This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

It's hard to overstate just how important record album art was to music before we downloaded everything.

Our experience with a record or CD used to be visual. The design of the record cover was your first impression of what was to come.

I would stare at the fonts on the cover and pour over the liner notes the first time I put an album on.

It was a ritual.

I'm not saying that Arab music was better.

It wasn't.

It was just different.

The art on the records tried to encapsulate the essence of a band and then that essence was

transferred to you because you were a fan and it became part of your identity too.

At least that's what it felt like.

Album art was certainly important to my friend and reporter Sean Cole, one

certain album and one certain band in particular.

Roman, were you ever a Devo fan? I was more of a Devo appreciator. I don't think I was really a fan. Like I listened,

I like the songs I heard. I remember Whippett when I was a kid. I remember they were

You were not a Devo T. No, it was not a Devo T. I remember they were not a devotee. No, it was not a devotee.

I remember the red hats and I have a particular memory of them doing a cover of

I can't get no satisfaction by the Rolling Stones on Saturday Night Live wearing these yellow hazmat suits.

You know, like they were really weird. Yes, weird, yes.

So this story is about that Devo album, the one that they were promoting on that Star Night Live

performance you saw. More specifically, it's about the album art of that record.

Because the story of the image that ultimately ended up on the of that

...