“Are You Experienced” by Devo

Devo took on Jimi Hendrix's "Are You Experienced" for Shout, the sixth studio album they put out through Warner Bros. in October 1984, and on paper it's an unlikely meeting: a Hendrix song, words and music, in the hands of a new wave band. Devo produced it themselves, with Bob Casale engineering.

Shout stuck with the synth-pop of the records before it and leaned hard on the then-new Fairlight CMI sampler, but it came out of the band's first real bout of internal tension and creative differences, and most of its members have since said they were unhappy with the result. It flopped with critics and buyers alike, Warner Bros. let them go, drummer Alan Myers, there since 1976, quit over the band's growing reliance on drum machines and programming, and Devo went on hiatus for four years.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.