Into the Slipstream: The Best Album of the ’80s – Released in the ’70s
What if I were to tell you, children, the best album of the 1980s was released in 1979? What if all the preconceived notions of pop and rock and image from the previous 25 years of rock ‘n’ roll were turned on their head for the entire decade after this album came out and would be set by the rise and fall of the band that released this album? That’s a lot of mystery for one paragraph.
Babies, for this edition of Into the Slipstream, I’m talking about Get the Knack, the 1979 freshman release from, you guessed it, the Knack.
Stop reading now. Before you go any further in this column, make sure you’re playing the actual record. Somehow, but preferably on a hi-fi piece of furniture much like the one pictured to the left. Go ahead. We can wait. Got it? Good. MP3s?? C’mon, it’s 1979 for crying out loud! Oh fine! Fine! Play the damn MP3. But if you put it on shuffle, I quit.
A quick look at the track listing can tell you that this album is about sex. Sex with teenage girls. And drugs. And a love of hooks. And sex with teenage girls.
“Let Me Out” hits the perfect mark as an intro song, making it clear that the band is exploding with angst all over dorm rooms across America. “Your Number or Your Name” is a plea for that hot chick in the PS 428 homeroom to just go have a burger and a shake (although she knows your intentions are not altruistic). Slow it down, Knack, slow it down on the third track, “Oh, Tara.” Calling a girl “the agony and the ecstasy” is a pretty big deal in this mid-tempo letter to Tara, who seems totally disinterested at the protagonist’s advances. So what happens after that? You go after the rich girl, of course. The one with the money and her parents’ 1976 Plymouth Sports Fury III. “She’s So Selfish.” Yet again, she doesn’t give a hoot. Selfish, maybe; liberated — yep. Doug Fieger, voice of the Knack, doesn’t get it at this point. He’s so busy being horny for everything that walks by him he forgets that these chicks are individuals, sure in their own sexualities. So yeah, eff you Doug. Or maybe he’s speaking for all the 17-year-old boys who just need a touch. Who cares? It’s hook-filled, power
-pop mayhem!
The backlash against the Knack after a few months at the top of the charts came in the form of the media calling them a Beatles rip off. “Maybe Tonight,” a good song in its own right, does little to quell that image with its back-masking, reversed drums. Beatles-esque, no, but it’s enough for the haters to latch onto, and they did by the droves in this fickle landscape of American popular music. At least the boys get a little light at the end of their dating tunnel as the protagonist in “Good Girls Don’t” states, “Good girls don’t, but I do.” Is it just another teenage tease or are we going back to your bedroom, baby? What gives?
The second side of this album (yes I said album, children. That would be track seven onward for those of you listening on inferior media) takes off like a rocket ship of lust. The eternal radio hit “My Sharona” is so damn lined with hooks, both musical and vocal, an aggressive, non-radio-friendly extended guitar solo (chopped out of the radio edit), and a scintillating sexuality that speaks about the girl, Sharona, in terms of worship.
However, worship alone wouldn’t be enough, as Sharona leads you down a self-destructive path. You start playing along with Buddy Holly records and wishing things could be more like the 1950s. “Heartbeat” makes you wonder what the hell happened after Sharona left, because Fieger and the boys start to travel some dangerous territory. You’ll never listen to a Buddy Holly song the same way again.
And then comes the drug use.
“Siamese Twins (The Monkey and Me)” is a sweaty, stench-filled, shooting gallery of a song. Power pop as written by Lou Reed. Sharona messed you up good, and you long for the days of chasing skirts and being let down when all they wanted to do was neck in the back seat of your car. Getting what you want is never as good as the picture in your mind.
“Lucinda,” “That’s What Little Girls Do,” and “Frustrated” round out the album, a cascading trio that culminates with this journey coming back to weak knees and a chick who leads you like a doggie on a walk. It’s an open-ended relationship as the beat just fades out. As you wished her skirt was a little higher. As you wished the party wouldn’t end. But damn, the riffs and hooks are so fine. Fiiiiinnnnnneeeee.
The letdown for the band after this album was a mild follow up …But the Little Girls Understand. It charted but never lead to the success of the first disc. The public makes superstars and then calls them out for writing dangerous lyrics that might sexualize teenagers. Welcome to rock music, ya squares!
The industry forgot the Knack after the second album, with the band recording one more, Round Trip in 1981, to little fanfare and even less success. Fieger left because he couldn’t take it anymore, and the band dissolved.
In 1991, the Knack reformed with a decent album, Serious Fun, but America was in the middle of grunge, and power pop had gone the way of the stegosaurus. Again, they restarted in 1998, with Zoom, and followed up in 2001 with Normal as the Next Guy. But middle-aged men can’t sing about teenage girls (it’s creepy), and there was little interest for the group except as a legacy act playing the hits. That’s worse than death in the music business.
Doug Fieger and company continued to tour and make a go until Fieger’s diagnosis with brain tumors and lung cancer, fighting the disease until his death in 2010. You cannot escape the reaper, even if you made possibly the best album of the ’70s or ’80s. Fight me on it; I dare you.
Maybe it isn’t best album of the decade. Or decades. There is, however, an argument to be made that it’s the best album of the cusp. The time between decades. Listen to it in all its skinny-tie glory. Listen to the magic of Get the Knack. If you are a teenager, go do something your parents are going to hate.
Until the next time, children.
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Tony