- Personal Thoughts -- Here are my favorite Blondie and Deborah Harry tracks over the years. She is such an icon of the rock era, recording many classic songs during her long career. My first encounter with the beautiful Debbie Harry was on the old music show in the 70's here in Australia called Countdown. Many local and overseas artists got their break on this show and two of the biggest worldwide artists of all time were broken here. They were ABBA and Blondie. Blondie were struggling to make an impact on their home soil in the USA with their newly released single X Offender and as rock folklore goes, Countdown compere and main music man, Molly Meldrum accidently played the Bside, of the new single, called In The Flesh, on the program. No accident though, Molly knew his audience. The reaction was instant with requests flowing in. This moment in rock history is forever implanted on my brain as I was one of the thousands of viewers that day.
In The Flesh
- The Hits -- Many hits followed and its very hard to choose out of so many greats like One Way Or Another, Heart of Glass,Rapture and Call Me. I have a real affinity to the song called Picture This. Love the way the beautiful Miss Harry lays out the lyrics and love the reference to a pocket computer. Its her awesome persona, her smile and those piercing eyes which seem to portray truth into the humorous lyrics. That's what todays music is missing truth,humour and passion !
Picture This
- Rapture -- Another ground breaking recording from the group was Rapture. It was the first hit song to include rap. Deb Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie championed rap and got involved in the community, often attending block parties in New York. Blondie brought rap to a far larger audience with this song. At this stage rap music was not welcome on commercial radio. This song changed that! Even though it was goofy rap done by Harry . It was a game breaker for the genre. Here is some trivia for you Flash is Fast ! Flash is Cool ! This was in reference to one of the first rappers and friend of Deborah and Chris in the mid seventies, Grandmaster Flash.
Rapture
- The History -- Photographer and guitarist Chris Stein began taking photos in 1968 around the NYC rock scene and in 1974 was asked to fill in as a guitarist for Deborah's band, The Stilettos. It was the beginning of a love affair and friendship that has stood the test of Rock'n'roll. Chris was fascinated with Deborah from the start and her photogenic personality taking many backstage photos which are to come out in his new book Me,Blondie and the Advent of Punk. It was this meeting of Chris Stein and Deborah that launched the group Blondie and in the early days they may have been categorized as new wave but their music included punk, electronica, reggae and funk but as Debbie once said, "we always lent towards the pop sound". They first became a household name in Australia in 1977 with a release of In The Flesh which was off the bands self titled first album, Blondie which failed to chart anywhere two years previous. The commercial and critical success came with their third album, Parallel Lines and the song "Heart of Glass" which reached No. 1 worldwide. It was followed by many other chart toppers like "Call Me," "The Tide Is High" "French Kissing "and "Rapture."
Deborah Harry on stage pic.twitter.com/hlMD35RO8R— A_Paris 👁🗨 (@Aud_Paris) January 15, 2018
The story continues with their new song Doom or Destiny from their latest album Pollinator
