in my lp renaissance, i want to talk about blondie.
i consider blondie (1976), parallel lines (1978), and eat to the beat (1979) to be classic albums (plastic letters (1977) is not as strong), and i make parallel lines one of the top ten rock albums of all time. boy they did sort of disintegrate after that: even autoamerican (1980), which featured "the tide is high" and "rapture", is not nearly as good as their best. they were dealing with a lot, chris stein's illness for one. but what they did at the end and debbie's solo albums early on were adventurous and interesting.
the hunter (1982) is sort of a horrendous album, and what debbie is doing in an absurd fright wig on the cover is anyone's guess.
but guess what? two great songs: "island of lost souls" and "for your eyes only".
one thing i want to bring your attention to is clem burke's drumming, which actually carries many of blondie's best songs; he's as good a rock drummer as i've ever heard. like listen to this extremely excellent rock song and really concentrate on the drumming:
i know they were sort of original cbgb punks, but i do not really hear them as a punk band, though there are punky moments; it's pop rock with many eclectic influences, including reggae, surf, spy themes, disco, hip hop, etc. before they got to the hunter, the last blondie gasp until much later, she did the solo album kookoo (1981) with nile rogers, where among other things she tried to take advantage of the momentum of "rapture". it's a pretty interesting - though not really great - album, not least because of the cover by h.r. giger.
the second solo outing, rockbird (1986), produced by seth justman, the keyboard player for the j. geils band (he plays keys here, too),represented a typically dramatic change of direction. it sounds quite a bit like the last couple of j. geils albums, which appeared around the same time or shortly before. again a mixed bag, but again with really good moments.
i just want to point out to all the broadway producers reading my blog that blondie: the musical (other title approaches: heart of glass, of course, or my candidate, 11:59) is the best idea ever. the songs are actually extremely theatrical and could easily be woven into a coherent story; the setting, the lower east side, hollywood, paris. cbgb and studio 54. diva as punk goddess and gay icon. who you gonna cast as david byrne, joey ramone, grandmaster flash? unbelievable personal trials, but rock 'n roll always wins in the end, baby. you could make the shit up and try to write some songs a la rent, or you could use the far better music that was actually there. one thing about that music: it's melodic, giving it an extreme advantage over sondheim, say. tell me you can't see this one as a show tune:
