JON ‘MOJO’ MILLS chews galactic fat with Devo main man, film composer and B-movie fan MARK MOTHERSBAUGH about starring in the 100th episode of Futurama.

Shindig!: Futurama – Devo. A match made in heaven, right?
Mark Mothersbaugh: Yeah, I think so. I know Matt and we grew up at the same time, so we have a lot of the same influences. We both love B-movies and when I was a kid I’d go to the matinée on Saturday. For 50 cents I could go and see two movies like Revenge Of The Zombie Killers or Mars Needs Candybars. Matt and I definitely grew up with the same kind of fantasies about what the future was going to be like.
It was perfect for Devo to be coming to the defence of a cyclopean mutant in the brilliant Futurama. We speak out for and come and stand up for the rights of mutants around the universe. It’s a very fitting casting.

SD: What music took you away from the mainstream of pop in the ’60s?
MM: As with Matt it was Captain Beefheart. Absolutely. But I didn’t just reserve my musical influences as coming from pop music. I was equally as fascinated with soundtracks, TV commercials and elevator music… the sounds that were all around you.
I loved old sci-fi movies with theramins, novachords and all of those really weird vintage instrument sounds. They have always stayed with me.

SD: Matt Groening – what makes his work so very special?
MM: It’s an ability to observe and turn things around and spit them back out again in a way that the obvious becomes humorous and the things that are mundane become creepy. I like his sensibility and it’s what gives him lasting power and why his shows do so well.

SD: The #1 “musical mutant”?
MM: It would change depending on what day you asked me… so today you’re going to get Raymond Scott – the Frank Zappa of Hollywood during the ’30s.
He wrote a lot of crazy music that Carl Stalling later arranged into scores for Looney Tunes. Scott was also an inventor who created something called the Electronium, which he called “the first music composing machine”. I remember reading in an article where he bragged “and it never writes the same song twice”.