Famous angry words at Max's Kansas City in the mid 70s: "That waitress spilled a beer on me!!"
Yeah, I hope you got her to autograph the stained shirt, fella, cuz she didn't remain Debbie
the waitress for all that long. She got together with some friends and started a band that
was as successful in the mainstream as it was controversial among the punks. And yet Blondie
remained a part of the New York City punk scene.
Decades have gone by and it's all in the books now. About 70% of the punk royalty died early
on, it seems, but the recent death of Joey Ramone is what really snapped everyone back to
reality. It was a long, long time ago that the scene existed. Some of the music is still
fresh. What do ya know about this: Blondie's music remains fresh and infinitely likable.
We can still hear the little snarl of attitude, even in the cutest pop songs, that gave Blondie
the right to hang out with Johnny and Dee Dee and Stiv and the others. Now we can hear it
better.
Maybe reissues have come and gone all along, but most have had nothing new to offer. Some,
in fact, have been inferior in sound quality to the vinyl releases. Capitol's re-release
series is not guilty on both counts, as the 24-bit sound is very good on all six titles, and
all six have bonus tracks that aren't just worthless little bones. The debut, self-titled
album was released on the tiny Private Sound label and didn't make stars of the band, despite
some hot tunes that would end up Blondie staples, including "In The Flesh," "Rip Her To
Shreds" and the classic, "X Offender." Besides the eleven original tracks we're served up
five bonus cuts. They are: three of the band's earliest demos, a cover of The Shangri-La's
"Out In The Streets," "Thin Line," and "Platinum Blonde," and the single versions of "X Offender"
and "In The Sun." "Platinum Blonde" is worth the purchase on its own just because it's funny
as hell to hear Debbie sing that she wants to be a platinum blonde just like all the sexy
stars. So 1976 wasn't going to be Blondie's big year, commercially, but it was a start.
1977 saw the band being picked up by Chrysalis Records and immediately making Plastic Letters,
a record that
was thin in comparison to the debut. While "I'm Always Touched By Your Presence, Dear" and
"Denis" are considered part of the list of Blondie classics today, they don't come close to
"X Offender" or "Rip Her To Shreds." Lack of hooks. But the band was learning how to rock
harder, as evidenced on tracks like "Youth Nabbed As Sniper" and "Detroit 442," and they would
use these skills on the next album. The bonus tracks on the new, improved Plastic Letters
include "Once I Had A Love," which is a 1975 demo of a song that eventually evolved just a
little bit to become "Heart Of Glass," a previously unreleased live version of "Detroit 442,"
and a pair of B-sides called "Poet's Problem" and "Scenery."
1978 was Blondie's big year. The album was Parallel Lines, and the hit was... that is
the hits were "Heart Of Glass" and "One Way Or Another," and nearly every song is on the
conventionally accepted list of Blondie classics. A pair of songs, "Hangin' On The Telephone"
and "Will Anything Happen," were covers of tunes by the Los Angeles punk trio, The Nerves,
which included future Plimsouls front man Peter Case. There were no weak spots. "Picture
This," "Fade Away and Radiate," "Sunday Girl," "Just Go Away," "I'm Gonna Love You Too,"
"11:59" and "I Know But I Don't Know" each have something special and fit in with the hits
perfectly, making Parallel Lines a perfect album. Nothing's perfect, you say? You aren't
paying attention, pal. Oh yeah, bonus tracks... We get our second demo of "Heart Of Glass,"
this one recorded the same year this record was recorded so you can expect they were closing in
on it, despite the fact it was still being called "Once I Had A Love." The disc closes with
three live recordings, two from 1978 and one from 1980.
"Bang A Gong," the T. Rex classic,
is kicked into shape nicely by the band, and the concert version of "I Know But I Don't Know"
explodes into a speedy frenzy. The 1980 recording of "Hangin' On The Telephone" is the
clearest of the lot, sonically, and probably the tightest performance, though if we're voting
for cool factor here I have to cast mine for "Bang A Gong." It just suits them so well and
I gotta have it. Overall, Parallel Lines is
the best of the lot in all phases of the reissue series, which is only fair since it was
Blondie's finest album.
That last statement is easy to make. Nobody argues. Personally, when I try to voice my own
opinion on Blondie's second best release, I'm taking my life in my hands. It always seems
like the ones with the brass knuckles are real sentimental about the debut album, while I've
worn out a few vinyl copies of 1979's Eat To The Beat. I'm bewildered. I point out
the classic Blondie sounds in "Dreaming" and "Union City Blue," I carefully mention that the
60s girl group stylings explored on the debut have been perfected with "Slow Motion," and
that "Accidents Never Happen" was one of the best - if least noticed - songs of the early
new wave era. And for Chrissakes, am I alone in hearing the greatness of the reggae-drenched
"Die Young, Stay Pretty?" I think you have to be deaf or dead not to "get" this one. Yet
it's picked on but never picked. Well, if you're hip to it, just know it sounds better than ever and that the
bonus tracks are all splendid live recordings of, in order, "Die Young, Stay Pretty," The Four
Tops' "Seven Rooms Of Gloom," David Bowie's "Heroes" and Johnny Cash's "Ring Of Fire," the
latter of which is particularly inspired. Sitting here alone it's safe, for the moment, to
say that this CD will get the second most play time in my house.
1980's AutoAmerican is just plain weird. It begins with Debbie Harry tumbling out
some words about the automobile being banned or some such thing, and the music that ensues is
really aimless disco, for the most part. There were two #1 hits: "The Tide Is High," which
was a cover of an old ska classic by The Paragons, and "Rapture," a song often credited as the
first rap song by people who've never heard of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way." Both are good
songs, but what the hell was Harry thinking when she recorded shit like "Here's Looking At
You?" Freddie Mercury got away with that stuff, but only Freddie Mercury. Then again,
"Go Through It" rocks in classic Blondie fashion, albeit with an annoyingly too-present
horn section, and "Do The Dark" has a cool mystique to it. The three bonus tracks are the
original long version of "Call Me," "Suzy & Jeffery," which was the flipside to "The Tide is
High," and a "special disco mix" of "Rapture" that goes on and on and on and on and on and...
By the time Blondie made The Hunter in 1982, they clearly didn't give a rat's ass about
much of anything anymore. It was a contractual obligation album by a band that had, for all
intents and purposes, gone their separate ways. "Island Of Lost Souls" is sorta fun if you
really, desperately want it to be, and yeah, "War Child" charted somewhere way down in the
numbers, but it wasn't much. By this CD, Capitol is out of candy for the trick or treaters, so
they can only offer a single bonus track, that being an eight minute version of "War Child."
(Geez, we didn't do anything to them!).
Now I'm fully aware that somebody reading this
is spitting and swearing because The Hunter is his or her favorite Blondie album (???), and
that's what makes the world go 'round, so to you... whoever you are... here it is. And let's
not forget the completists of the world. No matter which music you love among these six CDs,
you're going to find it sounding marvelous and you're going to have a nice new collection of
rarities you didn't have before. In almost every instance, the bonus tracks are exciting and
fun to listen to. The CD booklets have photo montages of concerts, EP covers and flyers. It's
all been done very nicely, giving one of pop's great bands of the 70s and 80s the makeover it
has long deserved.
