Preserving Time and Place: “My Sharona” and Get the Knack
Though well-acquainted with music’s sublime powers, I still find myself in awe of its unique ability to capture and accurately reproduce the atmosphere of a time period. I am equally awed by its singular capacity to preserve place. Music’s more serious followers often recall, with astonishing clarity and detail, exactly where they were when hearing certain songs for the first time. Of the many songs that preserve places in my life, one from the late seventies stands out: “My Sharona” by the Knack.
In June of 1979, after a morning of playing tennis, my cousin Neil and I were in my Cuda driving across Arvada. The DJ was playing something new, as promised, and we immediately took notice of the pounding drum intro and accompanying bass line. As we turned south onto Kipling Street from 72nd Avenue, we both knew we were hearing something special. There, passing over the railroad tracks, before Kipling becomes Oberon Road, is where I heard “My Sharona” for the first time. Preserved by music, it is the place where I’ve traveled backward in time, to 1979, on countless occasions through the years, if only for fleeting moments.
My narrative does not end there, however. By the time “My Sharona” ran its course, delivering its frantic guitar solo and then finishing the way it began — with drums and bass hammering out the song’s hypnotic tribal beat — I was utterly astounded and thrilled to the marrow. I made mental note of the band’s name, vowing to purchase the Knack’s debut album the next day. And I did just that.
Get the Knack lived up to my expectations and then some. Listening closely to the album at every opportunity, I gravitated to the record’s other Sharona-like rockers: “(She’s So) Selfish,” “Good Girls Don’t,” and the frenetic power-pop raver “Frustrated.” Never had an LP given me so much bang for six bucks. I was intimately familiar with the album, then, when I met up with friend Robert to toss a Frisbee around in the small park just north of Sears Automotive at the Northglenn Mall and, later, in the grass lawn in front of Northglenn High School. Having graduated a month earlier, we now found ourselves a bit lost and somewhat directionless: I had been looking unsuccessfully for full-time work since mid-May while Robert still toiled unhappily at El Chico. For me it was a period of change, uncertainty, and fear of the unknown — a restless atmosphere captured (and still vividly reproduced) by the rousing songs on Get the Knack.
Above piece excerpted from the forthcoming It’s Only Music: A Musical and Historical Memoir.
