museless aiming

Blondie

So yeah, Blondie. So far? Started with Parallel Lines which is typically regarded as their best, although I've been getting into their other stuff. Some random thoughts follow.

1976

Now for the first time I'm listening to their first album, Blondie (1976). Much of it is a throwback to 50s music, I suppose in the way that music today is a throwback to 80s music. 'Little Girl Lies' is especially 50s pop, as is 'In the Flesh', and what a contrast to Pink Floyd's. There's of course some more risqué stuff; 'X-Offender', or, even more obvious, 'I'll give you some head / and shoulders to lie on' in 'Look Good in Blue.' But I'm still getting used to it musically, and thus can't comment on it lyrically, though I'll admit that my initial impression is that it's not quite up to the level of the next few years.

'Rip Her to Shreds' tries a little too hard to be bitter, and I'm not even sure who she's describing. She says 'Yeah you know her', and I think, 'No, no I don't'. Some kind of groupie, I guess; this song is lost on me.

'The Attack of the Giant Ants' is so stupid it's almost unbearable.

1977

Listening to Plastic Letters (1977). My favourite line at the moment is 'kismet' in '(I'm Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear'. Thinking about 'I'm on E', I didn't make any anachronistic mistakes about its meaning but I wonder whether it means 'I'm on easy street'.

1978

I've been listening to Parallel Lines (1978) for the longest, and it's really good. I'll need to review it a little more and think, but at the moment 'Will Anything Happen?' is my favourite. A little close to home, but what a great song.

1979

Current favourite is Eat to the Beat (1979), and the best song on it is 'Die Young Stay Pretty', natürlich.

This album seems to me to have influenced the later mainstream, or at least be more related to the type of stuff I listen to. 'Union City Blue' reminds me of a specific Manic Street Preachers' song, I need to think of which one. 'Eat to the Beat' itself makes me laugh, it's exciting if stupid. I think of 'Accidents Never Happen' vs Elvis Costello's 'Accidents Will Happen', also in 1979. I wonder which came first? Something to think about.

When I mentioned the line from that song to a friend ('accidents never happen in a perfect world'), he said it proves nothing but that Deborah Harry has a great voice. This struck me for several reasons, which, because this is the internet I will put into bullet points:

The first is that despite the Blondie phase I'm currently going through, it's never really struck me that she has a great voice. Not that I think it's bad, I had just never thought about it either way. It's somehow an alien thought.
The second is the idea that it's 'inherent in perfection' that accidents wouldn't happen. He stated this explicitly, and I'm not totally sure it's true -- again, it's not exactly that I had an idea that accidents would happen in a perfect world, more just that it's a strange idea to me that they wouldn't. The statement 'accidents never happen in a perfect world' does not seem self-evident to me.
The third is a question of the worth of tautology. Even assuming that what she's saying is obvious (which, at least to me, it's not), are tautological statements necessarily worthless? I would argue that they're not. In the opening song on Eat to the Beat she longingly sings that 'dreaming is free'. But even that is loaded with meaning, is it not?

And speaking of 'Dreaming': 'I never met her, and I'll never forget her'. There are no better words for bittersweet regret.

8.5/10

Covers

I gotta say, I'm not normally a huge fan of covers, but Blondie's 'Denis' and especially 'I'm Gonna Love You Too' are really good. Harry actually does a great imitation of Buddy Holly somehow. Cash's 'Ring of Fire' is just overdone anyway (Social Distortion does it best), although their cover of Bowie's 'Heroes' is pretty great. (The last two are extras on Eat to the Beat so I don't know how known they are.)

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Fri May 4 16:14:15 BST 2007