Almost all the acts from the pioneering squad of the New York club CBGB’s achieved icon status: Television, The Ramones, Talking Heads, The Patti Smith Group and Richard Hell & The Voidoids all left their mark. It’s hardly surprising that Blondie would be the only band to achieve worldwide commercial fame. As early as 1974, when the group formed from the ruins of the stilettoes started, it was clear that a paradigm shift was imminent on the international music scene.
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With their stylistically open concept, Blondie united past, present and future. Thanks to platinum blond Debbie Harry and hunky boys (guitarist Chris Stein, keyboardist Jimmy Destri, drummer Clem Burke, bassist Gary Valentine), Blondie were also far more mainstream than the rest of CBGB’s scene. In short: they perfectly embodied the international pop consensus.
An intense look back
The retrospective AGAINST THE ODDS – 1974-1982 offers an intensive look back on eight CDs or ten LPs, a slimmed-down 3-CD version is optionally available. A whopping 52 bonus tracks, 36 of which are previously unreleased, complement the six complete studio albums in the SUPER DELUXE EDITION. The 1976 debut BLONDIE fused sixties beat, garage rock, power pop and surf sound in raucous production by Richard Gottehrer, Craig Leon and Alan Betrock, and delivered mini-hits “X Offender”, “Rip Her To Shreds” and In The Flesh. Gottehrer alone drew for the successor PLASTIC LETTERS with the punk pastiche “I’m On E”, teen hysteria à la “Fan Mail”, sci-fi cult (“Bermuda Triangle Blues”), no-wave avant-garde ( “Cautious Lip”) as well as the UK hits “Denise” and “I’m Always Touched By Your Presence, Dear”.
A quantum leap was achieved with the glam rock veteran Mike Chapman on the tone controls: The platinum-winning breakthrough work PARALLEL LINES in 1978 not only reflected the spirit of the times exactly in the disco hit “Heart Of Glass”. The releases “Picture This”, “Sunday Girl”, “I’m Gonna Love You Too”, “Hanging On The Telephone” and “One Way Or Another” were also considered the ultimate in New Wave times.
A perfect blueprint of its predecessor, again overseen by Chapman, was 1979’s EAT TO THE BEAT: Phil Spector’s Wall-Of-Sound provided the right coating for chart hits “Atomic”, “Dreaming” and “Union City Blue”. Egomania, drug excesses, burnouts and sheer phlegm let Chapman’s AUTOAMERICAN 1980 simmer on the back burner, despite the excellent hip-hop adaptation “Rapture” and a cover of the rocksteady classic “The Tide Is High”. Unfortunately, on the farewell work THE HUNTER in 1982, a pompous, inconsistent eighties sound spread.
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