The new wave band Jack Black called genius: “A creepy sense of humour”
If mainstream pop culture had a look, sound, and general demeanour across the 2000s, it’d probably look like actor-comedian Jack Black. Shooting to fame following starring roles in Shallow Hal, Orange County and School of Rock, casting one’s mind back to Black’s fixed animated and high-energy presence on early 21st-century TV is inescapably scored in the mind with the high-school pop punk and plastic rock that saturated the charts at the time.
He was big, but Tenacious D was even bigger. Formed in the late 1990s as a comedy mock rock foil with Kyle Glass and drumming assistance from Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, Tenacious D dropped a string of successful records, including 2001’s eponymous debut featuring the Kerrang! TV favourite ‘Tribute’, plus even starring in 2006’s Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny movie.
Black straddled Hollywood and the music biz with aplomb, boasting collaborations with The Vandals, Queens of the Stone Age, and even a duet with rock opera titan Meat Loaf on 2010’s Hang Cool Teddy Bear.
With such evident musical passion and performance chops, Black proved the perfect subject for Entertainment Weekly‘s “Top Five Albums” segment in 2000, roping in the comedy rock funnyman to offer an insight into the records he holds dearest. Presenting choice LPs from Radiohead, Liz Phair, Black Sabbath and Pixies, Black reached into the world of new wave to pluck out a key record that no doubt shaped his farcical life path.
“They were the first ones in my mind to have a fully realised concept with their band, Black revealed when discussing Devo’s Freedom of Choice. “They had a genius theatricality, a creepy sense of humour, and also some kick-ass tunes”.
The Akron synthpunks’ third LP in 1980 proved pivotal in their creative and subversive development, sharing production duties with Minimoog expert Robert Margouleff and striking a pitch-perfect sonic equilibrium of their angular electronic edge with a live band organicness, a harmony that would ebb toward total computer synths by 1984’s Shout.
Devo had firmly embedded themselves into the mainstream following the album’s second single ‘Whip It’. Having already been beamed into the homes of middle America with their 1978 boilersuited appearance on Saturday Night Live, Devo donned their iconic energy domes for its acclaimed synthetic western parody video, given extra boost the following year by the fledgling MTV eager for promo content.
Freedom of Choice still stands as the arch-pranksters’ signature album, a record that simultaneously shaped the 1980s’ cultural landscape yet lampooned its Reaganite free-market lurch with prescient bite.
Black would later perform his beloved new wave LP with Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh himself, plus skaters Steve Caballero, Tony Hawk, and his son, Warish’s Riley Hawk. Having endeared themselves to the skate community with Tony Alva and Steve Olson’s boarding skills in ‘Freedom of Choice’s video, the supergroup was an apt ensemble to promote the remaster of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater in 2020. Mothersbaugh was more than impressed with Black and Co’s loving rendition of the track: “…might just be the best version of that song I’ve ever heard”.
