THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,922) The Knaves — “Your Stuff”
Chicago garage rock perfection from “the quintessential long-haired juvenile delinquent rock ‘n’ roll punks” (the Monocled Alchemist, https://monocledalchemist.com/2024/12/07/the-knaves-your-stuff-sundazed/) who “look[ed] like a Windy City version of English R&B thugs The Pretty Things [see #82, 94, 153, 251, 572, 731, 892, 1,001, 1,327]”. (Jeff Jarema, liner notes to the CD comp Oh Yeah!: The Best of Dunwich Records) The song is “Utterly Brilliant” (PAULLONDEN, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKn-cnsVhvE), “[j]ust far out, [a] fantastic song” (charlesrlassiter, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKn-cnsVhvE) with “some nice stop-and-start tempos backing the salacious half-spoken vocal”. (Richie Unterberger, https://www.allmusic.com/album/leave-me-alone%21-mw0000413093)
Jeff Jarema writes that:
[The Knaves’] follow-up Dunwich [Records]-produced single, “Inside Outside”/”Your Stuff”, failed to get past acetate form. One theory is that the thinly disguised sexual suggestiveness of both sides was deemed unacceptable by [the Chicago radio station] WCFL [which had put “Leave Me Alone” on its playlist] and, more importantly [the Chicago powerhouse] WLS.
liner notes to the CD comp Oh Yeah!: The Best of Dunwich Records
Ken Voss tells the story of the Knaves:
In 1966 . . . [they] put out . . . “Leave Me Alone” b/w “The Girl I Threw Away[“, which] became a top five hit in Chicago. . . . [T]he All Music Guide[ states that] “The Knaves stood out a little from the garage crowed in their relatively heavy use of brooding folk-rock elements within their aggressive raunchy sound.” Classic Garage Rock concurs, “In the pantheon of ‘60s garage rock, arguably the most anti-authority anthem of them all is the Knaves’ ‘Leave Me Alone’.[“] Hailing from the northern suburbs of Chicago . . . [t]he Knaves formed in 1964. Howard Berkman (lead guitar, vocals), Mark Feldman (guitar), John Hulbert (guitar, harmonica), Neal Pollack (bass) and Gene Lubin (drums). Berkman, said to have been a child prodigy, played guitar in his early teens with a surf-rock band called The Jesters that included future folk legend Steve Goodman. Recalls Lubin, ” . . . . I . . . hooked up with an organ and bass player from Sunday school. We played beatnik coffee houses . . . . Then around the fall of 1962, I started college and met Howard Berkman. He was like 14 or 15 years old[.”] . . . The other [Knaves] were high school friends. Even though they had very little musical experience, there was a chemistry between them with Berkman becoming their mentor and instructor. Initially, they took on a “bad boy” image playing mostly covers embracing the British “rocker” subculture . . . . They built a following predominately in the Chicago underground music scene . . . . In 1966 the Knaves were introduced to Terry Sachan, who at the time was road manager for the Beach Boys [see #667, 1,825] . . . . Heading into the studio, under the production direction of renowned promo man and label owner Paul Gallis, the band recorded seven songs. Their debut . . . . [B-side] “The Girl I Threw Away” “deserves its reputation as one of the most outstanding fusions of Byrds-y folk-rock with morose ‘60s garage punk,” notes critic Richie Unterbuger. It was initially released on the small independent Glen label. Once it garnered enough popularity, it was licensed over to Dunwich for broader distribution. Then Neal Pollack got drafted, Stu Einstein stepped in to replace him. Despite the popularity their first record generated, when it came to release a follow-up “Inside-Outside” b/w “Your Stuff,” it appears Dunwich pressed so few copies that it was considered unreleased . . . . The Knaves never made very much money. With the label’s disinterest, and when their equipment was stolen out of their van, it spelled the end of the Knaves.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/illinoisrockandrollmusicarchives/posts/2381225912329783/
Howard Berkman told the Monocled Alchemist:
The difference between the Knaves and everybody else is we were terribly dysfunctional juvenile delinquent kids. The other kids, like the Shadows of Knight [see #184, 1,075], the Little Boy Blues, the Dirty Wurds and those guys, they had families to come home to, people patting them on the head, buying them a guitar, buying them an amp. I was always getting tremendous, tremendous resistance. None of us were getting anything but stormy seas from our people. We were really angry. . . . We all felt really stigmatized by this dysfunction that was in lives. We had this tremendous following among all the kids because they could really relate to that. We weren’t trying to be anyone else.
https://monocledalchemist.com/2024/12/07/the-knaves-your-stuff-sundazed/
Gene Lubin told the Monocled Alchemist:
[I]t was about provocation, because everything was in those days . . . the civil rights movement, the war protest. I think we felt it was our civic duty to send a wake-up call though we didn’t exactly have any idea as to what that might be. . . . You had this combination of a virtuoso guitarist like Berkman and then a bass player who was virtually practicing on stage. You had these layers of virtuosity and primitivism, which I think, gave it a unique sound. People just didn’t know what to make of it. . . . [O]ur first gigs were not suburban teenage clubs. Somehow or other, we got connected with some people that got us booked in these really hard-*ss places. They were practically burlesque halls. Our first gigs were playing . . . at . . . a nightclub mostly for conventioneers and tourists. We played on a tiny stage with a glass cage to either side of us with a gal in each one in a bikini go go dancing. I mean it was a hard place. There were prostitutes hanging around outside. . . . By the time we started playing for the teen clubs, we were a little hardened. There was nothing sweet about us.
https://monocledalchemist.com/2024/12/07/the-knaves-your-stuff-sundazed/
There was nothing sweet about them . . . except their music.
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