New Traditionalists (partially found live recordings of DEVO concert tour; 1981)
Promotional flyer for December 8, 1981 concert that was to be filmed
Status: Partially found
Comment: December 8, 1981 footage was destroyed.
For Devo's New Traditionalists album, the band undertook a large, visually complex tour combining a faux Greek Temple stage set, synchronized lighting and slides, and complex choreography based on three treadmills. Two shows from this tour were known to be filmed, but footage has been lost, save for three songs.
The November 24, 1981 show, at the Mackey Auditorium in Boulder, Colorado, was filmed with two cameras by a local PBS affiliate. Of this show, only the first three songs survive in extremely high-generation copies. Audio for the first two songs, the "NuTra Theme" and "Going Under" are lost, but an enterprising fan has synchronized the video with a live audio recording released from a November 28 performance in Seattle. This audio was released as a limited-edition LP in 2012, and as a CD in 2013. A third song from this performance, "Through Being Cool" also circulates with audio, though it features a brief voice-over early on.
On December 8, 1981, Devo performed a concert at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium that was to be filmed. According to the band's co-founder, Gerald Casale, "The one time we tried to record the show, it was because a seven-camera crew was shooting and their lighting generator got crossed with our stage-light generator and they blew out both sets of lights—the film lights and the stage lights. It was a disaster. And part of the insurance settlement was that all audio and video from that show had to be destroyed because they were claiming a loss." (Citation) No footage has been recovered from this performance.