Devo performs at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco on Nov. 5, 2023. Steve Carlson/STAFF.

SAN FRANCISCO — “Who here believes in devolution?” DEVO bassist Gerald Casale asked the crowd midway through the band’s set Sunday at the Golden Gate Theatre. “You don’t have to look far for the evidence.”

Indeed, the signs of a species-wide slide down the evolutionary ladder are everywhere now, from plummeting attention spans to screen fatigue, apathy and a sense that just about everything is trending the wrong way.

In spite of all of this, the legendary Akron, Ohio quintet was in good spirits as it rocked the 100-year-old theater. Before the band took the stage, an excerpt from DEVO’s 1979 tour video played, featuring farcical record exec “Rod Rooter” encouraging the band to sell out. An older, grayer and balder Rooter then appeared on screen riding an exercise bike and challenging the boys to be more like Kid Rock. The message was clear: the mindless consumerism the band first targeted in the 1970s has only grown more desperate and insidious in the intervening half century.

Devo performs at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco on Nov. 5, 2023.

Even the notion that this is DEVO’s “Farewell Tour” seems to have been the product of an overzealous promoter. The current tour wanders up and down the West Coast before heading to Australia at the beginning of December, celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary and supporting a career retrospective box set on Rhino Records.

While it took the audience a few songs to rise to their feet, the band’s biggest hit, “Whip It,” whipped fan into a frenzy of dancing and upraised phones as frontman Mark Mothersbaugh threw iconic red “energy domes” to them. Initially dressed in dark suits embroidered with the message “Reverse Evolution” on the back, the band blasted through early hits including the synthesized weirdness of “Peek-A-Boo” and “That’s Good.”

DEVO’s iconic cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” was even more ‘deconstructed’ than the original recording, with glitches and manic weirdness. The synthesizer-heavy “Going Under” from 1981 album New Traditionalists was stripped down and similarly mutated. A later video interlude featured a glitchy Carl Sagan describing the vastness of the galaxy while the members changed into their yellow suits.

Devo performs at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco on Nov. 5, 2023.

Guitarist Bob Mothersbaugh (Bob 1) sang the band’s twangy cover of P.F. Sloan’s “Secret Agent Man” and bassist Casale performed the vocals on early hit “Mongoloid.” Mark Mothersbaugh alternated between providing synthesized ear candy at his keyboard station and cheering on the audience with a strange set of pompoms during the songs.

Mothersbaugh tore at his bandmates’ yellow suits during a powerful rendition of the anthemic “Uncontrollable Urge.” Eventually, the band returned to the stage after yet another costume change, this time into shorts and black smocks that spelled out DEVO.

“We may be able to lure Booji Boy out here!” Casale announced before the last song.

The band then launched into hit “Beautiful World” and soon a masked and strangely attired figure—Mark Mothersbaugh—appeared on stage and sang the song’s later verses in a childlike falsetto.

“The first 50 years were about devolution; the next 50 it’s about you. You gotta change the world,” Booji Boy announced. “I want to see all of you here in 2073 for DEVO at 100!”

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