CD Odyssey Disc 1777: Blondie

Welcome back to the CD Odyssey. I have just taken out the recycling. As Flight of the Conchords teaches us, taking out the recycling is not sexy, but is still very important.

On to an album that is both sexy and important.

Disc 1777 is…Autoamerican

Artist: Blondie

Year of Release: 1980

What’s up with the Cover? Debbie Harry leans back against a low rooftop wall, all legs and rock and roll attitude. You may also be notionally aware of the New York skyline and other members of the band strung along the same wall. You may find yourself unaware of anything other than Debbie Harry.

How I Came To Know It: I had this record on vinyl as a kid, as a hand-me-down from my brother, so I already knew I liked it. Buying it on CD was an easy choice, made so many years ago the occasion is lost in the mists of time.

While I mostly play the CD version, I can confirm that on the vinyl version Debbie’s attitude is that much cooler, and her legs even longer.

How It Stacks Up: I have three Blondie records, and I had assumed “Autoamerican” would finish in third place. Not so, dear reader, it leapfrogs over “Plastic Letters” to land in second place. As this is my final Blondie review (for now) here’s the full accounting:

1. Parallel Lines: 5 stars (reviewed at Disc 958)
2. Autoamerican: 4 stars (reviewed right here)
3. Plastic Letters: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 692)

 Ratings: 4 stars

Even though I’ve owned this record since I was a kid, I have rarely put it on, and over the years it has settled in my mind as one of Blondie’s weaker records. If, after a few high balls I have ever pontificated to you about how this record is only OK, please now accept my apology. Settle in and enjoy like I – wrongly – once told you not to.

Take your time though, because “Autoamerican” is a slow burn. It’s like getting into the hot tub near the water jet; the bubbles are gonna be a lot to deal with but once you settle in alongside and find a sweet spot, you’re in for a relaxed and invigorating soak.

The opening track, “Europa” is the unwelcome bubble experience. It comes on like a movie score that has you thinking things are cool and majestic, like you’re pulling up in your Rolls to an old English mansion for a ghost story. Except, this ambient mood bit should end in that scenario after 60 seconds. Instead it moodily floats around for three and a half minutes. Reader, I was bored and a little restless.

The next song, “Live It Up” is a disco dance song, but its that one that nobody knows, where you excuse yourself from your partner and go in search of a breather and a Long Island Iced Tea. Following up on this is a barroom bit of burlesque with “Here’s Looking At You”. It is fine, but at this point I realized what was happening. Blondie was rich and famous, and they had realized they could afford to pretty much indulge whatever musical whim. But would they use their newfound power for good or ill?

The question is answered with “The Tide Is High”, and just like that the hot tub magic kicks in. There is just as much crazy experimentation going on, but now you realize the brilliance of it all. The sun is going down and you feel the warmth of a late summer day, beaming through this little bit of pop perfection. You realize Debbie Harry has just been trying on a lot of different vocal styles and has finally arrived – by design - at this wonderful moment. Sure she’s singing to you about moving on, but the song is so relaxed you’re happy to just let the song saunter off down the beach. The afterthought’s what matters.

From here, the album begins to unfurl in all its glory. “Angels on the Balcony” changes tone again into a ghostly bit of reverie, here are the spectres of parties past, or maybe parties present – it all blends together.

The record rolls through this and other various sounds, returning multiple times in new ways. Later in the record we get more ghostly angelic singing with “T-Birds”, only this time the vision is a blonde in a sports car. “Do the Dark” brings back “Live It Up” only better and “Faces” returns our barroom sound of “Here’s Looking At You” but once again, better.

Like I said, it’s a slow burn.

I would be remiss not to note this record’s other hit, “Rapture” is pure disco joy. A song for dancing close with a partner, but not so close you can’t sway your hips to the beat or invite a handheld turn or two.

Unlike my vinyl original, my CD copy is a remaster, featuring three bonus tracks. Usually I don’t like bonus tracks polluting the original playtime of an album, but the remastered copy of “Autoamerican” is the exception that proves the rule. There are three bonus tracks, all welcome.

The first is the original extended version of “Call Me”. “Call Me” is one of Blondie’s greatest songs, but if you don’t go in for their Greatest Hits (I don’t) you will only find it on the American Gigolo soundtrack. Here, I get a free copy of the eight minute “original long version”. I loved all eight minutes.

Also featured is the B-Side to “The Tide Is High”, “Suzy & Jeffrey”, a fifties crooner featuring love and car wrecks in the great tradition of “Last Kiss” and the Shangri-Las’ “Give Us Your Blessing” (if you don’t know the latter tune, check it out).

The third bonus track is a 10-minute extended disco dance version of “Rapture”. At 10 minutes, and with all those extra whistle blows and hand claps, does it end up being too much? Reader, it does not.

Cognitive dissonance is a powerful force, and no doubt the reason that even after all these years of exposure to “Autoamerican” I’ve never previously embraced its brilliance. Consider me cured.

Best tracks:  The Tide Is High, Angels on the Balcony, Go Through It, Rapture, T-Birds, and from the bonus tracks: Call Me (original long version) and Suzy & Jeffrey

CD Odyssey Disc 958: Blondie

Another busy day has me feeling a bit knackered and it is only Tuesday. I need a weekend but while I wait for it to arrive I’ll draw a little sustenance from musical genius.

Disc 958 is….Parallel Lines

Artist: Blondie

Year of Release: 1978

What’s up with the Cover? Debbie Harry and the boys looking sharp in black, white and – in the case of Harry – blonde. Possible exception the shoes: suits look better with dress shoes, boys. I guess that’s why its rock and roll, and not a wedding portrait.

How I Came To Know It: A few years ago I bought a bunch of Blondie albums on CD and this was one of them. I already knew Blondie from my youth, though, so it wasn’t exactly a blind leap of faith; I knew it would be good.

How It Stacks Up:  I have three Blondie albums, and this is by far the best so…#1!

Ratings: 5 stars

I have almost 19,000 songs in my collection, yet I can’t remember the last time I made a party mix that didn’t feature at least one – and usually two – of the 12 songs on “Parallel Lines.”

“Parallel Lines” is a perfect record, so perfect it seems to simultaneously be ahead of its time and yet have a sound so timeless it could have been released any year from the birth of rock and roll all the way through to 2017.

I’ve heard very few albums with as much range as this one. When “Parallel Lines” wants to rock out, it rocks out it with a vengeance. “Hanging on the Telephone” starts things off with a punk edge, and it is quickly followed by the riff heavy “One Way or Another.” Harry’s voice is a combination of sex and snarl, provocative and aggressive in equal measure. She’s that girl you desperately want to ask out but you don’t because even though you talk tough about her with your friends deep down, she kind of scares you.

But by track three, the record switches gears to a romantic pop song. “Picture This” has a lilting melody, with a rounded off and gentle production, but still with an urgency about it that says this isn’t just the girl next door. When Harry sings:

“I would give you my finest hour

The one I spend watching you shower”

She evokes the perfect combination of coquette and voyeur, without ever surrendering her power. You’re in her picture, buddy, not the other way around.

Then, before you can blink you’re whisked away with “Fade Away and Radiate” which sounds like it would be at home on Queen’s soundtrack for “Flash Gordon;” all futuristic and full of an ambient but undeniable authority.

A few minutes later and you’re listening to the sixties-inspired “Pretty Baby” which mixes doo wop chorus with the glitter and glam of the seventies club scene.

My favourite song (and a party standard) is “11:59” which combines elements of several of these themes, including an ominous guitar riff that could also be inspired by science faction. It features a drum beat that is New Wave to its core and Debbie Harry singing high and sweet as she calls for the night to never end:

“Pumping like a fugitive in cover from the night

Take it down the freeway like a bullet to the ocean”

It’s 11:59, and she reminds you that you want to stay alive forever in that magical moment the day changes over, and listening you believe it’s possible. The experience is a microcosm for the whole album.

This record has two of 1978’s most classic tracks, the aforementioned “One Way Or Another” and “Heart of Glass” but when you listen to the album in its entirety, they just blend in naturally; two more great songs on a record full of them.

My version of “Parallel Lines” is remastered with a few bonus tracks. The live versions of “I Know But I Don’t Know” and “Hanging on the Telephone” are good but I could live without them. Fortunately the worst part is having to hear both great songs a second time, which is hardly torture.

The other two bonus tracks are great additions. “Once I Had a Love (aka the Disco Song)” is like an early demo of “Heart of Glass,” slightly funkier and more upbeat, with just enough melodic differences to make it fun and new. Blondie’s cover of T-Rex’s “Bang a Gong” is brilliant, and does a good job of capturing the energy of their live show.

This record features the best of sixties pop, New Wave, punk, and hard rock and lets them all rub shoulders with one another in a way that feels easy and natural. Whatever your favourite kind of rock and roll “Parallel Lines” is not only going to have some of it, it is going to make you appreciate it in a different light before it’s done with you.

Best tracks: all tracks

CD Odyssey Disc 692: Blondie

Today was my first day back at work after eleven days of holiday time.

The shift back to work comes more opportunity to listen to music within the rules of the Odyssey (newbies can read these on the sidebar to the right).

Disc 692 is…. Plastic Letters

Artist: Blondie

Year of Release: 1977

What’s up with the Cover? The band loafs about on a police squad car. This seems to be a bad idea and I expect they will all be arrested for their irreverence.

How I Came To Know It: I had a couple Blondie albums and liked them both, so this was just me taking a chance on something else in their catalogue.

How It Stacks Up:  I have three of Blondie’s studio albums. I’ll put “Plastic Letters” second, just ahead of “Automerican” but well behind the classic “Parallel Lines.”

Rating: 3 stars

Blondie has always been a great band for blending a lot of different musical influences into a sound unique to them. “Plastic Letters” is early on their career and while good it would be fair to see the blender hasn’t completed its work.

Of the three albums I have, this is the most punk rock, with a raw (and occasionally directionless) energy that is missing from later records. It could probably use a little more direction, and with all of the different things it is trying to do, it occasionally feels like you are running on a musical hamster wheel.

“Youth Nabbed as a Sniper” and “Contact in Red Square” are both cool songs, but they are one step away from being awesome. Usually it is a step the band took when they shouldn’t have. I think it relates to the synth organs.

But Logan, you say, those synth elements help make the band the New Wave pioneers that they are. That’s true, but for some reason these synth-pop elements are a distraction to the energy of the record. With all its cold war grimness, I think I just want it to stay rough around the edges.

For all that punk energy “Plastic Letters” is a pop music record at its core, with melodies at their core that are all bubble gum and beach party, and that side of the band’s personality also works.

This includes “Denise” (masculinized to “Denis”) and “Love at the Pier” which unlike “Denise” isn’t a sixties doo wop remake, but still sounds like it belongs in a California beach movie. If those movies had been cool, that is.

I also enjoyed the muscle-car inspired “Detroit 442” which is all about the racing scene and feels like an update to Dick Dale’s hot rod music of fifteen years earlier, with a healthy dose of seventies cynicism. Listening to “Detroit 442” I wasn’t sure if Harry was celebrating hot rod culture or mocking it – I suspect the latter, but I liked it anyway.

The album’s opening (and best) track “Fan Mail” is about little more than a fan with a crush and dreams of achieving a stardom of his own. Despite this, the song is cleverly constructed, with Harry’s voice starting low down and seductive and morphing its way into an almost animalistic growl by the end. Odd additional production, including actual bells ringing as Harry sings about bells ringing (one or the other would suffice) can’t take away how great this song is, or how much fun you have listening to it.

My copy of the CD is a ‘bonus track’ album – something I often dread. Despite now clocking in at 17 tracks, the album stays under 47 minutes. And of the four added songs, only one (the live version of “Detroit 442”) feels like a weak link.

In fact, there is a 1975 version of “Heart of Glass” (called “Once I Had a Love (aka the Disco Song)”) that is different from the version eventually recorded for “Parallel Lines” but just as good. “Scenery” and “Poet’s Problem” are both songs I’d have kept on the original album at the expense of something else. I particularly like “Scenery” which was originally an outtake from the band’s eponymous debut.

“Plastic Letters” has all of the sounds that make “Parallel Lines” such a classic, but doesn’t pull it all together at once. Instead you get a collection of good songs, but none great, each sufficiently different from one another that the album feels a bit like a whole collection of outtakes. Kind of like Pearl Jam’s “Lost Dogs” or Tom Waits’ “Brawlers, Bawlers andBastards.” Fortunately, it is a good collection – like playing a whole bunch of old 45s without having to get up and change the record every three minutes.

Best tracks: Fan Mail, Denis, Bermuda Triangle (Flight 45), (I’m Always Touched by Your) Presence Dear, I Didn’t Have the Nerve to Say No, Detroit 442, Scenery