Devo

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Saturday Night Live begins its 39th season tonight, and if I had to consider every musical performance in the show’s history, I would vote for Devo’s cover of “Satisfaction” on the October 14, 1979 episode as the best of all. Performed just a week after the Rolling Stones was the program’s musical guest, this reimagination did for the head what Michael Jackson’s Motown 25 showstopper later did for the feet: It was moonwalking with the brain. They took the soul and put it into the machine.

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Before New Wave was just another old wave, selling its own nostalgia, it was trying its best to give the past a slip. Once that mission was accomplished, there was really nowhere for its leaders to go. But sometimes a brief revolution that clears the deck, even if it doesn’t build a new deck, is better than nothing at all. Devo, guesting on Merv Griffin’s show in 1980.

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Devo for Honda Scooters, 1984.

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