{"id":41916,"date":"2010-03-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-22T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/blondie\/"},"modified":"2010-03-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-22T00:00:00","slug":"blondie","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/blondie\/","title":{"rendered":"Blondie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the years, Blondie has been described as everything from New Wave to power pop and pop rock to punk. While they did hang out at CBGB and were close with The Ramones and the rest of the crew, they were never a punk band, although they did pepper their material with punk-like expressions of anxiety and definitely had a rebellious streak. The fact is, though, by the time Deborah Harry and Chris Stein formed the band, they were both pushing thirty and had struggled for years in various bands, at first apart and then together with The Stilettos.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

With drummer Clem Burke, keyboardist Jimmy Destri, and bassist Gary Valentine, they became Blondie and quickly set about finding someone willing to record them. They didn\u2019t have to wait long \u2013 in late \u201976, they entered the studio with Richard Gottehrer producing and came up with one of the most intense and exciting debut albums in rock history. It is slightly New Wave in sound and a little punk in attitude, but make no mistake, Blondie had great pop sensibilities and three great chief songwriters in Harry, Stein, and Destri.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Their initial success only came about because of a dubious mistake by a legendary Aussie rock guru\/DJ\/producer, Molly Meldrum, who played the flip side to \u201cX Offender\u201d on his TV show and sent the group\u2019s quaint little ballad \u201cIn The Flesh\u201d shooting up the local charts. Word soon spread to the UK, where a multitude of Aussie rock scribes and DJs worked, and the band had more success with both songs charting. The fact that Blondie<\/i> became a Top 20 album in Australia and charted in Britain had absolutely zero affect in the USA, however, and they wouldn\u2019t win over their homeland until they released Parallel Lines<\/i> in 1978.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

In hindsight, it\u2019s hard to see just why that\u2019s so because Blondie<\/i> is a strong and consistent album of urgent rock (\u201cX Offender\u201d) and radio friendly pop gems (\u201cIn The Flesh\u201c and \u201cMan Overboard\u201d). Several influences and styles are represented throughout the album, and although at this point, Harry was not a great singer, she had a decent range and fronted her band with a shrewdness that belied her beauty. Harry played the part of the pin-up poster girl but made it clear to anyone that rubbed her the wrong way or addressed the band without her that she was not to be messed with.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

That part of Harry\u2019s persona is clearly evident with her menacing delivery on \u201cRip Her To Shreds,\u201d which is her take on the judgemental and fickle tabloids. The band mirrored the rockabilly days with \u201cLittle Girl Lies\u201d and echoed the \u201860s surfer culture on the stunning \u201cA Shark In Jets Clothing.\u201d \u201cRifle Range\u201d is another \u201860s-style pop song that also mixes the New Wave sound of the day that\u2019s reminiscent of The B52\u2019s.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

The disc closes with the inane but fun \u201cThe Attack Of The Giant Ants,\u201d which would start a trend that the group still employs to this day: ending their releases with some ridiculous but mostly memorable song. It in no way takes away from the strength of the material on Blondie<\/i> and only serves to remind us that Blondie themselves can never be contained to a simple set of labels. They remain one of the most experimental and eccentric pop bands of all time, and this is where it all started.<\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":30263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7696],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-41916","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-blondie","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41916"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}