Redbot Loves The District Weekly!

Posted by Jon, onehumanbeing on October 14, 2009

Red­bot Makes His Print Debut

On page 61 of this week’s The Dis­trict Weekly — Octo­ber 14, 2009 — The Red­bot Now For The Future graphic!

The cap­tion in The Dis­trict Weekly about the Red­bot piece reads:

ABOUT THE ARTIST Ear­lier this year, Long Beach artist Jon, one­hu­man­be­ing launched Red­bot Loves You! a pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion art project. Red­bot will cel­e­brate arts month with sev­eral events includ­ing a Seek and Find Red­bot Hunt (details to be announced) and free give-aways of Red­bot Loves Long Beach but­tons. “This image is an homage to DEVO, one of my favorite bands as a teenager 30 years ago,” says Jon, one­hu­man­be­ing. (visit: redbotlovesyou.com or redbot.onehumanbeing.com)

This week’s Dis­trict just hap­pens to be the annual Best of Long Beach issue, an extra nice issue — or as it says on the cover of this issue:

Spe­cial We-Tell-You-How-Great-You-Are Collector’s Edition

…and that sure means a lit­tle extra to this onehumanbeing.

How Red­bot Ended Up In The Dis­trict

A few of weeks ago I noticed a blurb at the bot­tom of the Cal­en­der page of The Dis­trict Weekly, the very cool, local news/art/music/culture weekly here in Long Beach invit­ing local artists and pho­tog­ra­phers to sub­mit their work for use on the Cal­en­der page. It’s an unpaid gig, but 20,000 peo­ple could see your work that week.

Just the kind of thing a financially-challenged artist needs…

The idea got under my skin so I set up a graphic tem­plate for the size of the header in Adobe Pho­to­shop on my com­puter and started to play around with var­i­ous ideas.

For some rea­son DEVO, and par­tic­u­larly their 1979 album Duty Now For The Future, caught my atten­tion early last week, and after an after­noon immersed in my old DEVO albums while work­ing away with my cam­era and Pho­to­shop, the graphic called Red­bot Now For The Future emerged:

When I Was 15 — A Short Recollection

When I was 15 there was no MTV, no cable TV, no Inter­net… and your options for see­ing your favorite band were usu­ally nar­rowed to one — big sta­dium shows.

Around that time, my older brother David (older by 2 1/2 years, but way older in many ways…) took me down to the Bal­boa The­ater in New­port Beach on a night when they were play­ing DEVO films.

The Bal­boa The­ater was an old movie the­ater just a block from the beach which was always play­ing old and cool films which got changed every few days. It was the kind of place where they showed The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day nights at mid­night with the audi­ence mem­bers act­ing out the movie while it played.

But it was the DEVO films that really blew my 15 year-old mind. If you’ve never seen the film The Truth About De-Evolution by DEVO, then watch these videos:

Jocko Homo

Secret Agent Man

When I got my first job at age 15, work­ing at the local pub­lic library shelv­ing books, one of my first pur­chases was the DEVO album Duty Now For The Future, which I still have — that it in the photo below…

On the sleeve inside this album was an invi­ta­tion to join Club DEVO — the DEVO fan club, which I did…

I got a whole folder of cool stuff from Club DEVO for join­ing (which I still have) includ­ing a cat­a­log of mer­chan­dise to buy!

The next year, after Free­dom of Choice, the next DEVO album to came out, I had saved up enough money to order my Offi­cial DEVO Energy Dome, just like the ones that DEVO was wear­ing for that year’s tour.

In the photo below you can see me as a 16 year-old DEVO fan wear­ing my Energy Dome and my “punk rock” sun­glasses… Unfor­tu­nately I no longer have my Energy Dome (or the sun­glasses) — it was lost many years ago.

I still have my DEVO but­tons though! Here’s my lit­tle col­lec­tion from 1979 to 1982.

Need More Now For The Future?

You are in luck! I cre­ated a bunch of Red­bot Now For The Future Mer­chan­dise on Zazzle.com for those that like to have their own sou­venirs for the future…

Click here for more stuff: Red­bot Loves You! Shop on Zaz­zle. com

That’s all for now,

Enjoy!

NOTE: Orig­i­nal Duty Now For The Future Album Art by Janet Perr 79 — I spent many hours as a teenager star­ing at this album cover while lis­ten­ing to it…