Xposed 4Heads bound for Devo convention
From papering Milwaukee with fake gig posters to its tongue-in-cheek jab at bad “white man reggae” dubbed “Rastaman,” Xposed 4Heads has always been a bit different.
So it’s fitting that the satirical synthpop band’s comeback performance happened to be its live show debut.
The band’s first two songs ended up in rotation on WMSEFM (91.7) in 1982, but Xposed 4Heads never booked a gig before frontman Mark G.E. left the project the following year “at the height of Xpos-O-Mania” (his words for it . . . and only his words).
Three decades later, 4Heads played its first show at the reunited Milwaukee band showcase Lest We Forget at Turner Hall Ballroom. And in the last few years, this joke band has become a real working joke band. It played the Miramar Theatre last week to celebrate the release of its second full-length album “Urgency Squad,” and next week will trek to Cleveland to perform at Devotional, a fan convention for one of G.E.’s favorite groups, Devo.
Who’s who: Singer Mark G.E.; backing vocalists and “Star Girls” Theresa “A La Mode” and Linda Strain Flannery; keyboardist Kelp Chofs (a.k.a. “IdentiKey 1”); keyboardist Carter Hunnicutt (a.k.a. “IdentiKey A”); guitarist Bob Jorin; drummer Andy Stilin. G.E. spoke for the band.
How it started: As a teenager I wrote hundreds of songs but never played in a band. In 1982, I was listening to people like (late local musician) Mark Shurilla doing wacky songs like “No Surfing at Bradford Beach,” and I thought, “That’s funny. I can write stuff like that.” We put out a few cassettes in the early ‘80s that was ( sic) a mixture of B-52s, Devo and Flying Lizards. We put out show posters that had a venue or a date but never had both, so people to this day tell me how much they enjoyed seeing us, but the truth is we never played out.
Band name backstory: We had an “X” because I really loved (Milwaukee band) Those XCleavers. People in the Reagan era were talking about this technology to number citizens, and we were moving from long ‘70s haircuts to short punk haircuts. Exposed foreheads seemed like a perfect place to tattoo a number.
Getting the band back together: I left (the band) for graduate school in ‘83, and when I came back in ‘87, the scene had completely changed. We recorded a handful of songs in ‘87 and ‘92, but they didn’t catch on like in the early ‘80s. After (playing Lest We Forget), It was like, ‘Well, this is pretty fun. Let’s continue doing this and bring it into the modern world.”
I hadn’t written lyrics in 25 years, but Theresa was like, “Pick up the instrument that you wrote songs to begin with.” So with my Cascio VL-Tone, lyrics came to me and I wrote the song, “People are Stupid.” Dr. Demento played it twice.
My grandmother said there was a nicer way to say people are stupid, so I started thinking more about positive messages and saying my thoughts more cleverly, which ended up on (the band’s debut full-length album) “Choose to be Human” (in 2015).
Making “Urgency Squad”: I wanted to make an album that was not just a collection of funny songs, but to have it have some meaning and cohesiveness. “Push Me” is about being pushed to the edge to do more work with less resources. “System Overload” is our ode to IT professionals. “Humans are Ok” is written from the perspective of a computer running everything. I wrote “Slack It” after I met the founder of the Church of the Sub-Genius, a sarcastic spoof religion, who’s been a hero of mine since I was 20.
When we played Devotional last year we met Al Mothersbaugh, the cousin to (Devo frontman) Mark Mothersbaugh, who plays trombone in the band Massive Hot Dog Recall. Of course we had to have him on the record.
The basic concept (for “Urgency Squad”) is this idea that people are being oppressed, and the man or the powers that be are trying to divide us, and this is our resistance.