4/25/2023 0 Comments Songster dreaming blondie![]() In the same vein, “Detroit 442” sounds like sped-up surf rock scuzz that channels a certain Stooges’ lust for life. While most of Plastic Letters shows a band perfecting their pop sound, “I’m On E” sounds almost like a callback to their low-fi, proto-punk sound and Harry’s coolly detached vocals. Like many of Blondie’s best songs, even the album title had double meaning, describing venue marquees and how your name is spelled out on a mugshot. As Gottehrer put it, “Debbie sang part of it in French – I didn’t even know if the French was real, but it became their first hit in the UK. Their cover of Randy & The Rainbows “Denis” flipped the gender script and officially broke the band commercially in the UK. With Gottehrer on producing duties, the album once again reconfigured the 60s sound. As soon as they signed to Chrysalis in 1977, the label reissued the first album and a year later they released their real breakthrough record, Plastic Letters. ![]() While Private Stock was certainly an independent label, it wasn’t exactly the place to cultivate an “indie” sound. While the record spawned many of their live favorites, it never cracked the charts in a major way. 2 in Australia, which was another homage to the girl group sound but with more lustful undertones. The album also spurned the group’s first hit, “In the Flesh” which charted at No. ![]() Hailed as a new wave ingénue with looks to kill, Harry was too campy and too pop for the underground scene, they didn’t know what to make of her.Īs much as the Ramones are given credit for subverting 60s pop and rock, Blondie is just as much responsible for making girl groups sound tragically hip. Singing subverted teenage love songs at age 31 is just the kind of tongue-in-cheek appeal that made Harry such a charismatic frontwoman. From the very first track of “X Offender,” Harry does her best Shangri-Las impression except instead of singing about teenage romance, she’s singing about a cop and a sex worker – truly a love song for the times. Representing Klein’s encyclopedic knowledge of cultural relics from the past, the album riffed on everything from B-movies, rockabilly culture, and most noticeably girl groups. Blondie had earned their punk stripes gigging at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB and Gottehrer snatched them up, signing them to the indie label Private Stock and releasing their self-titled debut, Blondie in 1976. It’s beautiful and powerful drumming that showcases Burke’s guile.Richard Gottehrer (producer of Blondie’s first two albums, Blondie and Plastic Letters) had left his former label and was looking to put out a compilation of bands in the New York scene. Somehow Burke not only manages to match the emotion of the piece Harry had in mind but also save it from becoming a caricature piece. I would just be scatting along with them, and I would just start going, ‘Ooooooh, your hair is beautiful.'” The lyrics, well, a lot of the time I would write while the band were just playing the song and trying to figure it out. Before that, it was just lying there like a lox. In 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner, Harry explains the song’s composition: “He was trying to do something like ‘Heart of Glass’, and then somehow or another we gave it the spaghetti western treatment. But while that track is hung entirely on the new wave sound, somewhere along the line, Blondie went all western.Ĭombining that sound with the band’s new wave roots saw the group look ahead and create a futuristic sound. But, in truth, it was Burke that elevated the group.Ī classic track from Eat to the Beat, saw Harry attempt to write a song to match their globe-trotting mega-watt bop, ‘Heart of Glass’. The same can be said of Chris Stein, who operated as the band’s de facto leader, using his musical nouse and pop sensibilities to balance the band’s desire for sales and credibility. As the band displayed a unique take on the energy of punk, fusing it with the similarly fast-paced tones of disco and funk, Harry was heralded as a once-in-a-lifetime singer. Naturally, with the eighties looming ahead, it would be Debbie Harry’s intoxicating concoction of angelic vocals and a devilish glint in her eye that would be the main focus for fans. The band soon became icons of the era and were heralded as the face of new wave. From the Ramones to Talking Heads, NYC was brimming with creative talent, and Blondie with the metronomic dancefloor beat of Clem Burke were a shining light of the scene. Many of the street sounds that swelled around them were captured and replicated within the confines of their studio. Blondie and Burke would make their name on a fusion of sonic threads.
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