Here is the info file from Dime
DEVO – WORKFORCE TO THE WORLD – LIVE… ON SITE
Liberated Vinyl Bootleg
Originally released in 1978 – Cyber Records UD1
Vinyl > Audacity (WAV) via USB turntable > Wavelab Lite (Manual de-clicking and tracking) > FLAC Level 4 > you
1. Come Back Jonee
2. Blockhead
3. Too Much Paranoias
4. Praying Hands
5. Uncontrollable Urge
6. Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA
7. Gut Feeling
8. The Words Get Stuck In My Throat
9. FanfareTracks 1-2 recorded in Cleveland, OH
Tracks 3-8 recorded at Mabuhay, San Francisco, CA
Track 9 recorded in Akron, OHAll sometime in 1977
Artwork included.
Purporting to be by a group called Workforce To The World, this was, of course, a very thinly- disguised live recording by Devo. This vinyl bootleg appeared hot on the heels of the band’s first live dates in the UK, and my album listings tell me I bought this in August 1978. Very nearly thirty years ago – it just doesn’t seem possible…
In order to stay within Dime rules, I’ve spent much of today trying to determine whether any of these recordings have ever been released officially – I can’t find any evidence to suggest that they have, either on CD or on the DVD compilations of Devo films/videos that have appeared over the years. Although I can’t find any clear indication of exactly when the recordings were made, various message boards and fan sites indicate that they were all made in 1977 – I could find no reference to any live material dating from 1977 on any official Devo releases, so I think these are OK. If anyone knows differently, please yell…
I’ve performed very minor surgery on the recordings – I manually de-clicked some of the tracks, and on the original bootleg, there’s a short unexplained silence during Too Much Paranoias. It turns out that the music either side matches perfectly, and so I have put the two halves together – as Eric Morecambe was fond of saying, "you can’t see the join"…
I’ve also produced some artwork – I took the original album cover and used it as the front of the CD insert, and used the album’s original lyric sheet as the back of the CD insert. The back cover of the CD is the original back cover of the album, slightly tidied up to remove the yellowing that my copy has acquired over the years. I’ve produced these in Photoshop, and they should print out at the correct size if printed from Photoshop – I’ve no way of telling how they’ll behave in other graphics packages, but I hope they’ll be of use. Note that the original album listed Smart Patrol and Mr. DNA separately – I haven’t tracked them separately because they are always played together, and so I’ve always considered them as a single entity. I’ve amended the artwork to show only nine tracks, so your CD will match the artwork.
Sound quality is generally very good – a strong B+, I’d say, but I appreciate these things are very personal. As always, I’ve included some mp3 samples to help you make up your minds about downloading. There’s some variation in volume across the whole set, with tracks 1-5 (originally side one) gradually becoming louder, and tracks 6-9 slightly quieter – I didn’t think the variation was enough to worry about, so I made no attempt to correct it.
Around the same time as this bootleg appeared, there were a couple of other unofficial Devo releases doing the rounds – another LP (which I don’t have), and a four-track EP called Mechanical Man, which seems to feature demo recordings made in 1974/75. I have the Mechanical Man EP, and if there’s any interest, I’ll put it up some time soon – again, I can find no evidence that the material has been given an official release, so if no-one can tell me differently, I’ll consider it fair game…
Anyway, enough from me,
Enjoy!
Alan.