Mark Mothersbaugh has come a long way from Akron, Ohio. Mothersbaugh will receive the 2004 Richard Kirk Award for Outstanding Career Achievement at the BMI Film & TV Awards, May 12 at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. The award is given annually to a composer who has made significant contributions in the field of film and TV music. Former recipients of the award include John Barry, Randy Edelman, Danny Elfman, Charlie Fox, Jerry Goldsmith, Earle Hagen, Michael Kamen, Alan Menken, Thomas Newman, Mike Post, Lalo Schifrin, Alan Silvestri, Richard and Robert Sherman, W.G. "Snuffy" Walden, John Williams, Patrick Williams and Hans Zimmer.
Mothersbaugh, has composed in his accessible but highly eccentric style for the forthcoming films Lords of Dogtown and The Life Aquatic; as well as having scored the hugely successful Rugrats television, stage and film franchise. He has also scored a diverse array of films and television shows, including Welcome to Collinwood, Thirteen, The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, 200 Cigarettes, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Happy Gilmore, The Mind of The Married Man, Power Puff Girls, Pee Wee's Playhouse, Beakman's World, The Big Squeeze and more, over 100 credits in all. Mothersbaugh also has over 400 commercial credits, and is the co-owner of Mutato Muzika, an umbrella company that is home to a full-time staff of composers and music editors including Bob 1 (Mothersbaugh) and Bob 2 (Casale) of DEVO.
DEVO began as an elaborate art project when Mark Mothersbaugh and jerry Casale met as art students at Kent State in the mid-'70s. With their brothers - the aforementioned Bobs - and drummer Alan Myers, DEVO fleshed out its ideas about the self in a dystopian future in cartoonish, but very serious musical and graphic form.
The name "DEVO" is shorthand for de-evolution, and DEVO scoffed at the very notion of progress. DEVO took a blues-based genre, rock 'n' roll, deconstructed its connective tissue, rearranged it in a spastic manner, and played it back to us with a machine-like intensity that turned emotion into blind impulse, an "uncontrollable urge."
Article comments
1 - Joe
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, yeayeyeyeyeyeyeyeAh!
2 - Eric Olsen
Exactly, I love that surge of words that express the urge.
3 - Mark Saleski
i get to enjoy both the surge of words...and the pink marble vinyl (always wondered how may copies they pressed...i've never seen another one)
4 - Eric Olsen
I have pink marble vinyl, but not of DEVO - it may be the Stranglers?
5 - JR
My mom had a copy of Dave Mason's Alone Together that I guess could be called "marble" vinyl. We just called it the "puke disk".
It's a great album, by the way.
6 - Eric Olsen
I think that's his only really good one, by the way. That guy got a shitload of mileage out of about five good songs.
7 - Ram
Mark Mothersbaugh is my uncle my dad was the original drummer I love Devo!!! Hell ya!
8 - Ram
Mark Mothersbaugh is my uncle my dad was the original drummer I love Devo!!!
9 - Ziggy
"I think that's his only really good one, by the way. That guy got a shitload of mileage out of about five good songs"
Oh really go enjoy a Madonna concert! id10t?
10 - HW Saxton
I really like that weird pseudo Martin
Denny music that he scored for the Sat.
Morning show "Pee Wee's Playhouse".
He does some cool stuff too on "Rugrats"
which I can't stand, but from what I've
seen when channel surfing,the incidental
music is pretty cool.
11 - Eric Olsen
HW, the Mothersbaugh Xmas record is classic. I love his incidental stuff as well: "playful ambient" or something.
Ziggy, are you really defending fucking Dave Mason?? He contributed a few good tunes to Traffic, had a couple of nice songs on Alone Together, then lived off of that for the next 30 years. Spare me. Madonna has at least 20 songs I love.
12 - sydney
I think mothersbough has got a little on most of those composers listed in the previous winners list. (mind, i havent heard of half of them).
Anyway, glad to hear he's being recognized.
13 - Eric Olsen
I agree, note this was a year ago
14 - HW Saxton
I'll have to pick up the X-mas record.
I love to drive friends and family nuts
over the holidays playing weird X-mas
tunes.Louis Prima,Buck Owens,Chipmunks,
etc.
I've got the Devo "Bachelor Pad" album,
their weird take on E-Z listening muzak,
but I haven't listened to it for ages.
And: Dave Mason??? Oh gawd... I couldn't
think of anything I want to hear less.
Didn't he milk "Feelin Alright" forever?
on the FM classic schlock stations? oooh
15 - Eric Olsen
milked like a Norwegian goat
16 - HW Saxton
Yummmmmm... Norwegian Fromage De Chevre
17 - ziggy
Oops sorry Eric I thought your comment was aimed at Mark Mothersbaugh...I really ought to read more carefully :-)
18 - hugmebitch
is the music on "Muzik for Insomniacs" anything like the rugrats music?
19 - Jonny Cappo
Yep, it is. I've heard 10 or so tracks from it. Some songs use the EXACT cheesy flute sound from the rugrats theme.