Parallel Lines

The coolest woman who ever lived.

The first album I ever bought was Parallel Lines by Blondie, probably around 1979 or 1980.  I had been a big Blondie fan for a couple years before that, having gotten into them fairly early because my aunt, who is just two years older than me and more like a big sister, had gotten into them really early and was (and still is) a HUGE fan.  She may have actually been a fan before “Heart of Glass”, I can’t remember, but if that’s true I’m not sure how she’d have heard of them.  She lived in upstate New York (upstate meaning about 30 miles from the Canadian border, closer to Montreal than Manhattan) and I’m not sure if they were getting much airplay outside of the NY area before “Heart of Glass” hit.  Anyway, she had Plastic Letters, Parallel Lines, and Eat to the Beat on 8-track (I know, how incredibly archaic) and I/we listened to them constantly.  (The other 8-tracks I remember her having were the Knack’s Get the Knack, Candy-O by the Cars, a compilation that had “Heartbreaker” by Pat Benetar and “Cars” by Gary Numan; this is right about the time new wave was really making inroads in America). 

I think I paid something like $7.50 for Parallel Lines on cassette, a HUGE cash outlay since I was only like 13 years old and didn’t have a job, so this was like two month’s worth of my one dollar weekly allowance.  But I thought it was a good “risk” of money since I literally loved every single song on that album, and still do.   As anyone who reads this blog knows by now, I’m much more of a “singles” person in terms of how I approach most music----my MP3 collection is “wide and shallow” rather than “narrow and deep”—I typically only have a couple of songs by any given band, and rarely collect ALBUMS; hell, I still haven’t even ripped most of my CDs because I don’t want to clutter up my MP3 collection with a lot of filler songs that I don’t want coming up on random play, I usually just want the “hits”.  Parallel Lines may be the exception to this rule in that I honestly like every single song on that album.  Ironically, I think the song I like least is their most popular and famous song, “Heart of Glass”.  It has less to do with it being an out-and-out disco song and more to do with it just being overplayed back then.  So many of the other songs on that album are outstanding too, including the ones that showcased their harder, more aggressive sound, such as “One Way Or Another”, “11:59”, “Hanging On the Telephone”, and my personal favorite, “Will Anything Happen?”, the latter two of which were written by Jack Lee, formerly of the seminal LA powerpop band the Nerves.   But the mellower songs are also outstanding, such as “Sunday Girl”, which is a sweet pop confection; “Pretty Baby” (supposedly written about Brooke Shields), and “Picture This”.  I also love the weird, new wave-y songs like “Just Go Away” and “I’m Gonna Love You Too”.   But one of my all-time favorite songs is “Fade Away and Radiate”, with its big, startling drumbeat and Robert Fripp’s screaming, acidulous guitar weaving around Harry’s dreamy vocals.  The song almost sounds like a deconstructed 60’s girl group song updated for the 70’s. 

I’m almost as big a fan of Blondie’s second album Plastic Letters and their follow-up to Parallel Lines, Eat to the Beat.   Plastic Letters is definitely not quite as good as Parallel Lines but it definitely has some standout moments.  I love the album opener, “Fan Mail”, it’s just a lush big, fun song and I love the chorus of “for the bells in my ears, keep ringing”.  Jimmy Destri’s keyboards take center stage here, not unexpected given he wrote this song.    Another favorite is “Youth Nabbed as Sniper”, with its fantastic chorus (“moving streets all make me lonely, come to me, and be mine only”).  “Contact in Red Square” is silly but fun, a Russian spy romp with swirling Cossack keyboard and guitar swirls.  “Detroit 442” is almost heavy metal like, Debbie Harry’s voice almost sounding like Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics.  “Denise” “I’m on E”, and “Love At the Pier” continue the 60’s girl group sound of their first album.  Probably the best song on this album is bassist Gary Valentine’s “(I’m Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear”, which walks the line between a 60’s feel and a 70’s new wave feel. 

Eat to the Beat is an album that gets very little love from critics.  Most of the criticism of this album stems from the fact that it didn’t produce any standout hit singles like “Heart of Glass” from Parallel Lines, and it doesn’t have the same cohesion of that album.  Both are certainly true but this also greatly under-sells the quality of this album, which is truly phenomenal.  In fact, it contains, in my opinion, the best Blondie song ever:  “Dreaming”, which is such a pitch perfect powerpop song that it blows everything else in their catalog away.  The song is driven by Clem Burke’s  magnificently propulsive drumming; I actually consider Burke to be one of the greatest rock drummers ever and this song is exhibit A as to why I think this is true.  The other standout track here is “Accidents Never Happen”, another clairvoyance romp similar to “Presence Dear” off Plastic Letters.  “Atomic” is more lush disco, with an even more soaring vocal than “Heart of Glass”, though regrettably it never achieved anything near the same success.  I also love the big, lush, soaring sound of “Union City Blue”, which is slick and catchy, as well as “Shayla”, with its lush, swirling keyboard beginning and evanescent vocals by Harry—it almost seems to presage the whole indie shoegazer trend from more than a decade later.  “Die Young Stay Pretty” is another silly song, with its calypso beat (a precursor to their much more successful foray into Caribbean sounds, “The Tide Is High” off Autoamerican) and morbid lyrics.  Finally, “Slow Motion” is sweet, straightforward pop that’s also worth a listen.

Blondie’s fifth album, Autoamerican, yielded two more massive hits, “The Tide is High” and “Rapture” (which combined the disco feel of “Heart of Glass” with what may well be the first rapping most white people had ever heard), but was much more uneven.  But this is not to mean it wasn’t good either; “T-birds”, for example, is another piece of slick, catchy rock in the vein of “Union City Blue”.   Often I think Blondie get tarred with the brush of their own success; Parallel Lines was such a phenomenal, unified album, with every song sounding similarly excellent, that all other releases are thought to pale in significance.  But another thing to keep in mind is that Blondie were very much a band of their era, and back then it was not unusual at all for a band to put songs on an album that represented more than just other attempts at hit singles.  Not every song is intended to be a hit single, some songs are simply experiments, new ideas, fun concepts the band wanted to play with.  Perhaps more than any group in the 70’s, Blondie experimented with different styles and sounds—reggae/calypso, rap, bar band R&B, disco, powerpop, heavy metal, new wave, 60’s girl group, bubblegum, 60’s hippie folk, etc.  I think too often they get overly criticized for these experiments when in fact they were fun and adventurous, exactly what rock in general and new wave in particular was supposed to be about but was often lacking.  On some Blondie albums it was impossible to predict what the next song might sound like, and to me that’s a wonderful thing, not a deficit as most critics claim.

Blondie’s work is also united by the incredibly powerful sexuality of Debbie Harry, so that even the weakest song on any Blondie album still retains bits of her smoldering sensuality.  Its hard to emphasize what an icon she was in those pre-Madonna days.  Nowadays its almost expected that every chanteuse or other female pop star will parade around in a minimum of clothing, but back then Debbie Harry was a sexual icon even though she rarely was scantily clad.  Instead, Debbie exuded a mature, sophisticated sexuality; she was in her 30’s, definitely not some little girl but a mature, intelligent woman.  Plus she was COOL, I would actually say she’s the coolest woman who ever lived, and that was a huge part of her appeal too.  To compare her to Britney Spears or even Madonna is impossible—they were sexy little girls and Debbie Harry was a cool, hip, attractive WOMAN.  She was absolutely iconic in terms of her attractiveness and beauty--there have been a lot of successful female rock and pop singers since her but nobody has ever even approached her combination of icy beauty and downtown hipness.  Even still I’d probably rather hear Debbie Harry recite the phone book than listen to anything by any contemporary female artist.  I actually pity kids these days—what’s so exciting about some overly made-up young slattern parading around in next to nothing?  Well, okay, I DO get what’s exciting about that, but, at the risk of sounding old, to me what’s REALLY arousing are MYSTERY and ALLURE, and nobody has had that like Debbie Harry.