The Red Room Orchestra
Great American Music Hall
January 18, 2026
Photos by Tyler King
If you know me, you know that I love films and music, and I especially love when the two collide. I’ve been fortunate enough to see a few of my favorite film composers performing their music in a live setting and it’s always an interesting and unique experience that’s unlike a traditional concert. One of the events that I was most looking forwarded to attending last year was the Future Ruins Festival that featured only film composers performing their work live. Unfortunately that festival was canceled, but one of those composers had their work recently celebrated and performed live by San Francisco’s Red Room Orchestra: Mark Mothersbaugh. And what made the event even more special was that Mark himself joined the band onstage for most of the show.
Coming onstage to a loud applause, the Red Room Orchestra began the show by playing a few selections from Mothersbaugh’s score for Wes Anderson’s sophomore film Rushmore. It’s a whimsical score that has a Wintery feel to it, and the band pulled the songs off beautifully. Next was a cover of the DEVO song “Booji Boy’s Funeral,” an obscure early instrumental by the band, before Mark joined the band onstage, sitting behind a Moog Minimoog at the front center of the stage. What followed was an evening where Mark and the Red Room Orchestra worked their way through some of Mothersbaugh’s most iconic film and television scores and themes, as well as some material that, as a big DEVO fan, I never would have expected to see Mark perform.
The first song that Mothersbaugh and the band played was arguably his most iconic theme: that of the Nickelodeon show Rugrats. Seeing that, closely followed by the opening and closing themes of the show Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, made me feel like this more than made up for missing Mothersbaugh at the cancelled Future Ruins Festival. At one point in the evening Mark mentioned that Red Room Orchestra leader Marc Capelle had picked the setlist and some of the songs that they were playing weren’t ones that Mothersbaugh himself would have picked, but thank goodness that Capelle had chosen the songs, as there were still more than a few surprises in store throughout the evening.
Decades ago Mothersbaugh joined the ranks of Danny Elfman and Ryuichi Sakamoto of being a recognizable face from the new wave and synth pop movement who found success as a film and television composer. Unlike Elfman and Sakamoto though, Mothersbaugh’s work is harder to pigeonhole. You can imagine what an Elfman score will sound like. You can imagine what a Sakamoto score will sound like. But Mothersbaugh’s composition work has stretched the gamut from electronic (“Grandmaster Jam Session” from Thor: Ragnarok) to orchestral (his work with Wes Anderson) to even more hard guitar-based music (“It’s Cold Inside” from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and “Happy Place/Bad Place” from Happy Gilmore), and the Red Room Orchestra was able to perform every single one of those songs as if they had been the musicians in the studio with Mothersbaugh at the time they were originally recorded.
Now, we have to address the red energy dome-wearing elephant in the room: DEVO. I was wondering going into the show if the orchestra would sneak in a couple of songs by Mark’s band into the setlist and what songs they would be, and I never would have guessed the songs that they decided to perform. Instead of listing each one out, I will just say what my personal highlights were: DEVO’s take on the Allen Toussaint song “Working In The Coal Mine,” 1982’s “It Takes A Worried Man,” and the DEVO character Booji Boy taking the stage to sing “The Words Get Stuck In My Throat.” Some of the songs that were played by the Red Room Orchestra and Mark hadn’t been played by DEVO in decades, and in a couple of instances it was the first time Mark had played them live in any capacity. It truly was a treat for all of the spuds in attendance. Who’d have thought that the only way I would ever see some DEVO rarities was for someone outside of the band to pick the setlist?
After a run of songs from The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and a few more DEVO songs, the night was concluded with one of my favorite DEVO songs: “Uncontrollable Urge.” The audience was jumping and writhing, Mark embodying the role of frontman perfectly, finally coming out from behind his MiniMoog to proclaim, “I’ve got an uncontrollable urge!” He and the band even did the trademark jumps during the closing bridge of the song before its raucous conclusion. As I left the venue, I realized that this would be the smallest venue I would ever see some of these songs played, as well as the only time that I would see some of the other songs that were played. The show was a reminder to me about the power of live music and how important special shows like this are, not just to the fans in the audience who are treated to something that they’ve never experienced before, but also for the musicians onstage who get to do something that the audience wouldn’t expect.
