ƒ®@nK panű©©I
2005-03-29 16:40:05 UTC
Excuse if this has already been posted. Verizon's mail and news are
screwed up this morning.
http://www.newsobserver.com/lifestyles/story/2261615p-8641132c.html
Devo fan collects artifacts
Raleigh fan goes devo-obsesso for socio-roboto band from Ohio
Michael Pilmer knows more about Devo than you do -- much more. The
38-year-old's hobby has grown into a collection with thousands of items.
Encyclopedic knowledge made Pilmer a natural choice as Web master for
the band's fan site.
Staff Photos by Juli Leonard
By ELLEN SUNG, Staff Writer
RALEIGH -- The little white house in Oakwood doesn't look like a shrine.
But step through the door and into Michael Pilmer's world.
Gaze in awe at the massive autographed poster of Devo above the dining
room table, the authentic Devo concert costumes, the Devo pins and
shirts and ephemera carefully arrayed throughout the house.
Yes, here in Raleigh, half a block from Oakwood Cemetery, is the
planet's biggest collection of artifacts from the band best known for
the 1980 hit "Whip It."
"It's the ADD that keeps me going, I guess," says Pilmer, 38, a tall,
lanky redhead (it's dyed) in a homemade T-shirt with Mickey Mouse
sitting on a toilet. "I'm definitely kind of obsessive, so I just
figured I would channel that into one thing."
In some ways, he's a prototypical Devo-tee, the kind of geeky,
reflective guy who has special shelves built for his vinyl collection.
Standing before the floor-to-ceiling "Devo shrine" that occupies half a
spare bedroom, he tugs out a four-inch stack of vinyl from a shelf.
"Do you see that?" he says. "That's not every Devo album. That's every
pressing of one single album."
Most drooling fanatics tend to inspire fear -- or at least trepidation
-- from the objects of their affection. Pilmer has become part of the
family.
He is the band's official archivist (www.devo-obsesso.com) and its
Webmaster (www.clubdevo.com), working from the house he shares with his
cat, Booper. And when Devo lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh decided three
years ago to begin showing visual art in galleries after a decadelong
hiatus, he hired Pilmer to book the shows. (One is currently on view at
Temple Ball Gallery in Carrboro.)
"He actually took it far enough that he became part of it," Mothersbaugh
said. "At this point, he's kind of like the sixth Devo."
Maybe if his friends had listed their phone numbers, it would have
turned out differently.
One day in the early 1990s, Pilmer was bored, stuck at home with the
flu, and he began thinking of old friends from his native Ohio. He
dialed directory assistance with name after name, but no luck.
Then he started wondering whether anyone from Devo -- one of his
favorite bands since high school -- was still in Ohio. The quintet was
originally from Akron.
He found a Robert Casale and dialed, hoping to reach the guitarist. On
the other end, Casale picked up.
Pilmer explained that he was a big fan of Devo and that his band
Silica-Gel played electronic noise music inspired partly by Devo. Could
he send the CD?
You've got the wrong Bob Casale, the man explained. You want my son in
Los Angeles.
Pilmer felt a little nervous about taking the number, but the man was
friendly, even insistent, Pilmer recalled. He dialed Los Angeles and
wound up chatting with Casale's wife, Lisa, for more than an hour. The
next summer, when Pilmer and a friend visited Los Angeles, the Casales
offered them a place to stay.
As he drove up to the house, Pilmer said, Lisa Casale came running down
the driveway carrying a band costume she had rescued from a junk pile.
He recognized it at once: the silvery leather suits that Devo had worn
with red plastic "energy dome" hats on the cover of "Freedom of Choice."
She wanted him to take it before it got hauled off.
Pilmer already had a small trove of Devo wares. After meeting the
Casales, "I got more rabid," he said.
Getting rabid
Pilmer's affinity for Devo is easy to understand. The band wore
outrageous get-ups and mocked society. Pilmer's world is built around a
good-natured, amped-up version of the same subversiveness.
His girlfriend, J.B. Popplewell of Los Angeles, runs the Moist Towelette
Museum (www.moist-towelette.com), a site whose title more or less
explains itself. His friends include neighbor Skip Elsheimer, an
obsessive collector of vintage educational films and mastermind of the
A/V Geeks night at Kings Barcade.
Elsheimer has known Pilmer since college at N.C. State University.
"At the time, there were a bunch of 'Party Naked' shirts," Elsheimer
said. "He wore this shirt that said, 'Party Dead.' "
Mothersbaugh said he was wary of Pilmer when they first met. But over
the years, the band members became impressed with his incredible recall
and organizational skills. They started giving him collectibles.
Eventually, they were calling to ask for images or trivia.
"He collected stuff at a rate that kind of was amusing, but I also
thought, 'That's kind of nice that somebody was paying attention,' "
Mothersbaugh said. "When you're an artist and you're creating things and
you're moving forward, you don't always have time to archive things
properly."
Pilmer now owns thousands of Devo objects: tapes, bumper stickers,
shirts, costumes, socks, playlists, fliers, concert tickets, books,
stickers, even earrings.
His collection is so comprehensive that when the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of
Fame needed one of Devo's original costumes, it came from Pilmer. He
didn't have to look long for the suit that Lisa Casale had carried down
the driveway. He had preserved it in a dry cleaning bag in a closet.
Getting stupid
On the phone from Los Angeles, Mothersbaugh sits in an office that bears
Pilmer's unmistakable mark.
Some people leave their mark by scribbling, "I was here." Pilmer
distributes word-bubble stickers that say, "I threw up."
Mothersbaugh has plastered them all over the Mutato offices -- on his
computer, on Devo's record awards, on the Warner Bros. logo.
Mothersbaugh -- who has written music for the movies "The Royal
Tenenbaums" and "Rushmore" -- also pasted a sticker in director Wes
Anderson's bathroom. One is on actor Owen Wilson's bumper. Mothersbaugh
said that after a performance at a San Diego sports arena, he left one
on the glass over a photo of Barbra Streisand backstage.
"I wish I could have gone underneath and put it on the photo,"
Mothersbaugh said. "I remember seeing [the stickers] at first; you
thought they were kind of stupid. ... I've finally become wise enough to
understand how stupid and happy they are at the same time."
A few years after befriending Casale, Pilmer met the other man who
jockeys for the title of biggest Devo geek, Brian Applegate of Portland,
Ore. The two challenged each other to find the weirdest, most obscure
paraphernalia they could.
"It was like, 'Hey, if we are going to be stupid about this, we might as
well be really stupid,' " Pilmer said.
The stupidest thing in the collection?
"Hmm," Pilmer pauses. "There are a lot of stupid things."
He has Bob Casale's monogrammed bathrobe, expired credit cards and
health insurance cards. Lisa Casale once found a dirty sock and sent it
to him in a Ziploc bag, daring him to collect it.
He kept it, of course.
·
·
___________________
www.frankpanucci.com
screwed up this morning.
http://www.newsobserver.com/lifestyles/story/2261615p-8641132c.html
Devo fan collects artifacts
Raleigh fan goes devo-obsesso for socio-roboto band from Ohio
Michael Pilmer knows more about Devo than you do -- much more. The
38-year-old's hobby has grown into a collection with thousands of items.
Encyclopedic knowledge made Pilmer a natural choice as Web master for
the band's fan site.
Staff Photos by Juli Leonard
By ELLEN SUNG, Staff Writer
RALEIGH -- The little white house in Oakwood doesn't look like a shrine.
But step through the door and into Michael Pilmer's world.
Gaze in awe at the massive autographed poster of Devo above the dining
room table, the authentic Devo concert costumes, the Devo pins and
shirts and ephemera carefully arrayed throughout the house.
Yes, here in Raleigh, half a block from Oakwood Cemetery, is the
planet's biggest collection of artifacts from the band best known for
the 1980 hit "Whip It."
"It's the ADD that keeps me going, I guess," says Pilmer, 38, a tall,
lanky redhead (it's dyed) in a homemade T-shirt with Mickey Mouse
sitting on a toilet. "I'm definitely kind of obsessive, so I just
figured I would channel that into one thing."
In some ways, he's a prototypical Devo-tee, the kind of geeky,
reflective guy who has special shelves built for his vinyl collection.
Standing before the floor-to-ceiling "Devo shrine" that occupies half a
spare bedroom, he tugs out a four-inch stack of vinyl from a shelf.
"Do you see that?" he says. "That's not every Devo album. That's every
pressing of one single album."
Most drooling fanatics tend to inspire fear -- or at least trepidation
-- from the objects of their affection. Pilmer has become part of the
family.
He is the band's official archivist (www.devo-obsesso.com) and its
Webmaster (www.clubdevo.com), working from the house he shares with his
cat, Booper. And when Devo lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh decided three
years ago to begin showing visual art in galleries after a decadelong
hiatus, he hired Pilmer to book the shows. (One is currently on view at
Temple Ball Gallery in Carrboro.)
"He actually took it far enough that he became part of it," Mothersbaugh
said. "At this point, he's kind of like the sixth Devo."
Maybe if his friends had listed their phone numbers, it would have
turned out differently.
One day in the early 1990s, Pilmer was bored, stuck at home with the
flu, and he began thinking of old friends from his native Ohio. He
dialed directory assistance with name after name, but no luck.
Then he started wondering whether anyone from Devo -- one of his
favorite bands since high school -- was still in Ohio. The quintet was
originally from Akron.
He found a Robert Casale and dialed, hoping to reach the guitarist. On
the other end, Casale picked up.
Pilmer explained that he was a big fan of Devo and that his band
Silica-Gel played electronic noise music inspired partly by Devo. Could
he send the CD?
You've got the wrong Bob Casale, the man explained. You want my son in
Los Angeles.
Pilmer felt a little nervous about taking the number, but the man was
friendly, even insistent, Pilmer recalled. He dialed Los Angeles and
wound up chatting with Casale's wife, Lisa, for more than an hour. The
next summer, when Pilmer and a friend visited Los Angeles, the Casales
offered them a place to stay.
As he drove up to the house, Pilmer said, Lisa Casale came running down
the driveway carrying a band costume she had rescued from a junk pile.
He recognized it at once: the silvery leather suits that Devo had worn
with red plastic "energy dome" hats on the cover of "Freedom of Choice."
She wanted him to take it before it got hauled off.
Pilmer already had a small trove of Devo wares. After meeting the
Casales, "I got more rabid," he said.
Getting rabid
Pilmer's affinity for Devo is easy to understand. The band wore
outrageous get-ups and mocked society. Pilmer's world is built around a
good-natured, amped-up version of the same subversiveness.
His girlfriend, J.B. Popplewell of Los Angeles, runs the Moist Towelette
Museum (www.moist-towelette.com), a site whose title more or less
explains itself. His friends include neighbor Skip Elsheimer, an
obsessive collector of vintage educational films and mastermind of the
A/V Geeks night at Kings Barcade.
Elsheimer has known Pilmer since college at N.C. State University.
"At the time, there were a bunch of 'Party Naked' shirts," Elsheimer
said. "He wore this shirt that said, 'Party Dead.' "
Mothersbaugh said he was wary of Pilmer when they first met. But over
the years, the band members became impressed with his incredible recall
and organizational skills. They started giving him collectibles.
Eventually, they were calling to ask for images or trivia.
"He collected stuff at a rate that kind of was amusing, but I also
thought, 'That's kind of nice that somebody was paying attention,' "
Mothersbaugh said. "When you're an artist and you're creating things and
you're moving forward, you don't always have time to archive things
properly."
Pilmer now owns thousands of Devo objects: tapes, bumper stickers,
shirts, costumes, socks, playlists, fliers, concert tickets, books,
stickers, even earrings.
His collection is so comprehensive that when the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of
Fame needed one of Devo's original costumes, it came from Pilmer. He
didn't have to look long for the suit that Lisa Casale had carried down
the driveway. He had preserved it in a dry cleaning bag in a closet.
Getting stupid
On the phone from Los Angeles, Mothersbaugh sits in an office that bears
Pilmer's unmistakable mark.
Some people leave their mark by scribbling, "I was here." Pilmer
distributes word-bubble stickers that say, "I threw up."
Mothersbaugh has plastered them all over the Mutato offices -- on his
computer, on Devo's record awards, on the Warner Bros. logo.
Mothersbaugh -- who has written music for the movies "The Royal
Tenenbaums" and "Rushmore" -- also pasted a sticker in director Wes
Anderson's bathroom. One is on actor Owen Wilson's bumper. Mothersbaugh
said that after a performance at a San Diego sports arena, he left one
on the glass over a photo of Barbra Streisand backstage.
"I wish I could have gone underneath and put it on the photo,"
Mothersbaugh said. "I remember seeing [the stickers] at first; you
thought they were kind of stupid. ... I've finally become wise enough to
understand how stupid and happy they are at the same time."
A few years after befriending Casale, Pilmer met the other man who
jockeys for the title of biggest Devo geek, Brian Applegate of Portland,
Ore. The two challenged each other to find the weirdest, most obscure
paraphernalia they could.
"It was like, 'Hey, if we are going to be stupid about this, we might as
well be really stupid,' " Pilmer said.
The stupidest thing in the collection?
"Hmm," Pilmer pauses. "There are a lot of stupid things."
He has Bob Casale's monogrammed bathrobe, expired credit cards and
health insurance cards. Lisa Casale once found a dirty sock and sent it
to him in a Ziploc bag, daring him to collect it.
He kept it, of course.
·
·
___________________
www.frankpanucci.com