I will never forget the first time I saw Devo.
It was October 14, 1978, and my college roommates and I were watching “Saturday Night Live.” The band, which I had never heard of (I would guess that was true of 98 percent of the people watching the show), came on in their yellow jumpsuits, stiff and mechanical, swiveling like angry androids as they performed their brutalist robo version of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” When the song ended, one of the band members shot up his hand in what looked kind of like a Hitler salute.
At this point, the punk revolution was old news, and the new wave was in full swing.
I had eaten up the apocalyptic barbed anarchy of the Sex Pistols; I reveled in the Ramones, the Clash, Talking Heads, you name it.
But I’m not remotely exaggerating when I say that Devo doing “Satisfaction” on…