As you may have heard, Doug Fieger, singer / songwriter for the Knack, died. This is news for a few reasons: he wrote a popular song, a thrash-anthemic foot-stomper that bridged hard rock and the new post-punk pop aesthetic. (Hey, I sound like a critic! It's easy. Just remember to hyphenate musical styles no one can quite define or identify.) Keep in mind that the song came out in 1979. Thirty-one years ago.
So this is like someone in 1979 writing about a one-hit wonder group who had a big hit in 1948.
It's a good song, though, at least the first 100 times you hear it. If you worked in a bar at the time, you'd get those 100 times out of the way in a few days. After that you learned to grit your teeth every time it came on, because
A) you were sick of it, and
B) many of the people who enjoyed it were doing so for the wrong reason. They thought it was punk. It was not. Hence they should not think it was, but they did because they were stupid frat boys with Izod shirts. (Ah, to be 20 again, and care about such things.)
Did the group - or its managers - try to piggyback on the downtown / punk / Patti Smith / new wave movement that had arisen to combat disco, and give gawky people who couldn't dance a movement of their own? You be the judge:
