Day 410: Blondie – Blondie

I had a real hankering for some Debbie Harry today, so I thought I should finally listen to Blondie’s older albums. It isn’t a new band for me by any means, but I have my few albums that I had when I was younger and then I just stuck with them, so I’m branching out into their punk-Blondie era.

Album cover courtesy of Private Stock

Blondie was formed in 1974 from the punk and new wave scene emerging in New York at clubs like CBGB by singer Debbie Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. They were later joined by drummer Clem Burke and keyboardist Jimmy Destri, and they released their self-titled debut album in 1976 to somewhat limited commercial success. They didn’t really break commercially until their third studio album, Parallel Lines, was released in 1978.

It’s an interesting album to listen to, especially when you look at it as a precursor to their later sound. I love that they put their own spin on the 1960s Phil Spector girl group sound on the album, but without involvement from the demon that is Phil Spector. It was produced by Richard Gottehrer, who has a rock solid background in making ‘60s pop, as he wrote and produced songs like “My Boyfriend's Back” by the Angels and “I Want Candy” by the Strangeloves.

The lead single was originally called “Sex Offender”, but radio stations refused to play it, so they changed it to “X Offender”, but even that proved controversial. They suffered a stroke of luck when an Australian TV station was supposed to play it but chose their second single “In the Flesh” instead, which ended up being a bit of a success, reaching number 14 on the Australian charts. “In the Flesh” and the song about the alien ants attacking Tokyo were definitely surprising to me, I didn’t expect that this would be an appropriate album for the October season, but there’s a little bit of unexpected eeriness to a few of the songs on the record.

I do also get whispers of the Cramps from the slightly creepy vibes that some of the songs have, and probably not just because I listened to them yesterday, there’s the goofy themes set to a surf rock guitars and a punk sound with influences from old pop music that definitely lend themselves to sounding like musical distant cousins. And the similarities make sense, as both bands were honing their sound at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB around the same time.

Blondie was a fascinating peek into the history of the band and I did like most of the songs, but I don’t really see myself returning to it, so I’m giving it a very reasonable 7.5/10. It’s good, but far from their best.