Artist: The Knack
Album: Round Trip
Label: EMI
Rating: 10/10

Finally… The Knack’s masterpiece has seen the light of day. 

Granted, there are no extra tracks, no alternative takes, and the re-mastering is just standard, but at least the public-at-large now have the opportunity to listen to possibly the most underrated album of all-time without having to rummage through miles of old LP bins at the local vinyl store….

For a band that had quickly recorded two albums worth of material in just a few weeks; half of the tracks appearing on their landmark debut, Get The Knack, and the others appearing the following year on …but the little girls understand, the grueling, slow recording process employed for their third album, Round Trip, served only to heighten the growing level of frustration within the band.

Time spent meticulously re-mic’ing the drums in order to get just the right sound for each song zapped momentum and allowed certain members of the band to disappear along with their proclivities for long stretches of time. The Knack circa 1980-1981 was a band literally flying apart at the seams, still valiantly trying to keep it together. Despite the runaway success of their million-selling debut, circumstances and an impatient public cried for more.

With the second album failing to maintain the momentum of the first and a growing media backlash seeing the band get very little positive press, the band knew going into these new sessions that it was do or die. Strangely, it was as if the gigantic juggernaut that was “My Sharona” and “Good Girls Don’t” had never happened and that the Knack were just another L.A. power pop band facing uncertain times.

Like The Beatles before them, The Knack could very well have kept right on making albums like their first two and done just fine, but, instead, they risked it all for the sake of artistry and the world was all the better for it. The Knack, having quite intentionally patterned themselves after the fab four from the very start, were now trying to wipe that slate clean. In doing so, they too were a band eager to shed its skin for the sake of musical experimentation…just as the Beatles had done. Thus, comparisons to the Beatles were inescapable, even as the band moved into new territory.

Round Trip arrived in record stores in 1981 just as the new wave explosion took full control of the airwaves. Plus, a TV station by the name of MTV was quickly, and quite literally, altering the face of music. Thus, the world was changing and, when their third album finally arrived, the Knack found themselves to be a band out of time, no longer leading the charge.

Instead, bands like Elvis Costello & The Attractions, The Police, and the Pretenders were the faces of the “new wave” insurgence. While they had all got their start at roughly the same time as the Knack, each was now reaping the rewards of more gradual rise to the top while the Knack seemed to be paying the price for meteoric success.

Within weeks of release, sales of Round Trip stalled. Lead-off single “Pay The Devil (Ooo Baby Ooo)” had failed to generate any sizable airplay and the feeling within the Capitol Records tower was that the label needed to cut their losses rather than take any more chances on the band.

By 1982, The Knack would be without a record deal and in a state of shambles. Round Trip, their third and final record for the label, had not given the band a new lease on life. Instead, it had hastened their exit from the label and was a punchline used by the band’s naysayers.

Those who bought the album when it came out and were true fans of the band, not merely fair-weather fans of whatever happened to be in the Top 40 at the time, were privy to an album of remarkable beauty. Over the years, it has been like a cherished, well-kept secret known only by a chosen few.

Listening to it now, I am able to see it as one of the last albums of a time when studio extravagance and excess were an accepted part of the equation in Hollywood, a place such albums as Tusk and Hotel California called home.

Love them or hate them, those albums are all iconic postcards of a place and time in music history when artistry and inspiration were chased at all costs, where bands that seemed on the verge of collapse still managed to make the best music of their lives, and just when you thought they couldn’t top their last album, they did just that.

In a perfect world, Round Trip would be mentioned alongside such albums, as it is very much made from the same ingredients (sex, drugs – lots and lots of drugs – and rock & roll). Plus, like all timeless classics, it  sounds just as vibrant today as it did then. Such a shame very people got the chance to hear it.

The few who did hear it, and loved it, deserve applause for many years of being the lone voice in the wilderness, singing its praises.

To those who’ve never heard it before, pick it up NOW and listen to one of the most underrated masterpieces ever recorded.

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Darren Robbins is a fellow graduate of the “Almost Famous” University, a gifted songwriter, raconteur and lovable curmudgeon.  When you’re not reading him here, check out his terrifc blog… HE’S A WHORE…check out his new STORE as well.