From Stage to Screen: How Devo’s Bob 1 & Cartoon Network became collaborators

Bob Mothersbaugh, or Bob 1 as he’s sensibly known in iconic new-wave band Devo, was on tour with the band when the pitch from Cartoon Network Australia came through.

“We were in Seattle. I was in a hotel room and they sent me a packet about Exchange Student Zero,” says Mothersbaugh. “I read it and I said ‘This, I like this. This could be really good if they do it good.’ I just got that feeling.”

LA-based Mothersbaugh is in Melbourne as he sits down to chat with TMN. Across the table from him in the Park Hyatt lobby is Mark Eyers, Head of Kids Content at Cartoon Network’s Asia Pacific parent Turner. Eyers facilitated the creation of telemovie-turned-TV-series Exchange Student Zero, Cartoon Network’s first Australian-made series. The unconventional media company tapped Mothersbaugh to compose, along with TV and now radio host Rove McManus and Scott Edgar of comedy trio Tripod as two of the voice over artists.

Mothersbaugh’s screen credits, with MutatoMuzika – the production company he runs with brother and bandmate Mark – include films The Lego Movie, Hotel Transylvania, and 21 Jump Street, as well as TV shows including Regular Show, Rug Rats (which he scored for 12 years) and over 3,000 TV commercials.

The entire crew of Exchange Student Zero are in Melbourne for Screen Forever, a conference for screen industry professionals, and today will mark the first time they’ve all been in the same room.

First though, Mothersbaugh and Eyers are discussing how a member of one of the most progressive experimental bands of the late ‘70s came to spend 90% of his time composing for the screen.

As Mothersbaugh explains, Devo had been influenced by imagery long before the release of 1980 touchstone Whip It. In fact, they could very well have invented the ‘music video’ following a week-long visit from a Kent State University friend, who was making TV commercials at the time.

“Devo always had visual ideas when we were writing songs,” says Mothersbaugh. “We probably made the very first music video in 1976. No body was making music videos.”

The footage shot during Devo’s writing sessions that year became two music videos, which the band played before their sets at club shows. Of course, when MTV burst onto the scene in 1981 and forever changed the worlds of music, film, fashion and technology, the conglomerate was starving for content and played an indulgent amount of Devo in the early years.

It is not so far-fetched that, in an alternate reality, the members of Devo never came to form as a band, and are in fact working as professional visual artists. Mothersbaugh’s brother Mark and Jerry Casale attended art school, while Bob himself had planned to study art at Kent State. Sadly, the infamous shooting at Kent State in May 1970 stopped him: “All the good art teachers left so I decided not to go to college.”

“We kind of think in visuals,” says Mothersbaugh. “On the first album there’s a song Too Much Paranoia that we kind of stole from the McDonald’s commercial with it.”

36 years on from Devo’s first international tour, life couldn’t be any more of an antithesis for Mothersbaugh. The band released their last studio album, Something for Everybody, to critical acclaim in 2010, and since then have been infamously fastidious about the shows they play. According to Mothersbaugh, this has less to do with the band members’ post-heyday occupations, and more to do with a desire to avoid each other.

“My band is very dysfunctional and [there’s] a lot of internal strife, like being in a studio,” he laughs. “I can go on tour with them, I can get a seat on the other end of the plane and not have to sit with them. You only have to be together onstage.”

Early in his screen composing career Mothersbaugh found himself coming full circle – he scored a series of cartoons for McDonald’s in the US.

“There’s also a song that’s on maybe the second album where I was sitting watching a sitcom and there was a bit…” Mothersbaugh begins to hum an ‘80s-style intro. “And I had a guitar in my hands so I started playing it, and it became a song.”

Naturally, it was Mothersbaugh’s composing work that inspired the pitch to have him score Exchange Student Zero.

“[Mutato Muzika has] done such a huge body of work in the space that we work in,” says Eyers. “We thought there may be some connection there and we actually found out that they did Regular Show which has some retro elements in there.”

Based in Hong Kong, Eyers looks worldwide when harnessing resources. Exchange Student Zero may be an Australian-made production, but the weaving of Anime, Western and traditional comedy saw the show’s producers look to global cultures where people are using technologies and creativity in different ways.

“If you can tap into that and bring it back, then you’re truly getting some innovation,” Eyers says. “That’s why we do this,” he smiles. “It’s why we try to go to the end of the earth to get some ideas because we’re always looking for the diamond in the rough.”

Already a hit in Taiwan as the #1 show on Cartoon Network in the territory, Exchange Student Zero has been on air in 29 markets in the Asia Pacific region. There’s also plans to take it to North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

One important commendation to be made about the animated film industry is its aptitude for reaching a global audience with the original score intended for each show. Cartoon Network may re-work the dubbing for the 194 markets in which it airs, but one thing that doesn’t change is the global language of music.

“A lot of people forget, only 50% of it is visual, the other 50% is audio,” notes Eyers. “And say maybe half of that is dialogue, the other half is music. That’s got to work and we’ve got to get it right, or the whole thing falls apart. […] But if you get it right, you’re an alchemist. You’ve got gold at the end of it.”

Mothersbaugh’s method is quite visceral. Having never had a guitar lesson, but with noodling chops that have been praised by multiple guitar magazines and early advocate David Bowie, he has an ear for complementing visuals in a way that’s both non-intrusive and universal.

“When I put the show on and I’m going to start to score it, and I watch it, I can hear and feel the music that should be there,” Mothersbaugh explains. “Then my job is just to get that into a computer and make it come out of the speakers like I was hearing it.”

Initial ratings for Exchange Student Zero are already breaking the mould. Normally only shows with no dialogue are able to rate so strongly in both Asia and Australia, however Eyers says the show is “getting really strong numbers in Taiwan, Southeast Asia and really solid numbers in Australia.”

Next year, Cartoon Network will release four more Australian-made animated projects, including a pilot for Monster Beach: The Series. An award-winning telemovie by the same name was released on Halloween 2014 and featured music from Melbourne-based Tripod. It could be said Australia’s animation output will reach a new acme in 2016, and that Exchange Student Zero proved among many things that local ideas can eclipse the success of heavy-hitters when created for the global stage. But more likely it’s a sign that local writers and animators are now aware of Cartoon Network Australia’s open door policy when it comes to ideas.

Exchange Student Zero airs Saturdays at 9:30am on Cartoon Network