Talk:Get the Knack

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Price of the original LP vinyl album? An article that compares the prices of singles and albums/CDs across time?[edit]

Does anyone know the prices that were being charged in 1979 and 1980 for the original LP vinyl album?

For the singles (then)?


Also:

Is there an article on Wikipedia that compares the prices of singles and albums/CDs across time?

Especially including valuations of the dollar at the various times, inflation, and all that.

I think that would be a great, and interesting comparison!

Thanks!

Misty MH (talk) 07:19, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, an interesting topic for an article. I don't know of any such article, but there may be one.
I've always thought it was interesting that The Clash, when releasing a double album (London Calling), and then a triple album (Sandinista!), negotiated to receive a lower percentage of royalties in return for the record label selling these albums at reasonable prices, closer to a single-album figure. The albums sold At least, this is what's been reported. Not everything the Clash told the media was true.
Anyway: You've got a great idea there!
--Ben Culture (talk) 23:02, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Album cover imitates Meet The Beatles? . . . Really??[edit]

Our article currently states, "The album cover imitates their first Capitol LP Meet the Beatles! and the back cover photo depicts a scene from the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night."

I've seen the back cover of Get the Knack, and though I wouldn't recognize a scene from A Hard Day's Night if I saw one, I can't deny they look Beatles-like, bless their hearts. (It's a good look! More bands should imitate it.) My only concern is with the front cover. Like everyone else, I've seen the cover of With the Beatles / Meet the Beatles (same cover photo aside from the coloring), and my response to the above accusation is:

NO, IT DOESN'T. NOT EVEN A LITTLE.

It's a black-and-white cover of four guys. Beyond that, all similarities end.

1. On Meet ... The Beatles are all wearing black turtlenecks (or something), and the light source was placed so that, under high-contrast photography, you could only see half their faces, and none of their clothes or bodies. None of this is true of Get the Knack. You see all of their faces, and a fair amount of their (un-Beatle-ish) clothing. It's a much less "artistic" photo. More like a photo for a demo package than a slick album release. (It's also quite ugly -- Doug Fieger's creepy grin has a distinctly predatory aspect to it -- like that of a madman about to stab a woman to death. I'm not here to promote OR trash the Knack, though. Enough has been done of both, by professionals, so I'm not about to do it for free on Wikipedia!)

2. Meet the Beatles, the specificed album cover, is tinted to a blue color. Get the Knack is not tinted at all. Nor is such high-contrast photography used.

3. Three of the Beatle-heads seem to be floating above a fourth, which sits in the low-end corner (Ringo, naturally). The Knack are all presented on the same level.

4. Two of the Knack are smiling broadly, while the Beatles are showing properly "arty" (vacant) expressions. (It's a damned gloomy-lookin' cover for such an upbeat album!)

5. There is nothing about the titling of Get the Knack that is similar to With/Meet. Neither font, nor layout, is at all similar.

6. You could just as easily make this same overall accusation about certain editions of The Modern Lovers. In fact, more so, because two of the members (Jonathan Richman and David Robinson) are actually wearing black in a black-and-white photo! And none of them are smiling! (Though David looks vaguely cheerful.) But, as with Get the Knack, it doesn't really look a fucking thing like Meet the Beatles!

I think I've convinced myself to edit the article to omit this falsehood. (By the way, I'm not a Knack fan, or even really familiar with their music. Nor am I a big Beatles nut who's insulted by the invalid comparison. As far as the early 1960s are concerned, actually, I'm all about the Beach Boys!) The Knack did imitate the Beatles somewhat, and I won't deny that. The bit about the back cover, and everything else, I will keep. Again, my only concern is the front cover.

If anybody has a problem with this and decides to revert the edit I'm about to make, please explain it here! Please do NOT cite WP:BRD (Bold, Revert, Discuss) unless you are truly following the whole essay to the letter and spirit. Which means you explain yourself here in plain English, and civilly. This is a good-faith edit I'm about to make, and I expect it to be treated as such. Keep in mind, WP:BRD is not policy or a guideline, and WP:ONLYREVERT is exactly equal to it, and a much better collection of ideas. (Sorry I'm so angry and defensive, but I'm fundamentally fed up with WP:BRD, and for once, I have complete confidence that I'm indisputably right. I actually don't expect any objection to the tiny change I'm about to make.)

→Ben Culture (talk) 20:12, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of your personal opinion, many observers did notice the similarity between the two album covers. This is easily documented, as well as being one of many criticisms of the group which led to their quick exit from the pop spotlight and as such, it is an integral part of their story. Here are some examples:
From "The Knack: yesterday ...and today" Rolling Stone October 18, 1979:

"Perhaps the biggest annoyance has been the many Beatles references—the fact that the group asked Capitol to use its Beatles-era label for the LP; that the title, Get the Knack, is so similar to Meet the Beatles; that the black-and-white cover shot so closely resembles the cover of the first Beatles LP..."

From a couple 1979 newspaper articles:

"The album cover design is noticeably similar to the Fab Four's first American LP, Meet the Beatles"

"...one of several tunes not included on the Capitol album Get the Knack, which bears an affected similarity in packaging to Capitol's Meet the Beatles LP"

"We stride boldly into MCA-Whitney, poised to confront the profoundly elusive Knack on their own turf, and yep, there's one of 'em now, big as life: Knack symbol Doug Fieger, easily recognizable from certain controversial album cover photos of recent months, is locked in a consuming kiss with a rather knubile Knack constituent." (Riegel, Richard. "Knuking the Knack Inside Their Own Reactor" Creem April 1980: 25)

From The New Rolling Stone Record Guide:

"Beatles lovers hated the Meet the Beatles imagery being used to sell the Knack as a new Fab Four." (Marsh, Dave; Swenson, John. The New Rolling Stone Record Guide (1983): 281)

A few more:

"When a group sets out to deliberately evoke an earlier, hallowed group they had better back it up. This strategy worked for a while with the Knack's Meet the Beatles-type album cover, yet where are they now?"

"...the Knack. That groups's Beatles-modeled image and chart-topping debuts—Get the Knack (whose cover photo imitated that of Meet the Beatles) and "My Sharona" were both number ones" (Bashe, Philip. Heavy Metal Thunder (1985): 167)

"Their first album title, Get the Knack was a play on the title of the Beatles' first U.S. album Meet the Beatles. The front cover featured a black and white photograph similar to the one on the first Beatles album" (Reed, Everett. Ovations and Encores (2000): 113)

From trouserpress.com:

"Beatles purists objected to the Knack tarnishing the Liverpool lads sacred image (the front and back cover of Get the Knack echoes the look of Meet the Beatles)."

From theknack.com:

"Critics of the band fixated on the stark, black and white photo of the album’s cover and performance photo on the back as obvious send ups of the Beatles' first album Meet the Beatles."

More importantly, the similarities were not coincidental or the product of someone's imagination, they were intentional. According to Doug Fieger, "For Get the Knack, the concept was to appropriate the Beatle image much as Andy Warhol had appropriated the Campbell's Soup can in his paintings. As a cultural icon. As an ironic statement." (Fieger, Doug. liner notes to Retrospective (The Best of the Knack) 1992) Piriczki (talk) 16:24, 17 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Regardless, it really doesn't look much like Meet the Beatles, and if you read my comment, you'll see that is a factual statement, not a "personal opinion". If the Knack were trying to "appropriate the Beatle image" on their front album cover, they failed spectacularly. Did you look at my The Modern Lovers link? That makes my point for me all by itself ("Four guys in B&W" ≠ Meet the Beatles). Moreover, it's a shame you took the trouble to quote all this and not cite one source in the actual article, reverting the sentence under debate here. A simple re-write of the sentence in question could have left us both satisfied.
Editors and readers who aren't already steeped in 1970s pop-culture history & myth are going to find their way to this page, and they're going to read that sentence you re-inserted, and they'll take a look at the Meet the Beatles cover, and when they see how far apart the two album covers are, that will only reflect poorly on Wikipedia ... which already has a public image as unreliable, personality-driven nonsense. In other words, that we'll let a bunch of Rolling Stone or Trouser Press articles, or the late Doug Fieger himself, tell us that two album covers look a great deal alike when they really do not. That we perpetuate myths.
For example, until recently our Metal Machine Music article stated that each track lasted "exactly 16:01", simply because that's the amusing lie Lou Reed had put on the record labels. It isn't a fact at all; the tracks all last different amounts of time. But it's a fun, wide-spread lie that many critics have repeated (you can cite a "reputable source" for a falsehood), that few have bothered to check up on. Only the advent of the CD release . . . some 20-odd years ago . . . makes it easy to check without listening to the wretched thing. That would be a popular myth that we were perpetuating for years after the truth came out. This is another one. Rock critics spread the myth of "16:01"; why should we trust them about the album cover?
Again: I'm not saying the Knack didn't try to look like the Beatles in general. I'm saying the front covers aren't very much alike, and rock journalists are lazy. We shouldn't let them tell us what our own eyes can see is false.
--Ben Culture (talk) 22:04, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, "a couple of 1979 newspaper articles" are not acceptable sources, and I don't appreciate you throwing them in to inflate your list. And the Trouser Press quote is patently false, since, according to our article, the back cover of Get the Knack imitates a scene from A Hard Day's Night (film) and not Meet the Beatles, doesn't it? The back cover of Meet the Beatles is mostly text, with a small picture of the Beatles that I don't see the Knack imitating anywhere. Citing vague, inaccurate, and/or dishonest sources to make it look like "everybody knows this is true" can only tarnish your own reputation. --Ben Culture (talk) 23:19, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Why is the St. Pertersburg Independent not an acceptable source? I agree that Trouser Press made an error in descibing the back cover, but that doesn't refute the many sources (including Trouser Press) describing the front cover as resembling Meet the Beatles. Rlendog (talk) 14:54, 21 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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