Bonus features

There are many things to be learned from watching the Knockoffs’ new DVD 10 Years of Hits. Watch the Sacramento punk band’s video for “Last Summer Sucked,” and you’ll learn how much lead singer Tom Hutchinson’s neck will swell when hit with a golf ball. Click on “12 Sucker Punches!” on the special-features menu, and you can study the lyrics to the band’s first album and listen to it in its entirety. Navigate to “Bios,” and you’ll discover that Hutchinson enjoys reading and gardening, and guitarist Dan Reynoso enjoys “trying to convince teenage girls that 33 isn’t that old.”

As valuable as this information is, the DVD’s draw lies in the footage of the one-hour concert the Knockoffs played at The Boardwalk on August 3, 2003. Bassist Bobby Jordan welcomed the crowd by saying, “This is our 10-year anniversary. Never has a band done so little in such a large amount of time.” (That ought to explain why the DVD is coming out more than 20 months after the band’s 10-year anniversary.)

Shot from four different cameras and cleanly edited, the concert film is one of the better-produced pieces of Sacramento music history on record. Even more so because the concert’s guest appearances form a who’s who of local bands, including Kepi of the Groovie Ghoulies, Mickie Rat and Kevin Stockton of the Secretions, guitarist Greg “GB” Baxter, Cory Vic of the Haints, Jaz Brown of the Helper Monkeys and all four members of 7Seconds. It’s a perfect background video for punk house parties and a must for local-music archivists.

But perhaps the most endearing quality of the DVD is found in the band’s commentary to the concert footage, when it becomes obvious that they are unused to seeing their show from an audience perspective. “My God! I am fucking fruity,” Jordan exclaims as he watches himself addressing the crowd. “I need to get more macho!”

Later, when a sweating Hutchinson strains to sing a particularly challenging vocal part onstage, causing veins to bulge on his forehead, the singer candidly asks his band members, “Does that vein always stick out like that? Now I know how I’m going to die.”

Before that happens, you can see the Knockoffs—bulging forehead veins, fruity moves and all—at their DVD-release show on Saturday, April 9. The band plays with the Snobs, the Helper Monkeys and Trigger Renegade at Old Ironsides, located at 1901 10th Street. Apologies to all the young fans screaming in the video, but the show is 21-and-over. (Although some of you are probably of legal drinking age by now.)