{"id":8465,"date":"2015-09-11T05:30:20","date_gmt":"2015-09-11T09:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=8465"},"modified":"2015-10-19T12:48:10","modified_gmt":"2015-10-19T12:48:10","slug":"the-knack-zooming-back-from-oblivion-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2015\/09\/11\/the-knack-zooming-back-from-oblivion-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Knack: Zooming Back from Oblivion, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Once the backlash set in, though, The Knack<\/strong>‘s record sales figures took a sharp nosedive. …But the Little Girls Understand<\/em> reached #15 in 1980, but that had more to do with momentum remaining from the popularity of the debut than anything else. The singles from the album charted only briefly. The following year’s Round Trip<\/em> barely dented the Top 100 album charts, with one single charting briefly, and the other making no chart appearance whatsoever. The band effectively folded in late 1981, and then officially in mid-1982.<\/p>\n

Some reunions \u2013 with and without original drummer Bruce Gary<\/strong> — his contentious interactions with his bandmates seem to have been a frequent point of stress for the band \u2013 followed, but little came of those efforts until the late 1990s. With progressive- (and new wave-) rock hero Terry Bozzio<\/strong> (Frank Zappa<\/strong><\/a>, Missing Persons<\/strong>, U.K.<\/strong>) on board as drummer, the band cut Zoom<\/em>, an excellent collection of songs that delivered the band’s trademark, slightly snotty (and to some, borderline misogynistic) lyrics set against top-notch melodies. The band updated their sound to fit with the times. One can quibble with the production aesthetic, which now sounds hopelessly dated thanks to Bozzio’s insistent use of a piccolo snare drum. The ace drummer \u201cwas in love with that high, cracky snare,\u201d recalls Berton Averre<\/strong>. \u201cIt probably wasn’t the best sound for those songs.\u201d Averre defends Bozzio’s role in the band overall, pointing out that \u201cIt takes a special drummer to play with The Knack. We ask our drummer to play a lot<\/em>. There aren’t many drummers who could do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

So even with the annoying drum sound, there’s no denying the appeal of tunes like \u201cPop Is Dead,\u201d the power ballad \u201cCan I Borrow a Kiss,\u201d and the Kinks<\/strong> homage \u201cTerry and Julie Step Out,\u201d among others.<\/p>\n

But radio didn’t play Zoom<\/em>, few reviewers covered it, and the album zoomed (ouch) into oblivion. \u201cAs a musician and songwriter, I knew that there was really good stuff on the album,\u201d Averre says. \u201cBut I had this funny feeling that nobody was going to give it a listen. And they didn’t. I can’t say I was surprised, but I was crestfallen.\u201d He stands by his pride for the group’s late 90s\/early ’00s material. \u201cI do think that if people had heard Zoom<\/em>…\u201d His voice trails off. \u201cOur lot had been cast, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center>When The Knack played concerts in the new millennium, \u201cOne of the lessons we learned when we got back together,\u201d Averre recalls, \u201cwas that people would come to our shows, and they’d ask, ‘What happened with you guys? Why is it that you went away?’ We realized how few people were even aware of all of the ‘political’ stuff that was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

One wonders if the \u201cbrand\u201d The Knack was an albatross, and if they’d ever considered changing their name. There’s some precedent for that: in the late 1960s, Paul Revere and the Raiders<\/strong><\/a> were pegged as hopelessly unhip, so they sent copies of their newest single, the fuzz-rocking \u201cLet Me,\u201d to stations on a disc that pseudonymously credited them as Pink Puzz<\/strong>. The gambit worked for a time. Averre admits that The Knack considered changing their name as well. \u201cBefore Doug<\/strong> [Fieger<\/strong>] and I put the band back together, we thought about it.\u201d He winces as he recounts the tale. \u201cWe had been back to writing material as a duo [billed as Fieger-Averre], and Doug took some songs to a label. He came back and said, ‘Listen, Bertie. I’ve got good news and bad news.’\u201d The label was interested, and wanted to bill the project as Doug Fieger. \u201cI’m thinking, ‘What’s the good news?’\u201d<\/p>\n

Averre figured that nobody knew his<\/em> name, and that if anybody had the \u201cstink\u201d attached to him, it would be Fieger, not him. On top of that, Averre says, \u201cI had established that this time, I wasn’t going to kind of sit back and say, ‘Okay, [Doug] is the guy that everybody knows.’ I was a fully contributing member, and I deserved my due.\u201d At the end of the day, Averre believes that \u201ca known entity has more potential to open doors, even when it has negative connotations attached to it.\u201d So The Knack they would remain. \u201cIf we had changed the name, we would have been starting from square one again,\u201d he notes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And to a large extent, that’s what happened, anyway. Despite the quality of material on Zoom<\/em> \u2013 to this listener, song for song, it’s the band’s best-ever album \u2013 it went nowhere. In a testament to the band’s faith in the material, they would re-release it themselves in 2003, with some bonus tracks. Anyone reading this far will have guessed that Re-Zoom<\/em> didn’t sell, either. (The 2015 Omnivore reissue of the original Zoom<\/em> adds several demos that predate the studio sessions.)<\/p>\n

In 2002, The Knack decided to put together a live-in-the-studio record, Live From the Rock ‘n’ Roll Fun House<\/em>. That collection featured a number of songs from \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 Zoom<\/em>. And with Bozzio gone, replaced by David Henderson<\/strong> (aka Holmes Jones<\/strong>), the Fun House<\/em> versions have a timeless feel to them, one that presents the songs in a better light. The energy of a live audience helps, too. \u201cOne thing you should keep in mind about us,\u201d says Averre, \u201cis that we were a live band. We were a club<\/em> band. We always had a strong conviction to being able to represent our songs live. To be able to play well, sing well, to give the people the song<\/em>.\u201d And the Fun House<\/em> collection is a document of that commitment.<\/p>\n

While on initial release, reviews for these albums \u2013 and there weren’t many \u2013 were on the whole pretty positive, they pretty much flew under the radar of most listeners. Omnivore Recordings<\/a>‘ reputation provides a kind of seal of approval that says to serious fans of music, \u201chey, you should take another look at this.\u201d So does Averre feel vindicated by the positive buzz the band is getting now? \u201cI’d replace vindicated<\/em> with grateful<\/em>,\u201d he says. \u201cI don’t have the ability to dictate other people’s taste. The only positive frame of mind for a performer is, ‘I love whoever likes us.’\u201d<\/p>\n

He connects that thinking to the band’s history. \u201cI think that’s one of the mistakes we made in the early days. When all of that bad stuff was coming down on our heads, what we should have been doing is concentrating on the many people who did<\/em> like us. Because they’re the only ones that really mattered.\u201d He’s philosophical about the entire saga of The Knack, and offers this perspective: \u201cAs time has gone by, all of the extraneous, semi-political bullshit that people would jump on us…it would cease to matter. We’re decades on from that period now. So when people hear our music now, all they’re hearing is a song. Stripped of the \u201ccamp\u201d aspect \u2013 as in, the camp against us versus the camp for us \u2013 they listen, and they think, ‘this is a pretty good band.’\u201d<\/p>\n

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Continued from Part One… Once the backlash set in, though, The Knack‘s record sales figures took a sharp nosedive. …But the Little Girls Understand reached #15 in 1980, but that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,62,64],"tags":[1622,2163],"class_list":["post-8465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-rawk","category-reissue","tag-omnivore-recordings","tag-the-knack","cat-41-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8960,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465\/revisions\/8960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}