If rock’n’roll was a house party, it was the late 70s were that awkward moment arrived and someone carelessly spilled a drink on the stereo just as the neighbours started banging on the shared wall, and everyone realized that what they thought of as ‘grown-up’ music had gone just a wee bit bit beige.
Then two groups kicked the door in.
Devo, and The B52s had arrived to save us from ourselves…and now they are joinging forces to hit the UK with a pair of shows in 2026 that you’d be daft as a brush to miss.
TICKETS HERE (if you are lucky)
One arrived from the grey industrial wilderness of Akron with a concept, a warning siren, and a mission to be more than just a glitch in the system…a plan to subvert the prevailing monoculture with a new dystopian vision. The other floated in frivolously from Athens, Georgia, with thrift-store glamour, surf-guitar hallucinations, and the kind of communal joy that was to light up school disco dancefloors the world over for decades to come.
In 1978, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! landed like a user manual for the end of the world, followed just a year later by The B-52’s, which dropped through the letterbox like a postcard from a disco on Saturn.
Together, they didn’t just define New Wave; they made it relevant and sharp, and at the same time pointed out how gloriously un-cool it was to be your boring humdrum self.
Now, almost five decades later, they’re hitting the UK together for the “Cosmic De-Evolution” tour—a two-night lightning strike at London’s O2 (June 20) and Manchester’s AO Arena (June 21).
With Lene Lovich and The Rezillos rounding out the bill, this is one you won’t get to see again.
The Art of Not Fitting In
DEVO’s origin story has proper teeth. Co-founders Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis were students at Kent State University in 1970 when all hell broke lose.
Witnessing the shootings there turned the idea of “progress” into a sick joke for them.
Out of that trauma came the idea of “de-evolution”: the theory that humanity isn’t ascending, but sliding backward into a herd-like state of idiocy. Their early work was an art project disguised as a band, fueled by the jagged rhythms of Captain Beefheart and the electronic pulse of Kraftwerk. It was music that felt like factory machines having a panic attack, and all fronted by the deranged, man-child mascot – Booji Boy.
The B-52s formed in entirely different weather. Their mythic origins involved a shared “Flaming Volcano” cocktail at a Chinese restaurant, leading to a world where kitsch became high couture. While DEVO were clinical, the B-52s were kaleidoscopic.
Guitarist Ricky Wilson reinvented the instrument by stripping strings and using tunings that made his jangle sound like a neon sign flickering in seawater.
They mined 1960s girl-group harmonies and B-movie aesthetics to create a safe, absurdist space in the Deep South. If DEVO were drawing an X-ray of the American Dream’s skeleton, the B-52s were painting it with glow-in-the-dark nail varnish and insisting everyone dance THEIR way.
These were two bands who didn’t just sell records; they issued permission slips to every weirdo who came after them.
You can trace a jagged line from their debut albums to the “Egg Punk” scene of today, but the DNA is everywhere. Kurt Cobain was a vocal disciple, famously covering DEVO’s “Turnaround” and citing the B-52s as a foundational influence.
In their hometown of Athens, the B-52s’ success cleared the way for R.E.M. to find a global stage.
Even the heavyweights took notice. John Lennon famously credited “Rock Lobster” as the jolt that pulled him back into the studio for Double Fantasy, recognizing his own avant-garde sensibilities mirrored in their surf-pop weirdness.
A lot of legacy tours trade on nostalgia like a museum ticket, but this one feels different.
DEVO still sound like a prophecy delivered with a smirk – running diagnostics on our social systems with a drum machine. The B-52s continue to represent the dancefloor as a sanctuary, a defiant little utopia where the “outsider” label is a creative superpower.
When the lights go down in London or Manchester this June, it’s about that specific, physical moment when thousands of brains sync to the same ridiculous choruses.
It’s going to be the realization that these are songs – born from industrial decay and thrift-shop bargain-bins – that still vibrate with more life than the polished mainstream ever manages today.
DEVO
Studio albums
Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
Uncontrollable Urge; (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction; Praying Hands; Space Junk; Mongoloid; Jocko Homo; Too Much Paranoias; Gut Feeling / (Slap Your Mammy); Come Back Jonee; Sloppy (I Saw My Baby Gettin’); Shrivel-Up.
Duty Now for the Future
Devo Corporate Anthem; Clockout; Timing X; Wiggly World; Blockhead; Strange Pursuit; S.I.B. (Swelling Itching Brain); Triumph of the Will; The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprize; Pink Pussycat; Secret Agent Man; Smart Patrol / Mr. DNA; Red Eye Express.
Freedom of Choice
Freedom of Choice; Whip It; Jill’s Dream; It’s Not Right; Girl U Want; Planet Earth; Gates of Steel; Cold War; Devo Corners; I’m a Man; Don’t You Know.
New Traditionalists
Through Being Cool; Jerkin’ Back ’n’ Forth; Pity You; Soft Things; Going Under; Race of Doom; Love Without Anger; The Super Thing; Beautiful World; Enough Said.
Oh, No! It’s Devo
Time Out for Fun; Peek-a-Boo!; Out of Sync; Explosions; That’s Good; Patterns; Big Mess; Speed Racer; What I Must Do; I Desire; Deep Sleep.
Shout
Shout; The Satisfied Mind; Don’t Rescue Me; The Fourth Dimension; C’mon; Here to Go; Jurisdiction of Love; Puppet Boy; Please Please; R U Experienced?
Total Devo
Baby Doll; Disco Dancer; Some Things Never Change; Blow Up; The Shadow; Pink Jazz Trancers; Time Out for Fun; Out of Sync; Mind Games; Plain Truth; I’m Gonna Get You; Along Came Jones; Deep Sleep.
Smooth Noodle Maps
Stuck in a Loop; Post Post-Modern Man; When We Do It; The Big Picture; Speed Racer; Doghouse Doghouse; Pink Jazz Trancers; Devo Has Feelings Too; Dawghaus; Sexi Luv; Morning Dew.
Something for Everybody
(Focused on the “Song Study” tracklist, which the band published as a release version.)
Fresh; What We Do; Please Baby Please; Don’t Shoot (I’m a Man); Mind Games; Human Rocket; Sumthin’; Step Up; Later Is Now; No Place Like Home; March On; Jump in My Jet.
Extra session material also came out as Something Else for Everybody.
The B-52s
Studio albums
The B-52’s
Planet Claire; 52 Girls; Dance This Mess Around; Rock Lobster; Lava; There’s a Moon in the Sky (Called the Moon); Hero Worship; 6060-842; Downtown.
Wild Planet
Party Out of Bounds; Dirty Back Road; Runnin’ Around; Give Me Back My Man; Private Idaho; Devil in My Car; Quiche Lorraine; Strobe Light; 53 Miles West of Venus.
Whammy!
Legal Tender; Whammy Kiss; Song for a Future Generation; Butterbean; Trism; Queen of Las Vegas; Moon 83; Big Bird; Work That Skirt.
Bouncing Off the Satellites
Summer of Love; Girl from Ipanema Goes to Greenland; Housework; Detour Thru Your Mind; Digging the Scene; Wig; Theme for a Future Generation; Too Much to Think About; Ain’t It a Shame; Bounce Your Boogie; Don’t Worry.
Cosmic Thing
Cosmic Thing; Dry County; Deadbeat Club; Love Shack; Junebug; Roam; Bushfire; Channel Z; Topaz; Follow Your Bliss.
Good Stuff
Tell It Like It T-I-Is; Hot Pants Explosion; Good Stuff; Revolution Earth; Dreamland; Is That You Mo-Dean?; The World’s Green Laughter; Vision of a Kiss; Breezin’; Bad Influence.
Funplex
Pump; Hot Corner; Ultraviolet; Juliet of the Spirits; Funplex; Eyes Wide Open; Love in the Year 3000; Deviant Ingredient; Too Much t
