Listening Post - The Knack - Normal as the Next Guy

Every Knack song starts off with a bang. "Let Me Out". "Pop is Dead".
So, why does the final Fieger/Averre album start off sounding like a rejected track from a Squeeze album?
Sure the song picks up after a bit, but it's lazy, beachcomber atitude and dumb lyrics make me wonder why they even bothered.
Fieger is older. And his particular brand of rock is driven by adolescent frustration. He's never once suggested he could be an elder statesman, all his songs are basically love songs. In fact, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to think that he would have been a much in demand songwriter during the 50s. The Brill Building would have loved him.

But, in 2001, that kind of music is basically niche at best. The Knack of that era would be The Strokes (and even they would burn out after 2 albums).

They guys try to address their older status with songs like "Disillusioned Town", but, it doesn't really get you there, save as a piece of nostalgic remembrance. The same with "Girl I Never Lied to You", which, to me is the weirdest song on the album. It sounds nothing like a Knack song and that's because it's written by Monty Byron and John Corey the latter of whom was Fieger's first songwriting partner. They started the band, Sky, together. But, remembrance is sort of the theme of the record now, isn't it? They are very old and very done and the music of their youth, when they were relevant, has passed them by comepletely.

I don't know why the band didn't open with the title track, which is a fairly percussive piece (all the best Knack songs are, you know.) and snarky while at the same time defensive as hell. All the stuff I expect from Fieger. And I'm not sure why the world needed a redux of "One Day at a Time", but I actually prefer this version. And I can totally hear Robbie Rist or Lowen/Navarro covering it.

By the time you get deep into the album, and you realize that, well, this isn't the Knack of old, it's a collection of songs by a group of guys who make music and they aren't half bad, the album sort of grows. I am hardpressed to find a truly awful track in here, "Dance of Romance" being the exception.. Sure, much of it could've been written in the guys' sleep. But, you know what? I wish i could do that. At the time this record came out, Fieger was pushing 50 and he'd been recording music for 30 years. (His first band, Sky, will eventually be a part of this listening post, they have two albums that I was able to get). If he doesn't sound like he did 23 years earlier, isn't that to be expected?

In its own way, Normal as the Next Guy is the perfect Coda to The Knack. It's not really a classic Knack album, and they know it. It's a swan song of sorts, although I'm not sure Fieger knew he'd be dead in 6 years. It's an album by guys who don't need to make it. They made it. They get fat royalty checks from their big, era defining hit, "My Sharona". They just like to make music.

And that's the most important thing.

Grade: B+ (While the rating is higher then for Zoom, I do not consider this a Knack album proper. It's a Coda. Outside of their oeuvre in a way.)
ASide: Normal as the Next Guy, It's Not Me, Reason to Live
BlindSide: Spiritual Pursuit, One Day at a Time, Seven Days of Heaven, A World of My Own
DownSide: Dance of Romance

Listening Post - The Knack - Zoom

The Knack - Zoom - 1998

Let's get this out there. I love love love the opening track, "Pop is Dead", an infectious, snarky, reflective commentary on the state of pop culture wrapped up in a perfect 3:48 confection.
Terry Bozzio's drums emulate Bruce Gary's flourishy fills that I adored on that first record so much.

So, how's the rest?

LiveBlog time.

1. Pop Is Dead - Perfect.
2. Can I Borrow a Kiss? - A catchy knock off of "Needles & Pins", sublime Power Pop
3. Smilin' - Bozzio seems to have affected everyone here. And elevated everything at once. This song could've been a single.
4. Ambition - Co-Written by Stan Lynch (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers), a weaker affair. As most of the stuff Fieger doesn't write with Averre tends to be. But it doesn't suck. Probably better acoustic.
5. Mister Magazine - Reminds me of Cheap Trick, a lot. That's not bad. They could've been cousins.
6. Everything I Do  - Another Co-write. This time with Suzi Quatro writer Melissa Connell. It's a ballad. A very Beatles-y one. And not that great.
7. Love is All There Is - Every 21st Century Power Pop band sounds like this song. Sparklejets UK, Andersons, Jellyfish, everyone on the IPO roster.
8. Terry & Julie Step Out - From the opening riff this sounds more like an old-school Knack song than any other. A treat. (With the haunting chants of "No. 9", the band just isn't hiding their Beatles love anymore)
9. Harder on You - No Knack album is complete without a Buddy Holly/Roy Orbison style track. That's this one. It's not bad, but it's nothing special. Written by Averre with, hey! Prescott Niles, the bassist! Good for you, Prescott!
10. You Gotta Be There - A Fieger Ballad. Actually, I don't think I've heard as earnest a one in the band's catalog yet. Have I? Not like this. I kind of like it.
11. Good Enough - A promising percussive-soul-rocker that wants to be better than it is. And it's too long, to boot. :(
12. In Blue Tonight - A melancholy nostalgia trip that builds into a Nick Lowe-esque rocker. Someone's getting older....One of the most mature pieces Fieger's ever written.
13. Tomorrow - Niles gets back in on the action with F&A for a straight ahead rocker. A rave-up, actually.
14. (All in the) All in All - Okay, I get it! You wanna be the Beatles! Jeez, porpoise song much? But it's fine. It's to be expected. That's who Fieger really wanted to be anyway. He gets a pass.

Zoom isn't bad. Not by a long shot. It's easily the 3rd best Knack album. And if it had been trimmed, it would give Round Trip a run for it's money. The band never stood a chance. Their time had come and gone. But, what're ya gonna do? Quit?

Didn't think so.

Grade: B
ASide: Pop Is Dead, Can I Borrow a Kiss
BlindSide: In Blue Tonight, Smilin', Tomorrow
DownSide: Good Enough, Everything I Do

Listening Post - The Knack - Serious Fun

The Knack - Serious Fun - 1991

The first thing you notice about the reunion album by The Knack, recorded 10 years after they broke up, is just how...generic it sounds.
With Don Was's hands on the dials the album has a certain crunch to it but that doesn't help, it doesn't make it better, in fact, it just makes the whole proceedings sound anonymous.

The cheekiness of the last 3 albums is non-existent. Somewhere in there are the spines of classic Fieger/Averre songs, but they are so muddied by production, production which sounds like...omg....like The Tubes' Love Bomb. I mean, just listen to "I'll be Your Mau Mau".

That's what it reminds me of. The band is there, I think. The songs were written by the same guys. But, the sound has been so updated for the 90s that everything we fell in love with is missing.

If a track shows promise, like "Serious Fun", the lyrics kick in and they are as trite as the weakest Power Pop you've ever heard. Like latter days Rubinoos trite. Like "Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat" era Sparks trite.

Whereas some of the songs on earlier albums barely crossed the 2 minute mark, just about every song here hovers around 4 minutes and, you know what? That's too much. It's like "how many songs are too many Ramones songs for one listen?" (Answer...about 18) I mean, come on, "River of Sighs" is over 5 minutes long! For a Knack song!!! And that one sounds like the band is trying to be...um...Poison of all things. The same for "Shine", which tries so hard to be Anthemic! that the band gets lost.

I've spent too much time writing about this record. It's not great. It's forgettable and at times boring. It could have been better. Maybe next time.

Grade: C-
ASide: Rocket O' Love, Serious Fun, Doing the Dog
BlindSide: One Day at a Time, I'll be Your Mau Mau
DownSide: River of Sighs, Let's Get Lost

Listening Post - The Knack - Round Trip

After falling on their face with their follow up to their smash debut, Fieger, Averre and the band picked themselves off the self-congratulatory floor, tossed Mike Chapman out for Jack Douglas and pumped out Round Trip, their 3rd album and the last before they would break up for a while.

Too bad, really. Everything that was wrong with ...But The Little Girls Understand is right with Round Trip. Rather than harkening back and aping every influencer the band ever heard (Beatles, Stones, Rockabilly, Orbison, Specter, etc) the group fully embraces their Power Pop status and stand on the shoulders of the greats. The Raspberries, Big Star, Bay City Rollers and others have NOTHING on The Knack. Ironically, and sadly, Power Pop never really had a heyday. It was never truly embraced by anyone save the musicians who loved it. Weirdly, it has never really gone away, there are a gazillion Power Pop bands carrying on to this day. And they all owe a debt of gratitude to The Knack for breaking through so hard with the sound and paving...some way for them.

Much has been written about this record, about how it was unfairly maligned and very underrated and all of that is true. I'm not going to rehash it. The band is at it's muscly best on tracks like "Radiating Love" and "Soul Kissin'", thanks in no small part to the genius of Douglas who brings a lot of Cheap Trick and bit of Aerosmith to the proceedings. He really gives the band it's heft and credibility. I swear "Africa" owes as much to Steve Miller Band as it does to anything else. But, rather than rip the sound off, it just sounds borrowed and fresh. And "She Likes the Beat" has as much in common with late 70s Joe Jackson as it does Nick Gilder, and I could hear it playing well on early 80s radio. That it didn't is a shame. And the hits just keep coming.
"Just Wait and See" is super Power Pop.
"We Are Waiting" is Magical Mystery Tour redux, more Monkees than Beatles but I mean that in a very good way.
End Side One

So, what happens on the flip side?

The quintessential Fieger/Knack track, "Boys Go Crazy", that's what. A revved up cousin to "Good Girls Don't" (in theme and spirit, at least). Followed by the story song, "Lil Cal's Big Mistake", as self assured urban rocker if I've ever heard one which blends into the haunting "Sweet Dreams", an experimental prog rocker that is surely unexpected.

But, "Another Lousy Day in Paradise" is the perfect Knack song if I ever heard one. One that blends Big Star, The Beatles, The Kinks, The Cars and wraps them all up in one taut rocker. And one of the best tracks on the album, hell, in the band's entire catalog is the only Berton Averre solo-penned "Pay the Devil (Ooo, Baby, Ooo)", a giant, anthemic psychedelic piece of Lennon-esque pop.

If that's not enough, the album ends on the biggest, highest note of a track. A snarky, angry, punky, messy piece of social commentary called, "Art War". Considering that The Knack were basically a piece of Pop Art themselves, it's a perfect biting of the hand that feeds.

Round Trip is a treat. An unearthed, should have been, classic. Huh. I guess I did have something to say, after all.

Grade: A
ASide: Radiating Love, Boys Go Crazy, Another Lousy Day in Paradise, Pay the Devil (Ooo, Baby, Ooo)
BlindSide: Soul Kissin', Africa, She Likes the Beat, Just Wait and See, Lil Cal's Big Mistake, Art War

Listening Post - The Knack - ...But the Little Girls Understand.

The Knack - ...But the Little Girls Understand. - 1980

Hey! That's THE Sharona on the cover of the follow up to their massive debut album! I wonder if this album will have anything near as good as that track!!

The first half of that sentence I'm pretty sure no one said when they reached for this platter in 1980. But I am positive that second part is what people were thinking when this album came out.

And Fieger and Averre try hard to give the people what they want. That opening track, "Baby Talks Dirty" sounds like it was the son-of-Sharona and the next track, "I Want Ya" attempts to out do the previous record by ramping up the crash and sturm and drang. Those drums are giGANtic. For me, even though it's Get The Knack Pt. II, I'm okay with it.
The first real stumble on the record occurs on the third track, the Buddy Holly influenced (read: ripoff/pander), "Tell Me You're Mine" where Fieger inexplicably twists his voice into a quasi-Orbison baritone and fails miserably. We sort of right ourselves on the bright "Mr. Handelman", which is...well...it's not awful. It's just a song that wasn't good enough for the first album and is the kind of thing you expect deeper on a sophomore record. It's also the first song Fieger and Averre wrote together. So, there's that.

What's most intriguing to me is the direction the band takes on the second single, "Can't Put a Price on Love". The track sounds way more like a descendent of latter day Stones versus The Beatles, whom Fieger was trying to be on that first record. "Price" is the sort of song Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes should have recorded. Thankfully, Side One recovers with a flourish. The supershort, "Hold on Tight and Don't Let Go" is an inspired piece of pop rock. In and out in a flash, leave a good looking corpse.

Including the Ray Davies penned, "The Hard Way" is odd, it could almost make a case that Fieger is a better songwriter, since it's not up to the band's snuff. But it's gone so fast and replaced by the frenetic pairing of, "It's You" and "End of the Game" that you don't care. The second side is so lickety split that I have to wonder just how much Colombian Marching Powder might have been flying around the studio.
At least the band is having fun as evidenced by the Phil Spector homage "The Feeling I Get". Trouble is, it's SO on the nose accurate that it's hard to believe that it's not a cover. But they don't sound original at all here. "Havin' a Rave Up" sounds toooooo much like any rockabilly band of the 50s. And "How Can Love Hurt So Much" has John Barry and Shirley Bassey all over it. (I hope I got the right reference there. Maybe I meant Nancy Sinatra....)

Little Girls...is such a schizoid record that offers fans nothing more than what we already got the last time, rendering it sort of redundant. At the same time, there's nothing on the record so fantastic and hookalicious that it should encourage any new fans to flock to the band.

Grade: B+
ASide: Baby Talks Dirty, Havin' a Rave Up
BlindSide: I Want Ya, Hold on Tight and Don't Let Go, It's You
DownSide: Tell Me You're Mine

Listening Post - The Knack - Get the Knack

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.