Did you see that the late 70's / early 80's band Devo is suing McDonald's? Yup. Apparently the fast-food monster aligned with American Idol and passed out toys representational of different musical eras, and the "New Wave Nigel" doll, which looks like this,
is apparently (obviously??) too close to Devo's standard stage costume as seen here:
Me, I think it's kinda obvious (ok, REALLY OBVIOUS) that McD's took the image from Devo. No question at all. Four-tiered red hat on toy, four-tiered red hat on band members. Clinches it for me...
The real issue, I think, is that not many people, myself included, knew that the Devo hat (dubbed "energy domes" by the band) is actually trademarked and copyrighted. Cool! I didn't know you could DO that! And they were pretty prescient on that too. Who knew 25 years ago that one of the biggest corporations in the world would step on that same trademark? Or that a hat would become so emblematic of a time and its music. Woah.
Hey, trivia for you: did you know that Mark Mothersbaugh, the lead singer (I think) of Devo, wrote the music for the children's tv show "Rug Rats"? Yup. I guess we all grow up eventually.
And on that note, here for your viewing pleasure is a taste of what Devo became known for:
I can't find a nice clip of the opening Rugrats music, but I"m sure you can easily call it to mind. Bah bah bah baaaah bah bah baah bah bah bah bah bah bah... :)
1 comment:
Wow. Interesting they "got away" with a video like that, back in 1980-whatever-it-was. If that came out today, it would be lambasted as lauding violence against women, or something!
For some reason I cannot remember Devo at all. The music is pretty good, I think.
You can find the Rugrats theme, complete with embed code, here:
http://www.imeem.com/baliwkuya/music/R-yGKfdc/rugrats_rugrats_theme/
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