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From	Mark London <mrl@psfc.mit.edu>
Subject	Re: Story about the actual Sharona, from WSJ.
Date	Mon, 29 Apr 2019 20:51:27 -0400

[Part 1 text/plain utf-8 (7.7 kilobytes)] (View Text in a separate window)

Michael - Thanks for the post.  I'm so out of it, I had never heard of 
CarPark North.    Listening to their full song now, i can definitely 
understand why someone thought of My Sharona.  Almost a ripoff of it.

https://vimeo.com/15975233

The video is quite interesting.    But, when I tried to find this video 
on Youtube. the only version I found, kept cutting away to the lead 
singer, which ruins the video, IMHO.

- Mark,

On 4/29/2019 11:09 AM, Michael MacLauchlan wrote:
> One of my fav mash ups... CarPark North's Human and My Sharona.. Let's see
> if this works:
>
> https://tinyurl.com/y5gzjh8u
>
> or
>
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ztg1lq93q4yj63/Best%20Of%20Monkey%20Business%20Bastard%20May%20-%2015%20-%20Carpark%20North%20Vs.%20The%20Knack%20-%20My%20Human%20Sharona.mp3?dl=0
>
> Enjoy.
>
> Michael Mac
> Denver
>
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 28, 2019 at 10:13 PM Mark London <mrl@psfc.mit.edu> wrote:
>
>> By  Don Steinberg
>> April 24, 2019 9:52 a.m. ET
>>
>> Even now, approaching the 40th anniversary of the biggest single of
>> 1979, Sharona Alperin can’t escape it.
>>
>> “Oh my God, almost daily, almost anytime someone hears my name,” Ms.
>> Alperin says. “They say ‘Oh, like ‘My Sharona?’ And then they say, ‘Oh,
>> I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. You probably hear that all the
>> time.’ ”
>>
>> They have no idea. She’s not just a Sharona. She’s the Sharona, the
>> object of the Knack’s bopping 1979 hit “My Sharona.” The band’s lead
>> singer, Doug Fieger, wrote the song’s lustful lyrics about her when she
>> was 17 and he was 26.
>>
>> “Half the time I’ll say that’s me, and most of them don’t believe it,”
>> says Ms. Alperin, who today sells high-end real estate around Los
>> Angeles. She tells people that was her in the revealing white undershirt
>> on the sleeve of the “My Sharona” 45. The single sold 500,000 copies,
>> going gold within weeks of its June 1979 release.
>>
>> “My Sharona” has never gone away. Ben Stiller built a memorable scene
>> around the song in his 1994 directorial debut, “Reality Bites,” claiming
>> it for Generation X. Nirvana did a grunge version. The tune was reported
>> to be on President George W. Bush’s iPod in 2005. These days hipster
>> bands like Royal Blood play covers of the song. It still has life on
>> classic rock radio stations, terrestrial and satellite, streaming
>> services and with college pep bands and party DJs.
>>
>> It’s an odd kind of fame, being the person in the song.
>>
>> “There was a time where if I met anybody younger whose name was Sharona,
>> I’d say, ‘I just want you to know: You were named after me. It’s no big
>> deal, I just want you to know,’ ” Ms. Alperin says. “And they’re like,
>> ‘Oh, my God, I totally was named after you.’ ”
>>
>> Capitol Records released the single “My Sharona,” along with “Get the
>> Knack,” the debut LP from the Los Angeles-based band. The photo on the
>> back showed the four skinny-tied Knack members posed in front of
>> old-school TV cameras, as if ready to perform for Ed Sullivan, in a nod
>> to the Beatles, another Capitol act.
>>
>> Rock critics mostly forgave the Beatles comparison. Billboard was among
>> the publications praising the energy of the music at a time when
>> crisp-sounding new-wave rock was on the rise.
>>
>> “It was just a great, utterly radio-friendly pop song that called back
>> to the classic tunes of the British invasion,” says Simon Glickman,
>> managing editor of music industry publication HITS magazine. “The
>> energy, that guitar attack.”
>>
>> The Knack’s lead guitarist, Berton Averre, came up with the choppy riff
>> that has made listeners pogo for decades. “I was listening to Elvis
>> Costello’s second album, ‘This Year’s Model,’ and the drum break in
>> ‘Pump It Up’ was so primal,” says Mr. Averre, whose soaring guitar solo
>> also fills most of the song’s second half. “I picked up the guitar and
>> played something as simplistic and staccato as I could.”
>>
>> “My Sharona” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart by August and
>> stayed for six weeks.
>>
>> “It was on every minute,” Ms. Alperin recalls. “It was on the airplane.
>> I’d get off the airplane, and it was in the cab. I’d get to the hotel,
>> and the top 40 band in the lounge would be playing it.”
>>
>> “Get the Knack” separately went platinum, with a million copies sold.
>> The Knack on stage in Chicago in 1979. Their song ‘My Sharona’ became
>> the No. 1 song of the year. PHOTO: PAUL NATKIN/GETTY IMAGES
>>
>> Mr. Fieger had a mad crush on Ms. Alperin, who’d started attending Knack
>> performances at L.A. clubs like the Troubadour and the Starwood before
>> the band had a record deal. She says he chased her for a year, but she
>> was happily in another relationship when the song came out.
>>
>> Mr. Fieger also wrote “Frustrated,” “(She’s So) Selfish,” and other
>> songs on the debut album with her on his mind, Mr. Averre says. His
>> lyrics were so suggestive that some of the lines feel inappropriate even
>> to Google today. Mr. Fieger, who died in 2010, said he was writing from
>> the perspective of a 14-year-old boy.
>>
>> “Lyrically, it was a truly hormonal record,” Mr. Glickman says.
>>
>> Mr. Fieger eventually did woo Sharona. They were together for three or
>> four years, she says. The Knack issued a second album in 1980, and
>> others later, but remained famous mostly for just one song.
>>
>> Ms. Alperin posed for the “My Sharona” single, and a photo of her became
>> the cover of the Knack’s second album, titled “…But the Little Girls
>> Understand.”
>>
>> “I literally am a girl who went to yeshiva—and then was plastered
>> everywhere,” she says. “That was when a music store like Tower Records
>> would have gigantic albums hung on the outside.”
>>
>> Her parents, she says, were cool about it. “And the band was accessible.
>> They came over for Shabbat dinner.”
>> Doug Fieger, lead singer of the Knack, backstage with Sharona Alperin,
>> subject of many of his lyrics, in the early 1980s. PHOTO: SHARONA ALPERIN
>>
>> She enjoyed her time in the rock world. “I remember being at dinner with
>> Cher and the Kiss guy [Gene Simmons]. I spoke Hebrew with him.” But she
>> looks back with open eyes on those years dating an older rock star.
>>
>> “Is there a more possessive word than ‘my’?” she says now. “I mean,
>> calling somebody ‘mine?’ ”
>>
>> She married someone else. Terri Nunn of the band Berlin sang “Take My
>> Breath Away” at her wedding. Now Ms. Alperin is a single mom with a
>> daughter, Eden, in college and a son, Adam, in high school. (Sharona is
>> her middle name. Her given first name, which she never really used, is
>> Eve.)
>>
>> She’s also a cancer survivor who kept working through 36 rounds of
>> chemotherapy. “I didn’t want people to feel bad for me,” she says. “I
>> live and breathe real estate, no joke, seven days a week. Of course
>> people want to see a house on a Saturday. Of course there are Sunday
>> open houses.”
>>
>> In 2002, she set up her real estate website at mysharona.com. Her office
>> receives a steady flow of fan mail, ranging from flattering to creepy.
>> While she was showing a house the other day, a package arrived
>> containing a six-page letter plus three versions of her famous photo and
>> a white tank-top undershirt to autograph. She signed it all.
>>
>> She hasn’t really tried to escape the song, just take control of what it
>> means.
>>
>> “I remember people used to say, like, ‘Why are you breaking up with
>> Doug?’ ” Ms. Alperin says. “I’d tell them, because I want to be my
>> Sharona now.”
>>
>>

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