Devo are my favorite band of all time, and have been for some time.

"Wait, the guys who played 'Whip It'?"

Let me explain.

Devo were a group of punk weirdos ahead of their time. The seeds were planted on May 4th, 1970, when they were students at Kent State University and witnessed the shooting first-hand. It permanently warped their worldview. In their opinion, humanity wasn't moving forward, but backward: not evolution, but DE-VOlution. Far away from the "cultural centers" of the punk and new wave movements in New York and California, they stewed in their own juices for nearly a decade in the suburbs of Akron, Ohio, before their demo tape was discovered by Iggy Pop and David Bowie. Bowie called them "the band of the future". Iggy said he "felt like Christopher Columbus". Their first album was unleashed on the world in August 1978.

And it FUCKING. RULED.

"Uncontrollable Urge", the opening track off their first album.

Their albums increasingly became more synth-heavy, more pop-oriented, still subversive and weird but less openly confrontational. They've been going through a bit of a resurgence lately after re-issuing a collection of basement demos from before they got a record deal, which display just what a pissed off proto-punk group they really were:

"Fountain of Filth", from Hardcore Devo Vol. 2

Unique, twisted, original. ARE WE NOT MEN? WE ARE DEVO!

"Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA" Live, my favorite performance of my favorite Devo song