Robert Curtis Lewis is a founding member of the New Wave band Devo.
Education
Lewis studied poetry with Black Mountain poet Editor Dorn, British poet Eric Mottram and Robert Bertholf, an English professor at Kent who later was named the curator of the poetry collection and Charles Doctorate. Abbot Scholar at the University at Buffalo.
Career
He played basketball briefly for Bobby Knight at Cuyahoga Falls High School, was a National Merit Scholar at Kent State University, and the first student at the university to earn a degree in anthropology, graduating shortly after the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970. Lewis and Gerald Casale were the originators of the concept of de-evolution, writing seminal tracts in the now-defunct Los Angeles Staff, and later formed the band with Mark Mothersbaugh. The band refused to negotiate, and sued Lewis in Los Angeles Superior Court, seeking a declaratory judgment stating Lewis had no rights to the name or theory of De-evolution.
Lewis then filed an action in United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, alleging theft of intellectual property.
During discovery, Lewis produced articles, promotional materials, documentary evidence and an interview recorded at the Akron Art Institute following the premiere of In the Beginning was the End in which Mothersbaugh and other band members credited Lewis with developing the theory of De-evolution, and the band quickly settled for an undisclosed sum. He wrote and performed as Hurricane Bob on the New Wave Akron compilation album, Bowling Balls from Hell, and worked on videos with New Wave groups Tin Huey, Hammer Damage and Human Switchboard.
In the 1980s, when working as a consultant in Damascus, Syria, he was Middle East Correspondent for Rolling Stock magazine, published by Editor and Jennifer Dunbar Dorn. His poetry has been published in Creedences, Shelley"s and the Poetry Review, when Eric Mottram was editors