Jihad Jerry and the Evildoers: Exploring DEVO’s forgotten spin-off
For over 40 years now, the members of Devo have repeatedly bemoaned how the satirical nature of their music – including the themes and corresponding music video of their biggest hit, ‘Whip It’ – went over the heads of much of the general public.
“We were trivialised and pigeon-holed,” founding member Gerald Casale told the Associated Press in 2025. “Nobody wanted to hear us talking about the duality of human nature and the dangers of groupthink and the atrophication of people being able to think logically and think critically. It was like, ‘That’s a bummer. Just tell us about drugs and sex.’”
Presumably, there were moments when Casale and his bandmates wondered whether the fault was partially on their own end—that they’d made the line too hazy between their role as outsider satirists and active participants in the “system”, considering they were recording artists on a major label (Warner Brothers). If you watch the recent documentary DEVO on Netflix, however, the general vibe from Devo themselves is that they communicated their message successfully; the world just wasn’t ready for the unfortunate news of its own backward trajectory.
It’s not surprising, then, that Casale has a similar perspective on what many people would call an ill-fated or misguided side project; the 2006 DEVO spin-off act known as “Jihad Jerry and the Evildoers.”
Given the benefit of the doubt, this was arguably a noble attempt at true punk rock satire in the spirit of old-school Devo, as Casale took on the character of “Jihad Jerry”, a half-Iranian, half-American who “declared war on the prejudice and ignorance that had so wronged him” in his life, as Casale explained it at the time. Coming in the aftermath of 9/11 and during the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, the concept album was also inevitably doomed for a wave of blowback. And indeed, the sight of a nearly 60-year-old Casale, dressed like a fortune teller and singing about ‘Army Girls Gone Wild’, pissed off just about everybody.
“Jihad Jerry did not get the love, let me tell you,” Casale acknowledged to Free Press Houston in 2025. “I thought a man in his senior years, dressed in a theatrical turban and a pimp suit would be clearly satire. And guess what? We live in a nation of scary people and I received a lot of threats from Muslim people, because I was an infidel, but I also got really dissed by Christians. They didn’t get it. They thought I was pro-jihad! Even though [the album title] says, ‘Mine Is Not a Holy War.’”
The Evildoers record, which includes considerable contributions from all of the other members of Devo, actually has some great songs on it, including ‘Danger’, which really does feel a lot like prime ‘Gut Feeling’ Devo with a dash of R&B call-and-response. Despite the cold response it got, Casale seemed to think highly enough of the album that he re-released it with bonus tracks in 2021, albeit now under the official name of “Devo’s Gerald V Casale,” with “Jihad Jerry” reduced to a smaller print “AKA” designation.
For the most part, though, the Jihad Jerry project – like the ‘Whip It’ video a quarter-century before it – only managed to reinforce Casale’s theories on de-evolution.
“So much for declaring a holy war on stupidity,” he said. “Stupidity will win every time.”
