My view: "Get The Knack" by The Knack
Editor's note: The Knack — with original members Doug Fieger, Berton Averre and Prescott Niles and new member Pat Torpey — is performing at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Pipeline Cafe (doors open at 6 p.m.); see story on this page. Here's a review of The Knack's big breakthrough album.
By Jeremy Castillo
Special to The Advertiser
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RELEASED: JUNE 1, 1979 (REISSUED IN 2002)
STYLE: POP/ROCK
My take: Long before Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" abruptly ended the hair- and glam-metal trend of the 1980s, at the tail end of the 1970s a band released a song that single-handedly brought rock music back into the mainstream and killed disco once and for all. That song was "My Sharona"; that band was The Knack. In the summer of 1979, that song would become the season's inescapable tune and would propel the band's debut album "Get The Knack" to unprecedented sales success, hitting gold status (500,000 copies sold) in only 13 days and platinum status (1 million sold) in six weeks.
While "My Sharona" pushed The Knack into legendary status, the song's success was a double-edged sword, overshadowing the rest of the album, which uses lust as a theme and offers some of the most energetic, infectious and lyrically dirty power pop ever.
"My Sharona," for the eight of you who haven't heard it, is Knack singer/songwriter/guitarist Doug Fieger's love letter to a young woman named Sharona, written while Fieger was seeing someone else. Other songs are just as up front, cheeky and hormone-driven as the band relates to its prime audience: horny, sexually frustrated teenage males.
"Frustrated" is about the aggravation of dealing with an indecisive female; "Your Number or Your Name" is a tune about the hopelessness of being struck by lust at first sight; "Siamese Twins (The Monkey and Me)" is about ... well, you know; and "Good Girls Don't" is the anthem pining teenage boys everywhere can relate to, even now.
If you pick up the remastered version of "Get The Knack," you'll be treated to five bonus tracks, including a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Don't Look Back" and previously unreleased cuts of "My Sharona," "That's What the Little Girls Do," "Maybe Tonight" and "I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock And Roll)."
"Get The Knack" and The Knack itself were made classics with the release of one song right out of the box, but the album on the whole is probably good enough to have earned the band success. For fans who want to build a classic-rock album collection, start with Zeppelin and Hendrix, but get "Get The Knack" eventually.
