I love just about every Knack track I’ve ever heard. But, truly, that isn’t that many. Never did a band soar so high so fast and crash that much faster than this Power Pop quartet. Let’s go back and listen shall we?
The Knack – Get The Knack – 1979
Yeah, yeah. I know. “I’ve heard ‘My Sharona’. I know THAT band.
Are you sure?
The opening track, “Let Me Out”, really sets the tone for the whole experience that is The Knack’s debut record. The pure energy of that 2:22 song is enough to draw you in and lets the listener know that this group is tighter than….well…think about something that’s really tight and this group is about that snug.
Falling right into “Your Number or Your Name”, a track that straddles the balance between The Beatles and Glam rock, the pure power doesn’t let up. It’s melodic as hell and a real showcase for Bruce Gary’s drum fills.
In truth, “My Sharona” is maybe the 3rd or 4th best track on this record. Sure, it was the monster hit, but, next to “Good Girls Don’t”, “Let Me Out”, “Oh Tara” or what, with the Joe Jackson-sounding “She’s so Selfish, the latter days Beatles sounding (Or is that Cheap Trick I’m hearing in there?) “Maybe Tonight” and “Your Number…”, we just call “Side One”.
Side Two opens with the era-defining Sharona. And if that was all it had to offer, dayenu. But, it follows with a Buddy Holly cover, “Heartbeat”, a perfect harkening to the roots of rock and roll, establishing The Knack as heir apparents. If that wasn’t enough, the weird-o, New Wave deep track, “Siamese Twins (The Monkey and Me), solidifies the album as not just a series of hook laden singles. It’s an album of hook laden SONGS.
The requisite ballad, “Lucinda” is buried so deep into this album that its easy to forgive because the album picks right up with “That’s What the Little Girls Do”, which, with the lyrics in “Sharon” and the sexual content of “Good Girls Don’t” and the general content of “Frustrated, speak directly to the 14 year old listening to this album…yeah…it’s the soundtrack to male-adolescent frustration/puberty.
I have a special affection for this record for many reasons. One of them is that it was produced by one of the architects of Glam Rock. Mike Chapman was one half of the svengali writing duo of Chinn/Chapman who gave us all of the early Sweet hits. His finger is all over the great tracks of the 70s and this is only the second greatest offerings of his from that decade, the other being Blondie’s Parallel Lines.
I love this record. I love the immediacy. I love the frustration. The sex. The calamity. The pent-upness.
It’s sublime.
Grade: A+
ASide: My Sharona, Good Girls Don’t
BlindSide: Let Me Out, Oh Tara, She’s So Selfish, That’s What the Little Girls Do, Frustrated.
