The Strange Brew - artist stories behind the greatest music ever recorded
Aug 24, 2026 · 37 min · 12 segments
Devo co-founder Gerald V. Casale joins us for a career spanning conversation, starting with his new protest single “Just Do It” and moving through nearly every chapter of Devo’s story. Casale…
Gerald V CasaleGuest
Jason BarnardHost
It's certainly sharing your feelings for the, uh, current administration and the, uh, president, isn't it?
I am just so appalled and so stressed by the turn America took that it's never taken this far before, and, uh, I had to respond to it because clearly, [laughs] I think it's so funny that people here go, "Oh, there's some threats to democracy." Like, no, democracy left the station.
We have oligarchy, and we have authoritarian rule, and it was supported by the Supreme Court and various right-wing groups like the Federalists and the people that wrote Project 2025, and it was a coup.
It was a structured, well-planned over years and years and years coup, and of course they used a carnival barker to be the frontman for it because much like the movie Idiocracy where you got Macho Camacho as the president, that's Trump's function in this, in this whole scheme.
And now you're just watching it in the broad light of day, the naked corruption, the abuse of power, the complicity of Congress and the Supreme Court.
So my song's merely a, a celebration of, uh, the new America, of the, uh, authoritarian rule America.
What's your, um, position in terms of music enacting change? Is it more a case of something that you're, you're able to get your frustrations out, or do you think it will sway anybody? The risk is, is that those that want to hear it, hear it, and those, and there are millions in the States, just see a wall of noise and then ignore it.
But if you, um, if you're going to be objective and brutally honest about the history of pop music and politics, there's always been an illusion that countercultural music changed things.
And, uh, it did appear on the surface to change things because many times the more informed people were winning the cultural wars, but behind the scenes the real guys that knew that it's all about power stayed at the table and won in the end.
They let people do their flamboyant dress-up [laughs] on the surface, but what was really happening, what w- the wheels of power, they never relinquished.
You had the financial crash in about 2008, and that was ultimately the failure of the monetarist economic system.
It's certainly sharing your feelings for the, uh, current administration and the, uh, president, isn't it?
I am just so appalled and so stressed by the turn America took that it's never taken this far before, and, uh, I had to respond to it because clearly, [laughs] I think it's so funny that people here go, "Oh, there's some threats to democracy." Like, no, democracy left the station.
We have oligarchy, and we have authoritarian rule, and it was supported by the Supreme Court and various right-wing groups like the Federalists and the people that wrote Project 2025, and it was a coup.
It was a structured, well-planned over years and years and years coup, and of course they used a carnival barker to be the frontman for it because much like the movie Idiocracy where you got Macho Camacho as the president, that's Trump's function in this, in this whole scheme.
And now you're just watching it in the broad light of day, the naked corruption, the abuse of power, the complicity of Congress and the Supreme Court.
So my song's merely a, a celebration of, uh, the new America, of the, uh, authoritarian rule America.
What's your, um, position in terms of music enacting change? Is it more a case of something that you're, you're able to get your frustrations out, or do you think it will sway anybody? The risk is, is that those that want to hear it, hear it, and those, and there are millions in the States, just see a wall of noise and then ignore it.
But if you, um, if you're going to be objective and brutally honest about the history of pop music and politics, there's always been an illusion that countercultural music changed things.
And, uh, it did appear on the surface to change things because many times the more informed people were winning the cultural wars, but behind the scenes the real guys that knew that it's all about power stayed at the table and won in the end.
They let people do their flamboyant dress-up [laughs] on the surface, but what was really happening, what w- the wheels of power, they never relinquished.
You had the financial crash in about 2008, and that was ultimately the failure of the monetarist economic system.
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