Is Blondie Rock, Punk, New Wave, Disco or All Of The Above?

Is Blondie : Rock, Punk, Disco, New Wave or All The Above?


  • Total voters
    11

spantini

COO of me, inc.
How do you classify Blondie?

I choose : All The Above

I really don't care for Disco as a genre but there are several tunes by various artists which I like quite a lot. Blondie has several.
 
Reggae. Heart of Glass was written as reggae, but a producer or something had them do it as disco.

Also, don't forget rap. Their song Rapture was the first rap a lot of people heard, and it's not far removed from rap's Jamaican origins.
 
Blondie has always done what they wanted. Harry was always into dance music. But, at heart, I call them a punk band. Everything they've recorded is done in the punk spirit. Very much like the Clash. They're a punk band, but also played varied styles, most notably Raggae.

I always had the hots for Debbie Harry. I have a great poster of her in Central Park in a sweater taken by Chris Stein. I saw Blondie many times and was never impressed with her in person. But, the worst, I sat next to her and another celeb at a Suzanne Vega or Laurie Anderson show, and she looked like a homeless rag. It was so disheartening. This was in the late 80s or early 90s, so she wasn't old.

On the other hand I went to a book signing by Lara Parker (Angelique) from the original Dark Shadows. She was old and still stunningly gorgeous for her age.
 
But, at heart, I call them a punk band. Everything they've recorded is done in the punk spirit
For me, the punk spirit has been evident in music that was being played before some of the punks were even born. Jazz was very much the punk of its day. Then bebop was. Then free jazz especially was. It still is. It's more punk in just about every way than actual punk rock. What we generally accept as the punk attitude and spirit was already for grandmas and grandpas by the time punk caught on. Blondie to me were a nicely varied band who, like quite a few other artists of their time leapt onto a bandwagon that enabled them to have a home. Some people would view that with contempt. I don't. Like many in the punk era, they were quite articulate and arty and "punk" became a car park for them that would enable their particular car to rest somewhere before driving off on interesting adventures.
More power to them.
 
Suzanne Vega or Laurie Anderson
Vega, hands down. A friend of mine tried to turn me on to Suze and succeeded. Another friend around the same time tried to turn me onto Laurie Anderson because she knew I was a sucker for violins in a jazz and rock context.....and failed. She's one of those artists I should love, a bit like Traffic. She ticks all my boxes. Off the wall, creative, violin player. But Vega's, well, predictable, oeuvre won out !
Life and love are not logical !!
 
I thought Punk back then was about being rebellious in life and music. Blondie I don't think was that. It was just pop music.

One thing though. I think Debbie Harry back then was the best looking singer of that time and I dont think I have seen many to match her when in her prime since.
 
For me, the punk spirit has been evident in music that was being played before some of the punks were even born. Jazz was very much the punk of its day. Then bebop was. Then free jazz especially was. It still is. It's more punk in just about every way than actual punk rock. What we generally accept as the punk attitude and spirit was already for grandmas and grandpas by the time punk caught on. Blondie to me were a nicely varied band who, like quite a few other artists of their time leapt onto a bandwagon that enabled them to have a home. Some people would view that with contempt. I don't. Like many in the punk era, they were quite articulate and arty and "punk" became a car park for them that would enable their particular car to rest somewhere before driving off on interesting adventures.
More power to them.

I think the difference between jazz, bebop and other original musical forms is, those musicians knew their instruments. Even if they were self taught, they knew what they were doing. Punk rockers just picked up their instruments and made sound. While I feel the first punk rockers were The New York Dolls (every guitarist that went on to be called a punk rocker wanted to be Johnny Thunders, and every 80s hair band copied his hair style from the Dolls), they were considered glam at the time. The term punk rockers was truly attached to The Sex Pistols, and they were just able to slide into the realm of being musicians. There would have been no Sex Pistols if the New York Dolls stayed together. McLaren managed the end of their career. Of course they brought Johnny and the Heartbreakers over for the Anarchy shows. JOHNNY THUNDERS the BEST of the Punk Rock guitarists.

Imagine seeing Suzanne Vega with Laurie Anderson and JOAN RIVERS. I did at Carnegie Hall. What a great show. I bought Vega's debut album when it was first released. I'm on the bus going to work and Cracking comes on. The first thing that entered my mind was "she's overdosed on Lou Reed". One night she's telling her stories and she talks about how "she was listening to Lou Reed's Berlin and realized that songs don't have to be verse chorus verse chorus break, verse chorus, you can do anything you want. So, I wrote this song" and she broke into Cracking.
 
They were a top 40 pop band with lots of influences. So as to the original multiple choice question, I’d say all of the above with extra added elements.
 
Vega, hands down. A friend of mine tried to turn me on to Suze and succeeded. Another friend around the same time tried to turn me onto Laurie Anderson because she knew I was a sucker for violins in a jazz and rock context.....and failed. She's one of those artists I should love, a bit like Traffic. She ticks all my boxes. Off the wall, creative, violin player. But Vega's, well, predictable, oeuvre won out !
Life and love are not logical !!

I wasn't a real fanboy of either...though while Vega got the radio play, you're right...kind of predictable, and I never really though any of her songs were interesting. Her big "hit", "Luka"...got to a point where it was annoying to listen to after awhile...not sure why...maybe because at the time, I/we were into totally different music.
I always thought Anderson was more interesting musically, even though I didn't sit around listening to her stuff all day long, and she really wasn't ever Pop-radio friendly.

I mean...Anderson was on a similar music level as someone like Adrian Belew, who I listened to more than Anderson, mainly because of his work with Bowie, but he also had some good songs that kinda made it into the mainstream...though not really...and he was also a guitar guy, as extreme as he was with how he played it.
I've got 2-3 of Belew's albums...none by Anderson or Vega.
 
I don't really think of Blondie in the same way as bands like The Sex Pistols or The Dead Kennedys, Fear, DOA, ect... I'm not a fan of labeling genres to bands for the most part, but punk isn't what I think of when I hear Heart of Glass or something.

I enjoyed Home of the Brave by Laurie Anderson. I'm also a fan of Adrian Belew through his work with Zappa, Bowie, Talking Heads, King Crimson, The Bears, William Shatner and his solo stuff.
 
I wasn't a real fanboy of either...though while Vega got the radio play, you're right...kind of predictable, and I never really though any of her songs were interesting. Her big "hit", "Luka"...got to a point where it was annoying to listen to after awhile...not sure why...maybe because at the time, I/we were into totally different music.
I always thought Anderson was more interesting musically, even though I didn't sit around listening to her stuff all day long, and she really wasn't ever Pop-radio friendly.

I mean...Anderson was on a similar music level as someone like Adrian Belew, who I listened to more than Anderson, mainly because of his work with Bowie, but he also had some good songs that kinda made it into the mainstream...though not really...and he was also a guitar guy, as extreme as he was with how he played it.
I've got 2-3 of Belew's albums...none by Anderson or Vega.

I guess you know that Belew played with Anderson a lot. I don't know if it was ever released on DVD or even VHS. There was a concert film of Anderson "Home of the Brave" and he played a guitar that was made of some sort of rubber. I vaguely remember it. I think it came out in 86, that's when I saw it.

From the first time I saw Vega (I must have seen her about 30 - 40 times) she played Luka. So, I had bootleg cassettes with it on a few years before it was released. I loved it. When people asked what I was humming I'd tell them and finish with "when she releases it, it will be a hit". It was. Her only hit really. But, she changed Producers and went from folk to electronica and her voice just didn't translate well with that sound.
 
That was something like the mid-80's right when they worked together...?...and there was a movie she did around that time, where was also the guitar player.
I never saw it, just remember reading about it.

The mid-'80s was one of the periods where I kinda dropped out of recording and pretty much wasn't paying much to music.
I had been a big Bowie fan in the mid/late /70s and into the early '80s...went to see him in Madison Square Garden when he was doing his "Serious Moonlight Tour " tour.
Anyway, during that time I was in a band and I was also doing a lot of home recording, having put together a small setup, back when the term home recording didn't even exist....and then the band broke up, and I ended up moving out of NJ to Upstate NY in '84, and for awhile there, I just stopped playing and stopped paying attention to any new music...I just needed a brake...so I went skiing, for a bunch of years...:D...before I got back into the music around '88.

I didn't really "discover" Belew as a solo artist until the early-90s, which I think was when he had some really good success with 2-3 albums during that period.
I mean... I knew of him from back in the Bowie years...but it wasn't until then that I really listened to a lot of his solo work...which I thought was really good.
Funny...just recently I pulled out a couple of his CDs and listened to them again after a long time.
 
That was something like the mid-80's right when they worked together...?...and there was a movie she did around that time, where was also the guitar player.
I never saw it, just remember reading about it.

The mid-'80s was one of the periods where I kinda dropped out of recording and pretty much wasn't paying much to music.
I had been a big Bowie fan in the mid/late /70s and into the early '80s...went to see him in Madison Square Garden when he was doing his "Serious Moonlight Tour " tour.
Anyway, during that time I was in a band and I was also doing a lot of home recording, having put together a small setup, back when the term home recording didn't even exist....and then the band broke up, and I ended up moving out of NJ to Upstate NY in '84, and for awhile there, I just stopped playing and stopped paying attention to any new music...I just needed a brake...so I went skiing, for a bunch of years...:D...before I got back into the music around '88.

I didn't really "discover" Belew as a solo artist until the early-90s, which I think was when he had some really good success with 2-3 albums during that period.
I mean... I knew of him from back in the Bowie years...but it wasn't until then that I really listened to a lot of his solo work...which I thought was really good.
Funny...just recently I pulled out a couple of his CDs and listened to them again after a long time.

That was Home of the Brave. I went to all the Serious Moonlight shows at the Garden. I even have a few of the gold balloons they dropped. That was my favorite Bowie tour. I saw him in 77 and wasn't impressed. The Glass Spider tour with Frampton on guitar is in my top 50 worst shows I've ever seen. It was like a tacky Vegas act. Squeeze rocked as the opener (they were always excellent). We didn't have good seats at the outside Jersey stadium (Meadowlands?) and people were leaving in droves during Bowie. A friend offered me free tickets to the Garden and I refused them.

Back in the 70s I used to buy 16 and 17 magazine. They had a contest to win a necklace of Bowie's lightning bolt from Aladdin Sane and I won. It's a piece of crap. But, I bet it's worth something now.
 
Oh, man! Who ran that? I obviously haven't seen it - this video excerpt looked recent.

LA Woman.. another good song.
 
You guys got me watching Suzanne Vega's 1986 Live Cracking, which led me to this cool video from Ray Manzarek. Ten minutes of how it was created :

RAY MANZAREK-RIDERS ON THE STORM - YouTube

That was great. It's amazing how they took one classic song and created another, and I would have never put the two together. With Cracking her delivery is classic Lou Reed.

IMO Led Zeppelin is the greatest band that ever walked the face of the earth. They were not original in their ideas. It was the execution of those ideas that allowed them to take different forms of music and songs and make them unrecognizable to the average listener as a copy or cover. If Plant didn't mention this at their 2007 show I would never have put the two together. I still can't.

From this -


Came this -


Of course Johnson recorded his songs in a motel room directly to record. But, I swear that's some of the best blues I've ever heard. Artists with unlimited tracks and the best equipment can't touch this. It's unvarnished truth.
 
AXS TV

"Mr. Mojo Risin' - The Story Of L.A. Woman"

It was done in 2012...it's been on a couple of other channels.

Well, I couldn't stop myself.. I just finished watching this and really enjoyed it. Lots of stuff there I hadn't seen or heard before.

Jerry Scheff's bass parts are something else :cool:
 
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