Devo - Nitrous Nightmare (2026)

 

I loves me some Devo, but it's difficult to ignore that their posthumous archival releases now outnumber the formal studio albums. Said posthumous archival releases have mostly ranged from great to amazing but I'm beginning to wonder how much more of this stuff is yet to come, how much remains to be pressed on four, six, or eight sides of collectible splatter effect vinyl.

Nitrous Nightmare captures a 1975 live performance notable for Devo clearing the room of its generally indifferent and occasionally hostile audience, most of whom had expected moderate rockers playing sixties faves in preface to the happier sounds of the Sun Ra Arkestra. We've already heard the highlights on The Mongoloid Years but here's the set in full, complete with awkward silence in lieu of applause. The sleeve notes are fascinating for the sake of context, although the recording does little to capture the reputed tension. Aside from Hardore era songs played and recorded reasonably well, there's a lot of silence, an occasional joke cracked at the expense of an indifferent audience, and not a whole lot else besides a vague sense of confusion. The account describes a doubtless flared and hirsute gentleman from the audience expressing his concerns by snatching the microphone during Jocko Homo to answer Mark's question with the proposal that, You're not men, you're fucking assholes, which I'm sure was high drama on the night but you struggle to hear it on the recording. This leaves us with a lot of silence, some actual applause contrary to the claims, and versions of songs that sounded better on Hardcore Devo. Yay.

I'd say this would have made more sense as a bootleg cassette, or as a CD occupying the same ecosystem as a bootleg cassette; but of course it's also a CD so it's my fault for buying the double vinyl and no-one held a gun to my head. All the same, it's Devo so I don't regret the purchase in any sense but there's a limit to how many previously unreleased live recordings I need. I appreciate the guys still have to make a living and I certainly don't begrudge them doing so, but surely there's still some studio material right down in the bottom of that barrel - maybe that which was recorded as the Wipeouters or Dove*, or even more solo Jerry. Nitrous Nightmare isn't a bad album by any description, but regardless of whatever happened on the night, it's more an underwhelming dream than anything.

Also for what it may be worth, I've been in bands that cleared every single person from the room by the third song, so it doesn't seem that big a deal. You can still hear faint applause and appreciative whistles on side four of this one.

*: Assuming these haven't already been shoved out on green quadruple vinyl.