Sylvester had to cancel his appearance at the con, but he was replaced by Peter Davison, the 5th Doctor. Since Devo already had it in his mind that he was getting a Doctor on the album he emailed the con chair asking if they could still do something at opening ceremonies. She said yes and that was that. Apparently the con chair never ran this by Peter because Devo overheard her explaining what he wanted done right before opening ceremonies. Thankfully Peter was OK with it and during opening ceremonies Devo debuted "Companion Application" with Peter Davison sitting next to him on stage. Then at the end of the song Devo turned to Peter and asked "So what do you say, Doctor? Can I come along?" And Peter skillfully said the line "No. I've already had one treacherous redhead in the TARDIS. I don't need another." Devo wasn't able to get a clean recording of this so it's possible to hear the audience's reaction to the line on the song, but with Peter Davison secured as a guest appearance on the album Devo set off to contact other actors from the show.
The first person he contacted was Katy Manning who played the companion Jo Grant opposite the 3rd Doctor. The two had a history and Devo hoped she would remember him. Thankfully she did. Devo had performed at a convention in Springfield Massachusetts where Katy was a guest and Katy had accidentally introduced him as "Dr. Demento" instead of saying "as heard on Dr. Demento." Katy agreed to sing on the 3rd Doctor's song "Carnival of Monsters."
Devo tried contacting a few other people but didn't have any luck until he approached Sophie Aldred who played the companion Ace opposite the 7th Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, who started this whole thing. Sophie agreed to do a spoken bit in the middle of the seventh Doctor's song "The Regeneration." Unfortunately, due to a miscommunication, Devo wasn't able to get Sylvester McCoy on a song, although he found out later that Sylvester was open to the idea of appearing on the song.
I Am The Doctor was supposed to have been released on November 23, 2013; the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. Unfortunately it wasn't ready, which was really unfortunate as Devo had booked a gig in Brooklyn for the release party. The album was finally released in February of 2014.
Devo Spice wasn't the only person doing Kickstarters for his comedy music. Both Worm Quartet and Luke Ski had run successful Kickstarters for various projects. Luke Ski in particular had an interesting stretch goal. He made his initial goal of $1750 in less than 24 hours, so set a stretch goal of $5500 and said if he makes it he will put on an event called LukeSkiCon exclusively for the backers. Thanks to one generous donor in particular—who paid to have Luke fly out and mow his lawn—LukeSkiCon happened in June of 2013.
Since the beginning of The FuMP the group had talked about having their own convention. A festival of FuMP music, or a FuMPFest, if you will. However, in 2007 Devo was still reeling from the effects of the failed attempt at The Oddfest from the previous year so he didn't really see any way this could happen. LukeSkiCon provided a trial run for a FuMPFest and, believing that a FuMP convention was possible, decided to take the reigns and make it happen.
With the help of Luke Ski and several very active volunteers the first FuMPFest took place in Wheeling Illinois in 2014 with Dr. Demento as the guest of honor. There were performances by Devo Spice, Luke Ski, Worm Quartet, Robert Lund, Tim Cavanagh, Garden Fresh, Dan Hart, Phil Johnson, Tom Smith, Seamonkey, and more. Meep Morp Studios was on hand to talk about the Dr. Demento documentary they were producing and also to do some extra filming. The event didn't quite break even, but it made enough money that Devo was convinced that the event could continue.
FuMPFest has evolved a bit but it has happened every year since and will continue to happen for as long as Devo can continue to pull it off.
Devo Spice actually released two albums in 2014. Since I Am The Doctor was late that came out in 2014, and Devo planned the release of his follow-up to Gnome Sane? for 2014 as well. Herp Derp Ya Don't Sterp was released in December of 2014. This album included four of his favorite Ridiculous Raps, many of the songs from The FuMP that he had been posting, a couple commissioned songs, and even a cover.
Devo was home with his kids watching Phineas and Ferb one day when the distinct sounds of rap music began emanating from the television. Devo cringed and prepared for the worst, having grown up in an era of rapping Barbie commercials and Fruity Pebbles ads which were universally terrible. Devo was pleasantly surprised when he heard what turned out to be "There's a Platypus Controlling Me." It was surprisingly well put together and genuinely funny. So when MarsCon came along and Devo performed in the annual Dementia Smackdown where artists usually perform covers of some kind he decided to cover this song. A video of that performance was uploaded to YouTube and Phineas and Ferb creator Dan Povenmire (who was also the voice of Dr. Doofenshmirtz) saw it and commented saying he loved it. He later linked to Devo's Bandcamp page once the album was out.
The first track on Herp Derp Ya Don't Sterp is a parody of "Thrift Shop" by Macklemore called "Snack Bar." This song was nominated for a Logan Award for Outstanding Parody Song in 2015 and it was The Arrogant Worms who were on stage at FuMPFest that year announcing the winners who called Devo's name, much to his surprise. "Weird Al" Yankovic was also nominated that year, so Devo was really surprised to win.
"Snack Bar" features Chris Mezzolesta on backing vocals and music by Ben Stahl, who also did the music for Insane Ian's parody of the same song. In fact, after hearing Ian's parody Devo said "hey Ian, can I have that music?" Since Ben had already done all the work it seemed foolish to do it again, so Devo ended up using the same backing track as Ian. "Snack Bar" also features a cameo by Devo's then-seven-year-old son Jeremy with mouth full of goldfish crackers. This was not the first time Devo had been nominated for a Logan Award, but it was the first time he actually won.
The Logan Whitehurst Memorial Awards for Excellence in Comedy Music were started in 2011 to help try to bring some legitimacy to comedy music and also pay tribute to Logan Whitehurst, a brilliant and funny musician who died of cancer while still in his twenties. The award is presented each year in three categories: Outstanding Original Comedy Song, Outstanding Parody Song, and Outstanding Comedy Music Video. For more infomation about The Logan Awards visit LoganAwards.com.
In late 2015 Devo's good friend Shoebox of Worm Quartet made one of his random/silly/funny posts on Facebook and it lead to one of Devo's most popular songs to date. He posted this on Devo's Facebook wall:
"Your name is now Dinky McDiddlyboots. I apologize for the inconvenience."
At first Devo wasn't sure how to respond, but quickly decided the best response would be a song. Devo and Shoebox were both scheduled to perform at Con on the Cob the following month so Devo decided to premiere his song live at the event in front of Shoebox. Devo's performance as well as Shoebox's reaction to it were both filmed at Con on the Cob and used in the music video which came out a short time later. "Dinky McDiddlyboots" continues to be a fan favorite at live shows, even if few people can remember its actual title.
On April 23rd, 2016 Devo Spice celebrated 30 years of doing comedy-rap. That was the anniversary of the day he leaned over to Dave and Scott on the bus heading home from junior high and said "hey, we should form a rap group" and they said "OK." And the rest is history... that you're reading right now on this page.
Devo celebrated by putting up the original eight Sudden Death albums on a separate BandCamp page. This includes all the original mixes in their 4-track hiss-filled glory. The original CDs and cassettes that Devo had been selling are long gone, so this is the only way the albums are currently available—the first five, anyway. There are still some CDs availble of Fatal Error, Die Laughing, and Fatal Accident Zone. The first five albums aren't even on any of the streaming platforms, nor should they be.
Over the next couple of years Devo Spice continued working on new music, his podcasts, and performing live. It was around this time when he first started performing with Psychostick, the comedy-metal band from Chicago. And it was at the end of 2016 that "Nothin' But Truth," Devo's parody of "Nothin' on You" that he did with Bonecage, squeaked onto Dr. Demento's Funny 25, coming in at #23 for the year. Then in January of 2018 Devo finally announced the long-overdue overhaul to this very website, with a new design, updated content, and a mobile-friendly layout.
At MarsCon in 2017 Devo Spice premiered a new original song called "Just for You" to uproarious laughter from the crowd. This song quickly became a fan favorite and he has been closing out his live shows with this song ever since. In 2018 Devo released an official music video for the song with some help from the Reformed Whores. Katy plays the subject of Devo's affection. Marie is the one who plots their revenge. And long time fan Will Frank plays Devo's wingman. The video was shot on location at QED Astoria in Queens, New York where Devo has performed several times with Rob Paravonian.
Since the song came out in 2017 it was eligible for the 2018 Logan Awards which were presented at FuMPFest that year. The song won the award for Outstanding Original Comedy Song.
2018 was also when Devo decided to try to improve the between song banter in his act by taking stand-up comedy classes. The classes were offered at Scotty's Comedy Cove in Springfield, New Jersey. Devo actually took two sets of classes there, the beginner class and then the advanced class. Both classes offered a showcase at the end of the session which was a live show at Scotty's. At one Devo did just stand-up comedy. At the other he did half stand-up comedy and then performed "Just for You." The experience did help Devo with his joke writing and stand-up comedy which did help with his between song banter. Plus, he made a few industry contacts and a couple new friends, at least on Facebook. Devo isn't planning to give up rap and switch over to stand-up comedy just yet. He just wants his stage show to be the best it can possibly be.
Almost five years had passed since Devo released a full album, yet he was continuing to record music in all that time, so he had a lot of material already done. Then Luke Ski asked Devo to be the Music Guest of Honor at MarsCon in 2019 and Devo figured this was as good an excuse as any to release a new album. In fact, it was probably necessary.
The end result was The Anarchist's Jokebook. This album includes sixteen tracks of new comedy rap songs, both parodies and originals. The album included "Dinky McDiddlyboots," "Nothin' but Truth," "Just for You," three Stupid Rap Battles, a new Ridiculous Rap song, a new Doctor Who song, and a 1983-sounding epic old school rap song about Stranger Things. It also included three full bonus albums—one album of bonus songs that didn't make it onto the album, and two albums of commentary tracks. Oh, and it also included "Spider Verses."
Two weeks before the deadline to get the album into production Devo came up with an ambitious idea for a new song. He wanted to do a big group jam about the Sony Animation movie Into the Spider-Verse where each character in the movie is portrayed by a different rapper on the song. The question was could he produce such a monster of a song in such a short amount of time? The answer was a resounding yes! Devo took the first verse as the original Peter Parker. Creative Mind Frame aka 1-Up took the second verse as Miles Morales, the main character of the movie. Long-time Spider Man fan Insane Ian took the third verse as Peter B. Parker. Bonnie Gordon of The Library bards took the fourth verse as Gwen Stacey. Animator Kyle Carrozza, aka TV's Kyle, followed her with a verse as Spider Ham. LEX the Lexicon Artist took the fourth verse as Peni Parker. And finally, the great Luke Ski wrapped things up as Spider-Man Noir. Chris Mezzolesta recreated the music from the original TV show theme and Devo remixed it over a beat. The end result is one of Devo's greatest songs and biggest hits.
The song was an immediate hit with fans as well as on The Dr. Demento Show, going to #1 in March of 2019, the same month that Devo was Music Guest of Honor at MarsCon and when the album was released. The song continued strong, ending up #2 in both April and May. This was enough to make "Spider Verses" the #1 most requested song of 2019 on The Dr. Demento Show! This was Devo's third time at #1, not counting his appearance on Luke Ski's song "Peter Parker" in 2002.
While at MarsCon in 2019 Devo and the other acts who were there filmed some footage for a video for "Spider Verses," however technical difficulties delayed its production. Most notably, they didn't have a green screen, so they were filming on a white bedsheet, and Bonnie's Spider Gwen costume was also white, making it impossible to key out. The video was finally released in 2020 and in 2021 it won the Logan Award for Oustanding Comedy Music Video.
2020 was a rough year for everyone, literally. There wasn't a person on the planet who wasn't affected in some way or other by the pandemic. (OK, maybe those tribal people on that island that kill everyone who approaches it weren't affected, but that's about it.) During the lockdown Devo had fits and spurts of creativity, followed by periods of numbly staring at the wall doing nothing but a little drooling. Thankfully the creative spurts proved productive.
One of the songs inspired by the pandemic was "Zoom Meeting," a parody of "Rump Shaker" about how all of a sudden everyone was video conferencing on Zoom. Devo had been using Zoom for several years for the FuMPCast after a forced Skype upgrade made it unusable on Devo's machine. So watching the rest of the world adopt this platform was interesting. The song features vocals by Insane Ian and the great Luke Ski and while it wasn't a hit on The Dr. Demento Show (it was only played once) it did win the 2021 Logan Award for Oustanding Parody Song. This is Devo's fourth Logan to date.
The other big song to come out of the pandemic had nothing to do with the pandemic and everything to do with the most popular rap song of 2020. Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion had a controvercial hit song with "WAP" and one day Devo realized if he kept the chorus the same and just changed the topic of the song to be about cats he could have a really good parody on his hands. The result was "WAPC (Wet-Ass Pussy Cat)" which went on to be the 4th most requested song of 2020 on The Dr. Demento Show.
As with most other events in 2020 FuMPFest was canceled and became a 100% virtual event. Devo, being the Chair of FuMPFest, had always wanted to get the Consortium of Genius to the event, but they have a rather large production and moving out of New Orleans is difficult for them. So Devo took this opportunity to make them a part of FuMPFest. Under the guise of Devo having a concert at the online event the COG "hacked" the stream and put on their own concert. Devo still hopes to get them to FuMPFest in person some day, but at least they were a part of it somehow thanks to the virtual
2020 was supposed to be the big FuMPFest celebration of Dr. Demento's 50th anniversary, since he started using the name in October of 1970. But with the pandemic that was all canceled and postponed until 2021. Thankfully in 2021 the pandemic eased up enough for FuMPFest to happen in person and Dr. Demento was on hand to celebrate in person. The anniversary works either way, as it was 1971 when Dr. Demento's show broke off into its own separate program for the first time, rather than being a segment on another show.
While the event was a success with the fans, financially it was a disaster. This was the first event the hotel held since reopening and they decided to gouge the organizers for every penny they could. Things that were quoted at $750 came in at $3250 when the final bill was received. Several charges like that resulted in an $11,000 loss for the event, so Devo decided he would not do FuMPFest again until that debt was paid off. As such, there was no event in 2022. But there was hope for 2023.
With no plans for FuMPFest on the horizon, Insane Ian needed a place to host the Logan Awards for 2023. Devo suggested he reach out to Andy Hopp who runs Con on the Cob. The Logan Awards started at Con on the Cob and Devo figured Andy would be open to having them back. Ian reached out to Andy who said "Why don't you just have FuMPFest at Con on the Cob?" So that became the plan.
In 2023 FuMPFest was held in conjunction with Con on the Cob and played host to Ogden Edsl as the guest of honor. If you don't know that name they are the ones who sang "Dead Puppies," one of the most popular songs of all time on the Dr. Demento Show. In 2024 FuMPFest was finally able to get the Consortium of Genius out for a live performance.
Merging with Con on the Cob was a temporary solution and we knew that going into it. We are grateful to Andy Hopp and the rest of the staff for allowing us to do this but decided after the 2024 event that we should take some time off, regroup, and see how we want to present the convention going forward. So for the time being FuMPFest is on hiatus.
Shortly before lockdown Tony Goldmark launched a podcast called Escape from Vault Disney where he and a panel of rotating guests watch something at random on Disney+ and then talk about it. This quickly became one of Devo's favorite podcasts and, in fact, he was asked to be a guest on the show several times. At one point, someone on the show mentioned doing a spinoff and this triggered an idea in Devo's head, which is always a dangerous thing. Devo realized he could do the same thing but with horror movies so in late 2024, with Tony's blessing, he launched Random Acts of Horror.
The format is exactly the same as Escape from Vault Disney. One of the guests picks something at random, they all watch it, then come back to talk about it. Devo has set up a Patreon for people who want to support the podcast and had Tony Goldmark on the first episode to acknowledge his inspiration for the show.
As of this writing, Devo Spice is currently in the early stages of planning his next album, working on launching a website for his low run CD production company, working on the script for a mockumentary, and planning his next short film shoot. So, he's keeping busy as always.
Devo Spice continues to release songs on The FuMP, perform at conventions across the country, and chair FuMPFest, and will continue to do so for as long as his sanity holds out. If you are interested in booking, interviewing, or contacting Devo Spice for any reason you can contact him here.
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