Unfortunately I was never able to see them live due to being either too young, too broke amongst other reasons.

Step forward to 1985, I had just started a new job after following Sharon who later became my wife down to the south coast of England from my hometown of Bristol in the south west.

In the lab I worked in at the time the norm was to have the crappy local radio station (2CRFM) on all day. One day I must have been listening at least a little as there was an aired request from a listener for a book about the band Devo. I had to ask a colleague if I had heard correctly, and sure enough I had. So I called the radio station to obtain the contact details for the person wanting something about Devo. You see at this time I was almost certain I was the only Spud left on this part of the planet! To find another enlightened Spud was interesting to me.

Well it turned out the requester was not a fan, but rather a local guy that happened to trade comic books with a guy in Temple City CA. He said he'd put me in touch with the person in CA. Sure enough sometime later a letter appeared from a Steven Ross who indeed was a comic collector BUT also a serious Spud.

We never did quite find the "book" he was requesting, all I had was a little publication probably by Virgin Records. But this was the start of a friendship that continues to this day.

Quite early on in this friendship I happened to be bored one day at work and Turned a Couple of Energy Domes on my lathe. One was Plastic the other Aluminum. These were sent as a gift to Steve in CA. Steve at the time was trying to get into Film School and had an Idea for a little movie called "The Super Thing" He managed to talk Sharon and I into appearing in this little (comic book influenced?) movie. The Alloy Dome also had a Staring Part! Anyway this was done, and part of this episode was where I got the handle "Woogie Boy" Blame Steve for that!

Over the years some serious collecting was the order of the day. I probably spent more than I should of considering most of is now available via the net!

Fast forward to 2007.. I had been in something like a Devo Hiatus for some years, not really paying attention to what was going on in the Devo Scene on a daily basis. BUT I had continued to subscribe to the usenet newsgroup alt.fan.devo from quite soon after I went on the net in 1994-5 or so. Anyway one day there was an announcement from Michael Pilmer stating that a UK leg of a Euro tour was ON! I cannot explain the excitement but needless to say there was NOTHING going to stop me going.

Tickets and Hotel were booked ASAP, and arrangements for Grandparents to look after our 3 year old Daughter Elouise were made.

Then the big wait! Well it was probably only a couple of months, but seemed like an eternity.

The weekend before the show I decided I wanted to do something a little different. Apart from digging out an original but unworn FOC era Tour tee shirt out for storage I wanted to do something with Domes again, but what? Ten I thought earrings might be cool, so these were made. I had them Anodized and Dyed Red at my plating contractor, bought some cheap novelty earrings in town, and just used the chain and hooks attached to the machined Domes.

I also made something for myself which was a CNC engraved pinback taken from an original Mark Mothersbaugh "naughty" postcard drawing I had in my collection. This is now in the Devo Obsesso archives and the story behind it can be found there.

Monday 18th June 2007 I shut my business down for a couple of days and we set off for Brighton. Obviously the 100 mile trip was spent listening to Devo on route. On arrival we booked into the hotel, attended to some business on the phone for a while, and then got ready!

Was quite a long walk to the venue down on the seafront, but we knew we were in the right place when we saw the tour bus parked outside. Also there were quite a few obvious fans around. Being as I had effectively been "out of the loop" for a long time, there was no-one I was going to know there. But just prior to Michael Pilmer leaving the states I had emailed him saying we would be there.

We had just asked a Bobby where we could get something to eat quickly as we were pretty hungry! He directed us to a street just down the road from the venue. We had to walk past the stage door to get there, and who should appear from this door but Michael Pilmer.

I had seen a couple of pictures of him, so he was immediately recognizable!! I called out to say hi, and introduced ourselves. I cannot remember exactly which was noticed first out of the Dome Earrings or the Pinback. But Michael seemed to be impressed with the quality, he took a few pictures, and said it was quite likely we could get to see the band aftershow. We briefly talked about the possibility of making merchandise for Devo Inc. Not the reason I did it, and it was Michael that made the suggestion.

We ate, and made our way back to the venue. There was a lot of small talk and introductions outside the venue, but obviously Michael had told a few people about the gear I had made. As a got a comment something like "You must be the people Michael told us about" This was about the time we met the lovely Spudess Jane Stucky, who was later to make my first Devo concert one to REALLY talk about for months afterwards!

Anyway lots of socializing and Michael did hand me an Aftershow Pass during another encounter. We all got so wrapped up in Devo Talk that we skipped the support act, and chatted until just before show time.

On entering the venue I bought tee shirts and posters, and Jane happened to ask me where our seats were. The only tickets I could get were for the tiered stalls upstairs! Jane and Jon Kay had spare tickets and offered them to us! They were not close together seats but close enough that Sharon and I could still see each other. Mine was a front row centre ticket next to jane! For this I will be eternally grateful. THANK YOU Jane.

I must admit when the show started it may have almost caused a tear in my eyes! It was really the show I had so wanted to see for nearly 3 decades.

The show was amazing obviously, and needless to say I was on a high for days if not weeks afterwards.

Aftershow we did indeed ge to meet the band. They were all charming and friendly. Mark was a little upset that his Laptop had been stolen from his Hotel room and I was sad for him. Not a good start to a UK tour! He thanked me for keeping the FOC shirt. Meeting Bob1 was my personal highlight though, Although I admire and respect the whole band. I for some unknown reason felt an affinity to Bob1 and no illusions were shattered that night he was great to meet.

Jerry chose to come out for a drink aftershow instead of going back to the Hotel Straight away, and a group of us had his company for a while afterwards.

Fast forward a little later and I got in contact with Michael again to see if indeed he was still interested in getting some quality Domes made. Initially we were thinking more along the lines of Special Domes for the band to wear on Stage. Soon after an ex Bob1 Spare Dome arrived in a package from Mutato.

The project took a turn and it became more about merchandise than stagewear, as Devo's stock of domes for the Clubdevo.com store was running low. My business is precision engineering, and vacuum forming was something I had not a lot of experience in. Some research was done with some people I knew that knew more about it or knew someone that did.

I came up trumps, and was given a lot of advise from someone who had spent his career as a toolmaker in a major food packing industry vac forming company.

The mold was made to his guidance and the result was almost perfect from the start. Samples were sent to Michael and I waited!

I had a phone call from Michael probably immediately after he had opened the package. The response was positive! (Editor's note: Of course the response was positive, Wayne! The domes you made are absolutely beautiful! - Michael) It was at that point that I the go ahead to start thinking about manufacture.

The decision then was to decide whether to buy a vac forming machine, sub contract the work out or make my own machine. This decision had a major economic impact, and the latter was chosen as the other numbers didn't stack up.

So all over Christmas 2007 I spent designing and making a vac former. The pressure was really on as I had secretly known for sometime that Devo were to play a corporate event in the San Francisco area.

The initial tests were starting to worry me! I had a couple of technical issues to overcome, as I was not happy with the quality of the Domes coming off the machine. but with a little more work we cracked it.

A number of Domes were shipped out to SF in time so that Devo could wear them for the Microsoft Sponsored show on Jan 15th 2008.

The rest is in the FUTURE!!

Wayne Weedon (Woogie_Boy) Feb 2008.
FDOS Design - UK