Geek Chic

Rock & Roll unleashed the primal, the sensual and the animalistic impulses of raw male energy into popular culture. By the 1970s, amid the excesses that followed in rock's wake - disco, funk and country/rock fusion, a small countertrend representing all that rock opposed - emotional repression, control, precision - found expression in the realm of electronic music. The geek finally found his niche in the music scene. Groups like Devo and the Talking Heads explored the appeal of the anti hunk - the awkward, thin, stunted, spastic beta male who found his escape from the demands of the wide open mating rituals of the era in the realms of science fiction and technology.

But before these groups was the trailblazing band from Germany named Kraftwerk, and the song that exemplified the new brand was "We are the Robots" from 1978.