Song Of The Day 8/31/2015: The Beatles vs. The Knack (Go Home Productions) – “My Paperback Sharona”

M*A*S*H*U*P Week '15 – One of 2014's very biggest theme weeks was M*A*S*H*U*P Week. We did it in May. Just in terms of straight-up entertainment value it was one of the more fetching themes I'd done, and there were a lot of dropped jaws and squeals of glee pointed in this blog's direction that week. Even some purists who would normally turn violent, threaten bodily harm, burn my house down or use the comments section admitted that it was a fun week. Then, as I so often do, I ran away from its success, tried to compartmentalize its triumph, pivot from its popularity and retain my insistence on ensuring that the blog turn in more progressive, dare I say important work. I sought to further a more meaningful and artistically holistic agenda for Song Of The Day. I yearned to build a site of intellectual nourishment and aesthetic soundness for ensuing generations to experience, to learn from, and perhaps for all of us to grow as well. Now, however, I don't give a rip about that crap, so let's go back to Bowling For Dollars.

First up, some sacrilegious payback. Go Home Productions is the name of a pseudo-conglomerate that turns out some pretty golden subversion. It's the DBA of British producer Mark Vidler, and his rap sheet contains a lot of entries any self-respecting plunderer of the past would love to have amongst their priors. (Of particular interest is something called Raymond Scott Rewired, a collaboration with the Bran Flakes and the Evolution Control Committee.) Today's piece is a reckoning of sorts for the introduction of The Knack into our lives back in 1979; they very cheekily called their debut album Get the Knack, pretty close in concept to Meet the Beatles. Or perhaps that was just me. They were both on Capitol Records so there couldn't have been that much internal hand-wringing. I thought this track would be an easy and familiar way for you to refamiliarize yourself with this happy form of sabotage.