If I were to rewrite my own history of my love for music, I\u2019d start here, with Blondie\u2019s eponymous debut. But that\u2019s not exactly how it happened. It would still take a few years for me to discover the band, preferring instead to follow the career of, um, Donny & Marie. Talk about guilty pleasures! Guess you can lump me in the same category of most Americans back in 1976. Though they came out of the seedy, scrappy Bowery in New York City, Blondie\u2019s initial success would most immediately be seen halfway around the world in Australia, before Blondiemania took a full hold of the UK. When it came to the ever-conservative States, lead singer Deborah Harry must have been seen as an alien landing from another planet. She was edgy, mysterious and kinda scary. Ahead of her time she and the four men of Blondie may have been, but then this country has always been hesitant to lay the title of \u201cnext big thing\u201d onto anyone. Pushing the envelope from a creative standpoint was never a priority for music artists here. The tried and true route was always a safer bet when it came to launching careers. You had to pay your dues.<\/p>\n
Producer Richard Gottehrer (of Go-Go\u2019s fame) would reel in the eccentricities and polish Blondie\u2019s rough live punk sound for their first record. Many of the songs sound like a strange hybrid between the girl group sixties sound (\u201cLittle Girl Lies\u201d) and the futuristic electronic sound that was just starting to capture the ears of the listening public, compliments of the disco era. Primarily, it was solid guitar, bass and drums here, backing up the pristine, expressive vocals of Miss Debbie. The songs all fall under the 3:30 mark, making for a speedy runtime that is never boring. If modernized surf tunes are your thing, this Blondie album is for you.<\/p>\n
There is one experimental track tacked on as the album\u2019s closer, \u201cThe Attack Of The Giant Ants.\u201d Not only could this serve as a possible theme song to a monster movie of the same name, but it would be right at home on Blondie\u2019s train-wreck of a sixth release, namely 1982\u2019s The Hunter<\/i>. It doesn\u2019t exactly fit with the rest of the material on Blondie<\/i>, but you know what? That\u2019s what I like about it. If anything, it helps to demonstrate that Blondie wasn\u2019t afraid to try new things. They were fearless when it came to breaking new ground. Don\u2019t forget, it would take Blondie to be the first act \u2013 a white one at that – to bring the rap genre all the way to #1 with \u201cRapture,\u201d which can be found on my personal favorite Blondie album, 1980\u2019s Autoamerican<\/i>.<\/p>\n
When it came to radio-friendly singles on Blondie<\/i> (none of which were major Billboard<\/i> hits), you have the trifecta of the controversial \u201cX Offender,\u201d the CBGB classic \u201cRip Her To Shreds\u201d and the dreamy ballad \u201cIn The Flesh.\u201d What\u2019s most notable is the fact that all of these retro-sounding cuts are Blondie originals, written by all five members of the band. That\u2019s what makes the group sound so fresh and exciting, while harkening back to a familiar time as to not alienate prospective new fans. It\u2019s a hard balance to strike indeed, but something Blondie would be so adept at achieving on this and all subsequent releases. It could very well be the secret of the band\u2019s longevity in the music biz, ultimately landing them a spot in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2006. This first effort was a good way to start, but two years later, they\u2019d really hit it out of the park with Parallel Lines<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":30263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7696],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-43557","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\/43557","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\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43557"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52040,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43557\/revisions\/52040"}],"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=43557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43557"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43557"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}