Von LMO and the Future-Past of Punk

Von LMO and the Future-Past of Punk

There’s no way to properly figure Von LMO. The band’s a weird duck – Von LMO seems to be the band’s name as well as the dude singing. But in just about every piece of writing one’s able to track down on the band, there’re endless references to Devo. That probably gets a lot of folks’ hope up. And for good reason. Devo rules. It’s curious, though, considering no one usually connects Dow Jones and the Industrials to that Akron band. All involved are tied to electronics. But whatever. Von Lmo doesn’t sound like Devo really.

Yeah, there’s some where funky stuff peeking through the tough guy punk. But Von LMO’s voice comes off as something that Jello may have used as a basis for developing his own delivery in direction opposition to the odd nasally Devo vocals.

Separating Von LMO from most groups that had a technological bent about them around this time is the inclusion of a sax – which way later factored into a few stolen moments with James Chance.

Either way, the band’s first album, Future Language, sports a cheeseball cover that one would expect. It’s funny to think about all these odd ball almost punkers sitting around and pondering the implications of space and men from another planet - then writing songs like this. Wearing space suites was probably a step in the right direction while playing these tunes, but still weird to see on the cover of an album.

Like what you ask? Like…

“This is Pop Rock” is more sensible than anyone’s gonna give it credit for – punk’s still based on simple song structures and inevitably tied to Chuck Berry simplicity. The following “Leave Your Body,” while lyrically obtuse and as ridiculous as one might be able to handle, sounds like it served as the foundation for the Spits. That’s a good thing.

A weird focus on the human body, it’s odd functions as well as the possibility of becoming roboticised is a bit unsettling. But seeing this Von LMO probably was too.

Even if the music stunk – and it doesn’t – the performative aspect to the whole endeavor’s pretty intruiging. Apparently during shows, the destruction of instruments wasn’t a prerequisite, but it certainly wasn’t frowned upon. Of course, there was no shortage of folks by the late seventies willing to destroy anything in arms reach. It’s just that the music might not have been as good as Von LMO and there wasn’t anyone that looked like this while engaged with tangents of the punk scene.