I’m On E

This song had me mystified for years, wondering what ‘E’ was. My first assumption, and probably yours too, was the drug Ecstasy. It’s the most obvious conclusion to jump to, especially since it’s such a jacked-up song. But, as it happens, Ecstasy was not yet a thing in 1978. Well, technically it was a thing, but not a popular thing. E didn’t become mainstream until the 80′s, so it wouldn’t have occurred to anyone to write a song about being on it in 1978.   And even if it had been, Debbie Harry is absolutely not the kind of person to glorify her drug escapades. So, of course, “E” means the E train. Which, if you actually paid the slightest bit of attention to the lyrics and knew anything about New York City, you would have figured it out pretty quickly. It took me an embarrassingly long time to connect the dots, but it makes complete sense now. Debbie wrote a lot of songs about her less-glamorous-than-expected New York lifestyle, and that lifestyle involved a lot of shlepping up and down the island of Manhattan in high heels and while carrying a guitar. Debbie Harry might look like a glamour goddess, but you can’t question her regular-girl street cred. She sings about regular-girl things and that makes her so much more appealing than someone who only presents their fabulous rock-princess side. The world of Blondie is all about aching feet, cold pizza, riding the bus and stalking guys who don’t like you. Just like yours and mine.

Hello Joe

Hola, Joe. A tribute to Blondie’s dear old comrade Joey Ramone, who passed on in  2001 at the too old to rock’n'roll, too young to die age of 49. I’ve never had much use for Ramone et al. but I find this a moving tribute. It’s more personal than star-burnishing. There’s something vaguely grave-robberish about the whole tribute album industry, and it seems like every time anyone famous dies there’s a million mawkish ‘homages’ from people they barely had any connection with. The attitude seems to be, ‘let’s grab a piece of attention while everyone’s thinking about this dead person’. There’s definitely a whiff of exploitation on the wind whenever there’s a celebrity death. Ramone himself was recently ‘exhumed’ via posthumous new album. I can’t judge the quality of that or the motivations of the exhumers, nor do I even care very much about Ramone’s legacy, but I do feel that there’s something profoundly undignified about digging up and releasing old tapes the artist didn’t deem worthy of finishing during his lifetime. It feels like a desperate stab to bleed some extra cash out of a dead icon’s memory. And if you can’t get cash at least get some press. This isn’t like that at all. For one thing, Joe’d been dead two years when The Curse of Blondie was released. And of course, this isn’t just anybody, this is Debbie Harry – a onetime lover and lifelong friend – writing about some plainly very personal recollections. About as fine a tribute as Joey Ramone has ever gotten, and top of the list for best tributes to dead rock stars in general.

Heart of Glass

I’m rounding off an extended run of girl-power entertainment today. It totally wasn’t planned, because I don’t plan these things, but we’ve enjoyed a week’s plus of awesome female singers from Billie Holiday to Lily Allen, all of whom I admire for different reasons. Though it wasn’t planned, it did get me thinking deeply about women’s roles in culture and who some great female role models might be. I came to the conclusion that while the male-dominated, patriarchal film and publishing industries aren’t letting very many truly empowered females emerge into the pop culture sunshine, music is a different community entirely. Music has always been a home for the eccentric, the outrageous, the unconventional – anyone too crazy or too unwilling to stuff themselves into more conventional career paths. Anyone with the wherewithal to learn an instrument or write song, and the exhibitionism to do it in public can conceivably be a rock star. Music is a special creative medium in that it’s collaborative but not prohibitively so. Painters and writers are lone visionaries working in isolation – there is something particularly narcissistic in working alone and taking all the credit for it, and the people doing it tend to live inside their own heads. Film-making on the other hand is such a complicated web of interconnected tasks and talents that not even the most visionary director can truly take full credit for his films. Music lies somewhere in between, balancing between personal vision and team effort. What I’m saying is, it’s the perfect art form for crazy personalities to flourish, and it’s from music that all the really great, ahead-of-their time, transgressive, trailblazing heroes and heroines have come. At least for me. I’ve always particularly looked up to rock stars – female, male or hazy cosmic ones – simply for finding a way to be their weird selves when being your weird self wasn’t an option for many people, thanks to society having a stick up its ass. All of which brings be to one of my favorite people, Debbie Harry, who for me pretty much created the image of sex-positive feminism. She took the image of the gorgeous hot chick and made it her own, made it a cool creative thing to be – not a skank or a bimbo or a nasty backbiting bitch, but nice cool person with something to say for herself. She taught us that if construction workers call you “Blondie!!”, embrace that image and have fun with it.

The Hardest Part

Oh, this Blondie song isn’t about stalking some dude. Unless it’s about running him down on the highway. It’s more like one of those songs that sound cool but the words are basically gibberish, but no matter, because it’s great anyway. Because, well, just watch the video. Debbie Harry’s video dance moves are wooden, especially by today’s standards. The dark wig doesn’t suit her, and her teeth look weird. No, who am I kidding? Debbie is perfect. She looks amazing as she always does, wig or no, and she doesn’t need choreography to be a magnetic presence. Why can’t all pop music be this much fun?

Hanging On The Telephone

Have you noticed how many Blondie songs are about being a stalker? This, One Way Or Another, I’m Gonna Love You Too, and The Tide Is High being the most blatant examples. Plus many others that are just slightly creepy, like Picture This, Susie and Jeffrey, or X Offender. In fact, most of Blondie’s songs cast Debbie Harry as a romantic obsessive. Sometimes merely a deeply in love romantic, sometimes the kind of romantic who follows a guy downtown to spy on him and knows what his mom’s up to at any given time. Or the insane type who drives her car into a wall with her fiancee inside. That might sound like the work of a disturbed mind, but somehow Debbie still comes off as a sweetie-pie. Maybe because she is a sweetie and she’s just playing a campy role. Or maybe she really is horrible and insane but gets away with it because she’s so pretty. Probably the first. The persona works and she continues to be appealing and iconic to girls young enough to be her daughter. How does someone so ridiculously beautiful still feel like a cool best friend? Debbie comes off as a slightly amped-up version of a regular cool chick, the kind of little bit crazy, little bit fast, cool but nice neighborhood girl we all kind of looked up to at one point or another. So it’s really kind of adorable that she’s always stalking and creeping and spying. Because everybody kind of does that to some extent. We’re all hanging on the telephone, like Debbie says.

11:59

11:59 was the B-side for Heart Of Glass back in 1979 when the concept of ‘sides’ was still viable. See, back in the day they used to release singles on these little 7″ rounds of vinyl, with a song on each side, A and B. Why someone would bother purchasing a two song disc instead of waiting for the whole album to drop, I don’t know, except in those cases when the big singles weren’t included on the album they were meant to promote, but I think they stopped pulling that ol’ bait ‘n switch sometime in the sixties. Honestly, I don’t know how singles are disseminated nowadays. No one in their right brain-space is going to buy a CD with less than 10 songs on it, because that’s just such a ridiculous waste of time, money and plastic. There’s iTunes, I suppose, where you can download a single (or album track) for 99 cents. But again, why bother when you can bootleg it for free, or if you’ve got scruples, stream it on YouTube or Pandora or Jango or MySpace, or one of any number of free music streaming venues the interwebs have to offer. I guess singles to serve some purpose – they get played on the radio, they give artists an excuse to film extravagant videos, and they may even be worth buying if you’re reasonably certain that you won’t be able to tolerate a full forty minutes of Bruno Mars music. I’m amazed that Top 40 radio still flourishes despite being about as obsolete as the horse and buggy. Why does anyone still bother when everything and the kitchen sink is available online, faster, cheaper and better?

On a different tangent, observe below, Deborah Harry looking stunning in, um, harem shorts? White pantaloons? God forbid,  a white pantaloon harem onesie? It’s like I said yesterday, Deb is above and beyond the conventions of mere mortals. If she likes jumpers and onesies, so it will be, and she rocks it. Watch her and weep.

Die Young Stay Pretty

“Leave only the best behind”

Die young, stay pretty is a motto of lots of people, including some guys I know. It’s the myth of the beautiful corpse. Never mind that no corpse is beautiful. Some people just can’t stand the thought of seeing themselves deteriorate. Let them have their lifestyle, but this song is satirical. Debbie Harry never had any intention of dying young. She was never one of those rock chicks who had to have their nose reconstructed after the blow ate away the cartilage. Has Deb, at 65, aged gracefully? Well, she’s caught some flak for not dressing her age, and while after a certain point it’s true that ripped fishnets are no longer dignified, it’s not a fair criticism. She’s a professional rock ‘n roller. She’s not beholden to your conventional ideals of dignity.

Eat to the Beat

How cool is Debbie Harry? She’s got on a strapless shorty onesie, and a sweatband, and she looks adorable. No one above the age of five should be able to wear a onesie and get away with it. Obviously, this lady has superpowers. In addition, she’s singing about food. I’m always a sucker for songs about food. (Buildings, also.)

Dreaming

In some intangible way, Dreaming completely encapsulates the enormous appeal of Debbie Harry. Somehow it sounds just like Debbie looks; glamorous, happy and real. She’s been called the Monroe of the seventies, which is not inappropriate. They share a taste for red lipstick and extreme peroxide, and an inexplicably high cuddle factor. I suppose the appeal of the appeal is that Harry (and Monroe before her) has an inordinately complex image. Most stars develop a one-sided persona, emphasis on develop. Debbie doesn’t just have a persona, she has a personality. Her image is multi-faceted. She can appear to be several incompatible things at once, because she is those things, because her image stems from real self-hood. That’s why she can be a dream-girl, a glamor girl, a cool girl, but still seem like an outsider, a real person, a relatable person, down-to-earth, approachable, etc. And, you know, boatloads of charisma doesn’t hurt. Anyway…If this doesn’t make you happy, you are made of wood. Therefore…

Desire Brings Me Back

Blondie had a good comeback moment. They broke up for a long time, then got back and cut a couple of albums that came out very well. Toured a lot too.  Some critics said Curse of Blondie was marred by too much trendy production. I don’t think slick production has to be a bad thing. Dipping their feet into dance music Blondie was always good at. Not to mention Debbie Harry’s famous mc skillz. I would commend them for trying on a wide range of styles on that album. It’s not all great, granted – Background Melody is hands-down the skeeviest song ever. But they diversified mightily, and mostly with success. I heard rumors of a new album for 2010, but 2010 is almost over and I’ve seen no new album come out.