Live Review: Devo, Bow Wow Wow

Live Review: Devo, Bow Wow Wow

Devo, Seagulls and Bow Wow Wow revisit synth pop of the Reagan years: Aidin Vaziri | The last time any of the headliners -- Devo, Bow Wow Wow and A Flock of Seagulls -- bothered the charts, people were still trying to outwit Donkey Kong by jumping over flaming barrels. Accordingly, you could count on one finger all the people under 30 in the room. At the beginning of the evening, as minor New Wave footnotes Animotion and When In Rome played their lean cache of hits to a largely empty hall, there was the unfortunate whiff of an actual John Hughes high school dance. This feeling was compounded by the fact that not all the mullets and shoulder pads in the audience were meant to be ironic. Things picked up soon enough. A Flock of Seagulls front man Mike Score has traded in his once aerodynamic mane (along with most of his original bandmates) for a simple ponytail and baseball cap, and led the group through its surprisingly durable confections such as "Wishing (I Had a Photograph of You)" and "Space Age Love Song." Bow Wow Wow, meanwhile, sounded and looked as ferocious as when it first appeared on "Top of the Pops" in 1982. Opening with a cover of the Smiths' "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish," the group unfurled its trademark tribal drums and wild banshee wails. Devo closed out the night with the only set that stretched past the hour mark. Wearing its bright yellow anti-nuclear-waste protective suits and red energy-dome hats, the group updated its clinical computer hits such as "Peek-A-Boo!" and "Whip It" with metal guitars and contemporary political commentary. At one point, a man in an Osama bin Laden costume tiptoed across the stage. "You can't have Halloween without the bogeyman," said front man Mark Mothersbaugh.