"I was rehearsing for the March gig when I started having this problem with my guitar," Alvin recalls. "A hollow buzzing sound kept coming in and out. Annoying as hell. I wasn't sure if it was the guitar or amp. You drove me over to Simon's so he could test them out, and he figured out it was the guitar. So he loaned me his blue guitar to rehearse with while he tried to fix it.

"I'd been playing that old black guitar for years, and between Simon and me, we managed to keep a pretty good sound coming from it. And, you know, you get used to things. I was fine with how it felt and how it played. But then I started playing Simon's guitar. Oh, man, it was like night and day. It sounded so much better than mine, even before that buzzing kicked in. It felt better in my paws, too."

"I dismantled Alvin's guitar in order to isolate the problem," says Simon. "And while repairing it, I reflected on its condition. Alvin had been playing it for many years, and had worn it out considerably. I contemplated that perhaps it would be more prudent to simply replace it. When you mentioned how much Alvin was enjoying using my guitar, it solidified my decision that Alvin would be receiving his birthday present a bit early that year."

Simon and I pooled our money and ordered a new half-sized electric guitar for him. And, while placing the order, Simon took the plunge and ordered something for himself - a Korg MS-20 synthesizer. "I had attempted to keep my electric organ in working order as the years went on, and had replaced it completely at one point. But I felt it was most likely time to commit to owning an actual synthesizer. The MS-20 was not the most superior one on the market at the time, but it was both portable and powerful. The keyboard was also somewhat smaller than normal, so I was able to acclimatize to playing it fairly quickly."

The guitar was a bit slow to ship out to us, so Simon told Alvin that he needed some parts to repair the old one, so it wouldn't be ready for a bit. The guitar finally arrived on Thursday, the day of our next gig. When we went to pick up Simon, he snuck it into the back of my truck without Alvin noticing.

Once we were at Riley's and started setting up, Simon told Alvin, "Oh, incidentally, brother, I have your guitar ready now." He handed him the guitar case.

Alvin looked ambivalent. "Thanks, but do you mind if I use yours tonight? I've gotten kind of used to it."

"Of course. But would you mind giving yours a quick trial? I wish to ascertain that everything is in working order."

"Sure." Alvin opened up his old guitar case, then stopped short. Laying inside was a brand new, bright-red-and-white guitar. Alvin stared at it for a second, then looked up at us, confused.

"It's really tough to explain what I was feeling right then," admits Alvin. "It was a whole range of emotions. At first, just...disbelief, really. Then there was gratitude, obviously, although I was so gobsmacked, I probably forgot to say thank you. But there was more to it than that. You both had done a lot for me over the previous few months. You'd given me a place to live, taken charge of my screwed-up budget, and helped me get a real job. And up until that point, I couldn't help but feel that maybe you were just doing all this stuff because you felt like you had to." Even having him play with us at Riley's? "Even that. I would tell myself, well, they know all these jazz musicians and everything that're much better than me. Maybe they're having me play with them just because they feel sorry for me." Despite all the sold-out shows and fun we seemed to be having? Alvin shrugs embarrassedly. "I didn't say it made sense. My ego was still kind of beat up. I wasn't used to these feelings of insecurity. I spent a lot of nights staring at the ceiling feeling kind of down on myself.

"But you guys getting me a new guitar - a red one, even! That was like...proof, if that makes any sense. Proof that you guys...well, you thought enough of me to do something like that. You two actually still liked that flat-broke screw-up brother of yours." Alvin pauses, and makes a vague motion with his paw. "I didn't study psychology or anything, so I'm not sure if this is right. But it felt like it was really the first step at rebuilding my ego. Correctly this time. Where I was feeling worthwhile not because I'm AL-VIN but because I AM worthwhile." Alvin grins lopsidedly. "That's kind of a lot of weight for a half-sized guitar to carry."

Simon adds, "Alvin was appreciative of the gift, which was welcome. But receiving the gift also appeared to compel him to excel on stage. The show we performed that evening without a doubt ranks among his best."

We had added another new song into the set, and debuted it that night - Billy Joel's "You May Be Right". That one was Alvin's idea. "I heard it on the radio, and I rushed out to buy it. No, wait - I had to ask you to buy the record for me, since you were still in charge of my money. Same thing, really, I guess. It was the music that grabbed me at first - it's a good driving pop-rock number. It wasn't until I played the record at home that I really listened to the lyrics. And when I did, my first thought was to skip it. I mean, the guy singing is kind of a jerk. But the more I listened, the more I realized how much like AL-VIN this guy sounded. Basically being an asshole, and thinking everybody still thinks he was such a cool guy. Sometime between playing it the first and second time, I went from thinking 'um, maybe not' to 'oh, we HAVE to do this one'."

We worked out an arrangement in rehearsal, with Alvin taking the sax solo on guitar. "That was pretty easy - it was only eight measures long. But we also had to work out an ending, since the record faded out. We decided to turn it into a bit of a jam, with you and Simon repeating the 'you may be wrong but you may be right' vocals in the background every so often." We placed the song about halfway through the post-Knack part of the set that night, which was the only time it ended up there. "The crowd went crazy for that one. I don't know if we just played it well from the beginning, or if they picked up on the whole AL-VIN-ishness of it. But they loved it. We hit the part where I thought we'd end the song, but the crowd was still totally into it, so we kept right on going. When we finally finished, the crowd went nuts, and I think all three of us knew we had found our new closing number."

That gig also spelled the end of our full Get-The-Knack nights. "The novelty had worn off," Simon explains. "The complete-album performance was originally the main impetus for people to come watch us perform, but by this point, the crowd was just as enthusiastic for the other songs." We decided to keep "Let Me Out" as our opener, and have "Frustrated", "Good Girls Don't" and "My Sharona" spread out within the set. This of course meant we were ditching eight songs from the set. So we added a few Little Rocks numbers back into the set, and also went out in search for newer material.

I suggested "How Do I Make You", the then-current hit by Linda Ronstadt. Most of her hits were kind of feather-light covers of well-known oldies, but "How Do I Make You" was a modern pop-rock record with a bit of a new wave feel. The main reason I chose it was because it kicked off with a killer drum roll, and finished with a cool drum freakout. Alvin, however, wasn't too keen on the song. "To be brutally honest, I didn't want to do it because it was a 'chick' singing it." Alvin grins a bit. "Sorry. But it was 1980, and I was holding onto my tiny bit of machismo as tightly as I could." So I offered to take the lead vocal on it, and we gave it a few tries in rehearsal. However, the powerful drum intro would wear me out, and I kept running out of breath while trying to sing the first line. "You tried it four or five times. But after each try, I realized more and more what a good song it was. So I said, OK, fine, I'll sing it. And I'm glad I did - that was a fun one to do."

The first gig in April was the one that really set things back in motion for us. After we had wrapped up our set with "You May Be Right" (with an even longer ending than we had done before), Alvin went out to "work the crowd" while Simon and I started clearing the stage.

"I chatted with a few people, the basic 'thanks for coming, glad you liked it' sort of thing. But then one guy sort of pushed his way up to the front. He handed me a business card, and said it was important that I call this guy the next morning. I glanced at the card. Excelsior Records, it said. I wasn't sure how to respond, so I just said 'OK thanks'. I hadn't ever heard of this label, so I didn't really think much of it. I gave the card to Simon, and he said he'd take care of it. Little did I know what it would lead to."

Simon explains, "I was unaware of it at the time, but in another city, a radio disc jockey had inadvertently played the Blondie track 'Call Me' at the wrong speed, making singer Deborah Harry's voice extremely high. The disc jockey had jokingly stated that it had been a performance by the Chipmunks, and listeners began calling in to request this supposed new Chipmunks song. This in turn led some people to ruminate that perhaps the time was ripe for a Chipmunks reunion, without knowing that the we had in fact already reunited. Excelsior Records was extremely fortunate, as they happened to know somebody who was aware of where we were performing."

Excelsior Records was a subsidiary of Chiswick, a UK-based label, which was mainly used for reissuing old material. "Their plan was simply to get us in the studio immediately to record a rendition of 'Call Me', for single release," Simon says. "And while I was not against the idea of the Chipmunks performing that specific song, their plan appeared to be exceptionally short-sighted. The ongoing success of our live shows, and the unexpected response to the 'Call Me' mishap, suggested that the public at large might be prepared for a full-fledged Chipmunks revival. I believed that this was an opportunity to show what we were truly capable of producing, and so I began negotiations towards the Chipmunks recording a full-length album."

Before Simon got too far with those, however, he placed a phone call. "I felt it imperative to keep Ross Bagdasarian Jr. informed of these developments. It was somewhat in jest that we had offered to split the Chipmunks franchise with him so many years previous, but I did feel obligated to abide by that agreement. Ross initially sounded skeptical about accepting a full share of whatever income the Chipmunks earned, but I eventually convinced him that we were more than happy to take him in as a partner. At the time, we both envisioned the deal resulting in a few extra dollars here and there, so we thought little of doing an agreement via the telephone."

As the negotiations dragged on, we met at my place to start working out song arrangements. We started with Blondie's "Call Me", since that was the one song that Excelsior made clear they really wanted us to record. Alvin says, "Simon had to help me with those French lyrics in the bridge. I just learned them phonetically - didn't even ask what they meant. It wasn't until our album came out that I really gave it a listen, and I sort of realized, oh, this is the theme from American Gigolo. It's basically sung from a gigolo's point of view. I guess it was a good thing I didn't think about that at the time. It probably would've weirded me out a bit."

Once the deal was signed, Excelsior rushed us into a studio. Some of the songs we recorded were straight from our live set, so we were set to go with those. But the label insisted that we record several other songs of their choosing. "There most likely were specific rationales for their requests that we record those specific numbers," says Simon, "but identifying those rationales would be sheer conjecture on my part. And much like our Beatles recordings for Liberty, we were not given ample time to familiarize ourselves with the requested songs, and our recordings of those songs definitely suffered as a result. Our take of 'Let's Go' is rather stilted, for instance, which is especially unfortunate as that recording opens the album."

"It's kind of strange," says Alvin, listening to it for the first time in years. "This album probably sounds more like our live shows than any other one we did. And I love it from that standpoint alone. But Jesus, there's a lot to hate about it, too."

For instance, there was a huge screw-up with one of the Knack songs. When we first got to the studio, we set up our instruments and recorded a scratch version of "My Sharona", mainly just to make sure the microphone levels were all properly placed. Once that was done, we got around to recording everything in earnest. But somehow, that scratch take of 'My Sharona" was the one that ended up on the album. "Pure carelessness on their part," Simon grouses. "That take is exceptionally lackluster. Alvin's singing is very unpolished, and your drumming sounds very flat. Anybody who had witnessed us perform 'Sharona' live would be disappointed by the version presented there."

One of the songs that we learned at the label's behest had recently been a hit by Queen - "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". Alvin recalls, "When we sat down to go through it the first time, I asked if we could slow the tempo down, so I could make sure I had all the lyrics right. So we're chugging our way through this song at about half-tempo...and I suddenly realized how cool it sounded that way. It was like one of those make-them-squeal numbers Elvis used to do. 'Love Me', 'I Want You I Need You I Love You', that sort of thing." We told the guys at Excelsior we wanted to record it at that tempo, and they did let us run a few takes like that. But they also asked us to 'try a take just like the Queen one". We hadn't really practiced it at that speed, but we gave it a go. It was clumsy and rather uninspired...and of course, that's the take they used. We kept our slower version in our live set, though.

Even our recording of "You May Be Right" had issues. I mentioned that, when we performed it live, we'd been replacing the sax solo with an Alvin guitar solo. While preparing to record it, we decided to switch that to a keyboard solo. "It was not feasible to utilize a keyboard solo in a live setting," explains Simon, "as the lack of bass during that section was somewhat jarring. However, we could accomplish it without much effort in the studio. I wrote a simple eight-measure solo, including a pitch bend leading back into the chorus, and recorded in three takes. The rough mix sounded promising, so our expectations were rather high for that particular song." But then somebody at Excelsior decided to replace Simon's keyboard solo with a newly-recorded sax solo. "The performance is solid," admits Simon. "But the label retained Alvin announcing 'Take it, Simon!' just before, implying that I was the saxophonist. I have always been displeased with this, as I have never once attempted to play the saxophone in my many years."

Simon invited his friend Margaret to do the photo shoot for the album cover. Alvin says, "She took us to the terminal where I was working, really early in the morning when everything was shut down. We did a bunch of poses on the platforms, and a bunch more in a subway car. Margaret had us pose while holding up paper masks of the old cartoon Chipmunks faces in front of our heads. She made a few black-and-white test prints of those for us to look over, and wow. They were creepy, but really cool. We picked one of those to be the back cover photo, with one of us sitting on the top of the subway car for the front. I thought they looked great." Excelsior, however, didn't agree. "After all that, Excelsior decided to use a cartoon drawing for the cover. And it's not even a good one. It looks like a little kid drew it."

And, as a final insult, there was the album title. I suggested the album could be called 'Survival', and the label seemed to like that idea. But eventually, without our input or approval, the label gave the album the title Chipmunk Punk. Even three decades later, this still gets Alvin riled up. "Punk?! There was nothing punk at all about that album! We were covering Linda Ronstadt, for fuck's sake. And of course, with the skinny ties and safety pins on the cover, it looks like we were somehow buying into that - like we actually thought we were being punk. But we never thought of ourselves as being a punk band, ever. We were a power-pop trio, damnit."

Despite all the issues we had with the album, it managed to do the impossible. It completely resurrected the Chipmunks brand. The album made the top forty, and was eventually certified gold, making it only the second Chipmunks album to achieve that status. Excelsior released "You May Be Right" as a single, and it almost became our first one to crack the Hot 100 in eighteen years. Sadly, it fell just short, stopping at #101. "I should've gone out and bought ten copies that week," says Alvin. "That probably would've been enough to push it up a slot or two."