Happy Birthday Mark

He’s an American musician, singer, songwriter, and composer. He came to prominence in the late 1970s as co-founder, lead singer and keyboardist of the new wave band Devo, whose “Whip It” was a top 20 single in the US in 1980. He’s Mark Mothersbaugh and he was born on this day in 1950.

Born in Akron, Ohio, Mothersbaugh attended Kent State University as an art student, where he met Devo co-founders Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis who formed the idea of “devolution” of the human race after Casale had two friends die in the Kent State shootings. Mothersbaugh was intrigued by the concept and joined them and worked in an oddball style, shunning structuralism in every way.

The band combined kitsch science fiction themes with deadpan humor and satirical social commentary. They merged punk rock music with electronics creating a new wave sound that was so different and futuristic.

While I liked and appreciated what Mothersbaugh and Devo did musically, it wasn’t until he began scoring music for movies that I really dug him.

His work with Wes Anderson on his films including the fantastic Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums remain some of my favorite soundtrack works ever. It was old fashioned, quirky and playful. Similar in style to Anderson’s vision in his films. Some of my favorite tracks include “Hardest Geometry Problem in the World”, “Sparkplug Minuet” and “Cleaning Rooms with Inez”.

You can also hear his work on plenty of children’s shows and movies (Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, and Rugrats just to name a couple).

Though Mothersbaugh’s film and television credits continue to pile up, he’s still a visionary oddball at heart - he builds elaborate noise-making sculptures out of things like doorbells, organ pipes and bird calls. He’s got a museum of instruments he’s collected over the years (which he used to make synth-driven square dance music).

His belief all along has been to be subversive. He thought of Devo as an earwig and wanted to get deep into people’s heads. Once he was through with recording music as a band, he discovered the joy in recording music on the fly (almost), starting with Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. He remembered getting the tape of the show, writing songs and recording and by the end of the week, his songs were on TV.

To me, he’s a musical genius in a different sense than Prince or Bowie, but like those two, he has been able to stretch boundaries with instrumentation and tempo and everything else that ties in with music.

So take some time and listen to some of his music today and appreciate the genius that is Mark Mothersbaugh.