“Knackology: The Zen Recordings” (Omnivore Recordings)
By Eleni P. Austin
Back in 1979, The Knack suddenly appeared as if out of nowhere. They made a huge splash with their debut album. Get The Knack, which ushered in the brief era of Skinny Tie bands, and managed to create a sharp amalgam of melodic Power Pop and primitive Punk energy. Critics raved, delighted by the band’s crisp and concise songcraft. The public agreed, sales were brisk and their first single, My Sharona,” shot up the charts. Music mags hailed them as the next big thing.
A year later, they returned with their follow-up, …But The Little Girls Understand and those same critics and music publications pilloried the band. Music buyers mostly ignored the record and sales tanked. They made one more long-player and then slunk off into the sunset. The about-face left the band scratching their heads. They’d gone from revered to vilified in just two years.
The Knack, which featured Doug Fieger (vocals, guitar), Berton Averre (lead guitar), Prescott Niles (bass) and Bruce Gary (drums), formed in the late ‘70s. Their stripped-down but muscular sound drew comparisons to British Invasion acts like The Beatles and Kinks, as well as American compatriots like Raspberries. Their music was a much-needed antidote to the bloated Corporate Rock of Styx, Boston, Journey and Kansas that had a stranglehold the radio airwaves.
The Knack’s incendiary live shows received a surfeit of attention from record companies and a bidding war ensued. Capitol Records (home to The Beatles), emerged victorious. In the Summer of 1979, their debut single, “My Sharona,” skyrocketed up the charts and perched there at #1 for six weeks. The accompanying album, Get The Knack followed suit and holds the distinction of becoming one of the fastest selling debut records of all time. But the band did themselves no favors by refusing to talk to the press. All of the goodwill quickly evaporated.
The record label rushed them back into the studio, and their second album ….But The Little Girls Understand, arrived eight months after their first. The backlash was swift and merciless. Even though the record reached #15, it was considered a critical and commercial failure. The band’s plan had been to move from black & white with Get The Knack to technicolor with their third effort, 1981’s Round Trip. But, by then, no one was paying attention. The Knack quietly called it quits.
Although they re-emerged a decade later with the intriguing Serious Fun record, their label, Charisma (a boutique imprint from Virgin Records), fumbled the release and promotion. But the band persevered, and 1998’s Zoom felt like the Punky, Power Pop gem they were always destined to record. They followed up three years later with Normal As The Next Guy and a live set, Live From The Rock N’ Roll Fun House, appeared in 2002. Sadly. Doug Fieger lost his battle with cancer in 2010.
Luckily, the cool kids at Omnivore Recordings have made it their mission to preach the Rock N’ Roll Gospel of The Knack. They have curated and re-released archival ‘90s and 2000s efforts, adding a surplus of bonus tracks. They have also released posthumous collections like Rock & Roll Is Good For You: The Fieger/Averre Demos, along with concert sets like Havin’ A Rave-Up: Live In Los Angeles 1978 and The Knack Live In Los Angeles 1978. Now they return with Knackology: The Zen Recordings, an odds n’ sods collection that spans 19 tracks.
The record kicks into gear with a live track off the Havin’ a Rave-Up! album, with a blistering live rendition of “Let Me Out,” coincidently, the opening cut from their 1979 debut. Thrashy guitars and oscillating bass lines collide with a pummeling back-beat. The arrangement literally bursts at the seams, blasting out of the speakers at breakneck speed. Doug’s boyish tenor leaps above the fray. Priapic lyrics seem to find the little head instructing the big head: “Let me out, come get me out, I’m just a prisoner of your love, let me out, come and get me out baby, I will never have enough, I guess I’m getting while the getting is right, she may be faking, but I’m taking my chance tonight.”
Unfortunately, their 20th century output is kinda under-represented here. Only one track from ….But The Little Girls Understand makes the cut. A live version of “Baby Talks Dirty” simply throbs with intent, as fuzzy guitars zig-zag between rubbery bass lines and a meaty, beaty, big and bouncy rhythm. The underrated Round Trip record is completely overlooked and the Serious Fun album is only allocated two tracks, the marauding “Shine” and the pensive, mid-tempo “One Day At A Time,” which should have been a hit.
The collection reserves the most bandwidth for the Zoom and Normal As The Next Guy records. And rightly so, both efforts verge on perfect. A couple of Zoom songs are fractious, fast and furious. If it were possible for The Beatles and The Who to sire a sonic love child, it might sound like “Pop Is Dead.” A percussive fusillade and contrapuntal bass lines propel slash and burn guitars through a roller coaster arrangement. Caustic lyrics eulogize the untimely demise of Rock N’ Roll: “I wonder what they’ll say, years from now, who’ll understand it all anyhow, Art straight from the heart, piercing the gloom on the walls of a tomb.” Sugary, Fab Four guitars underscore each refrain and the shout-it-out chorus unfurls with ghoulish gusto: “Hey, Pop is dead, bring your shovel, hey, Pop is dead, bust your bubble, hey, Pop is dead, please don’t trouble me, not while I’m watching TV.” They take it to the bridge with a Townshend-“Tommy” pastiche: “Feel me, peel me, punch me, steal me,” that folds into a powerhouse drum break and a distorto guitar solo.
Meanwhile, “Ambition” is just as potent. Slashing power chords ride roughshod over thrumming bass lines and a whipcrack beat. A mordant treatise on the entertainment industry, verbose lyrics offer some cutthroat advice: “Take nothing on the backend baby, just a smile and a knife will close the deal, just like an uptown hope chest someone’s throwing overboard, another downtown left-out living on the second floor, you’re still the same, just rearranged, ambition is guaranteed, ambition, it’s all you need.” Squally guitars punctuate each verse, and a skittery harmonica darts across the bridge. Strategic drum salvos detonate like cluster bombs and the arrangement builds to a stinging crescendo before stopping on a dime.
The action slows with “Harder On You.” The song shares some musical DNA with The Beatles’ “I’ll Follow The Sun.” Doug’s tender croon and wraps around the verses, abetted by guitars that shift from strummy to astringent, along with wily bass lines and a thunking beat. Emotional subterfuge is eclipsed by sincerity as lyrics parse the intricacies of a mutual break-up: “It’s sad girl, seeing this side of you, that lonely look in your eye, and no words I’ll ever confide to you will hide the tears that you cry, there isn’t a way of making this easy, I’m feeling it too, you must believe me, and though it’s going to be hard on me, feeling the way I do, I know it’s going to be harder on you.” A plangent guitar solo on the break underscores the commiseration.
Although The Knack’s signature sound drafted off a blueprint drawn by British Invasion bands, a couple of Normal tracks clearly mine different influences. “Les Girls,” with its glissando’d bass intro, sidewinder guitar riffs and chunky beat, feels like a kissing cousin to the Velvet Underground classic, “Sweet Jane.” Doug’s vocals veer from suavely continental to sardonically conversational as lyrics chronicle cosmopolitan girl-watching: “Hollywood, New York, Paris, the Jet-Set life can seem so strange, strolling down the rue de vie, it’s funny how some things never change/Les Girls, tres jolie, les girls bells jeune filles, les girls sens unique, les girls c’est magnifique.” Reedy accordion notes add a bit of savoir faire ahead of a scattershot guitar shower.
“Normal’s” title-track is revv’ed up and ready to go. Staccato guitar riffs and caffeinated bass lines are wed to a bludgeoning back-beat. Doug’s robotic monotone and the arrangement’s industrial clank take a page from DEVO’s deadpan-Art/Punk playbook. Doug spits out a diatribe that pleads conformity: “I’m normal as Walter Cronkite, I’m normal as Ghandi, I’m normal Idi Amin, I’m normal as Eydie Gorme, and when I come home from work, I’m as normal as Dr. Joyce Brothers, and who are you to say what is normal and what is not.” On the break, the beat kicks over, pounding out a triple-time tattoo as bass lines gyrate and Tilt-A-Whirl guitars scrap and spiral.
The best tracks here leap-frog through the band’s 30-year history, beginning with the whispery menace of the stripped-down demo of “Rock & Roll Is Good For You.” They continue with a demo of “That’s What The Little Girls Do” that delivers a la-la-la sweetness that almost camouflages the lyrics’ casual misogyny. That song arrived fully-formed on Get The Knack. Several songs from their debut appear here as live versions. “Oh Tara” remains an elastic Rocker that offers a mordant meditation on unrequited love. Then there’s the candy-coated crunch of “Good Girls Don’t,” a petulant dissertation on Blue Balls that features this erudite couplet: “And it’s a teenage sadness everyone has got to taste, an in-between age madness that you know you can’t erase, ‘til she’s sitting on your face.” Who said romance is dead? “(She’s So) Selfish,” another cut from that epochal album, also arrives live. It’s a version that truly fires on all cylinders. Rippling lead licks tangle with shapeshifter rhythm guitar, angular bass lines and stuttery, Bo Diddley beat. The infectious melody and arrangement nearly offset sexist lyrics that felt problematic in 1979, and viewed through a 21st century lens read like the rantings of a basement dwelling In-cel. The whirring dervish/frenzied crescendo manages to distract from the limp-dick machismo and entitlement.
“Can I Borrow A Kiss” is a mid-tempo groover that is fueled by ringing, Byrdsy guitars, vroom-y bass lines and a rat-a-tat beat. The acrid stench of “….Selfish,” is forgotten in the perfumed haze of angsty adolescence: “I was a knock-kneed, freckle-face over-shy underfed boy, in the summer I’ll always remember, said I was high-strung, middle-class oversexed, underemployed, by September I was a man, I followed the throng out to the coast and found a girl who stepped out of a song, and filled my world with light and sound as she said to me, ‘can I borrow a kiss, can I borrow a kiss, no cost incurred and I’ll pay you back with interest.” On the break, the song drifts skyward, tilting toward Psychedelia as crushed velvet keys pulse and an incendiary guitar solo sputters and catches fire.
Meanwhile, fluttering guitars wash over agile bass lines, a stutter-step beat and brushed, hi-hat action on “Love Is All There Is.” Written two decades after their debut, the Knack found a more pragmatic way to talk about romance: “Love can slip away, love’ll let you down, if you brush away the bad times, love will turn around.”
Finally, “Seven Days Of Heaven” tethers melodic slide guitar and pinwheeling bass lines to a heartbreak beat. The Knack’s usual sneering cynicism gives way to ardent authenticity: “Expect a miracle, so goes the saying, but expectations can leave you so blue, then when you came along, sweet as an angel’s song, I found the miracle was you.” A lush slide guitar solo lattices a pummeling back-beat on the break.
The collection closes with thunderous live take of their signature hit, “My Sharona.” A blitzkrieg back-beat is supplanted by thumping, syncopated bass lines and strafing guitars. Doug’s ageless croon distracts from the wanton carnality that goes along with lusting after a teenage nymphette: “Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind, I always get it up for the touch of the younger kind…” These days, the song is practically an outline for an episode of the reality series of To Catch A Predator, but in the late ‘70s it was de rigueur for musicians to um, date underage girls. However, it’s impossible to deny the insanely catchy melody, the sharp instrumentation and the indefatigable arrangement that simply crackles with authority. It’s the perfect finish to a whip-smart collection of tracks.
It’s easy, and lazy to characterize The Knack as a one-hit-wonder band. The truth is, that one hit, has been part of the zeitgeist for close to half a century, popping up in films, television series and commercials. The opening notes of “My Sharona” are instantly recognizable. Pure Power Pop/Punk energy that remains indelible. Unfortunately, The Knack wasn’t afforded the same grace as Cheap Trick. The Illinois four-piece also had a few missteps following the first blush of success, but are still going strong. If not for the untimely passing of Doug Fieger, The Knack would probably have been on that same trajectory.
Knackology isn’t a paint-by-numbers greatest hits, but it’s still a pretty cohesive collection of essential tracks. Demos confirm that their greatness was already baked-in. Live cuts certify that on stage, The Knack had the goods.
