Nightmare Fuel / Devo

Peek A Boooo!

• The two Hardcore Devo compilations. They're demos from 1974 to 1977, and they are some seriously creepy sounding stuff ("U Got Me Bugged" in particular is little more than a loop of high-frequency noise).
  • The robotic voice on "Mechanical Man" is just a little bit terrifying. Then you add the discordant music.
    • Me feel swell. Me work well. Me want what you got.
• The "Beautiful World" video. Plenty of music videos include mushroom clouds for shock effect, but something about the imagery of a crying, starving child and a '50s cartoon clip about a man suffering from radiation poisoning (from a Public Service Announcement about fallout) is singularly unnerving.
• "Booji Boys's Funeral" is a creepy and just downright haunting track that consists soley of droning and bleeping synths. Forget being played at a funeral, it sounds more like it should be played in of the darker sections of a Final Fantasy game!
• While on the topic of Booji Boy, there is of course this video in which his he is decapitated after his head is crushed by a machine!
  • The Devo Live 1980 concert film shows us what happens next. This video shows Booji Boy's horribly disfigured face after the accident while "Booji Boy's Funeral" plays during it. The fact that this grainy, creepy blue lit projection is the only known version of that particular video that exists is also pretty creepy.
    • Also, the song Booji Boy is singing in this ,"Tunnel of Life". It's one of the only times Booji Boy actually sounds somber.
• The original recording of the band's cover of "Secret Agent Man" is pretty creepy with the high pitched synths playing throuhout and Bob 1's distorted guitar solo. The video itself is quite scary with the random cut aways to various weird sights like a woman being paddled by two men wearing chimp masks, a nurse dancing with a man wearing an unnerving rubber mask and of course the band members themselves with their quite frankly weird looking transparent plastic masks.
• Booji Boy has more bad luck in the "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" video where he is electrocuted after sticking a fork into a toaster.
• The original video for "Jocko Homo" is pretty much all Nightmare Fuel. From the loud alarm playing as Booji Boy runs through the streets of Akron, Ohio in a very odd looking fashion, the rest of the band's squished faces while wearing stocking masks as they answer Mark's question of "Are we not men?" and the doctors and nurses excitedly pounding their fists on the table as people are squirming around in sacks in front of them.
• The video for "Peek A Boo" has several creepy moments, namely the lauhing cartoon devil, the Evil Clown who pops up now and then who also laughs and the various close ups of Mark's face as he says the name of the song.
• The band's costumes in the "Freedom Of Choice" video. Seriously, what the hell are they supposed to be? Jerry Casale's commentary on the video on The Complete Truth About De-Evolution mentions the band representing aliens observing and studying human behavior, so maybe their grey skin and large foreheads are meant to bring to mind The Greys.