FILTER REISSUES

Deep dive into the NY punk-pop trailblazers’ archive, including home tapes, lost gems and an embarrassment of hits.

By Mark Blake.

Blondie

★★★★ Blondie: Against The Odds 1974-1982

UMC/NUMERO GROUP. CD/DL/LP

S OMETIME IN 1975, Blondie’s vocalist Debbie Harry and her boyfriend, guitarist Chris Stein, visited an opera singer-turned-clairvoyant named Ethel Meyers in New York. Blondie were still two years shy of having hits, but Meyers predicted Harry was going to become a star.

Years later, Stein listened back to a recording of the meeting, and the clairvoyant’s voice had faded.

“In the way of a ghost deteriorating over time,” he said. Harry reminded him that the world was a different place in 1975: “There was a lot more acid in the air, Chris,” she cautioned.

In Debbie Harry’s memoir, Face It, Stein confessed to spending most of Blondie’s golden years selfmedicating. So much so he couldn’t always differentiate between what he called “psychic events” and “merely induced delusions”.

This admission comes to mind on Against The Odds, which corrals Blondie’s first six albums with dozens of demos, home tapes and 36 previously unissued tracks. These rarities f loat, sometimes half formed, between the cracks, like a clairvoyant’s voice or f lashbacks to an ancient trip. With the music remastered at Abbey Road and accessorised by expansive linernotes, it all demonstrates how adventurous and contrary, sometimes messedup and uniquely brilliant Blondie were.

Stein, a guitarist and New York School Of Visual Arts student, met waitress and model Debbie Harry in 1973, when she was performing with vocal group The Stilettoes. By the following year, they’d found a Who-worshipping drummer, Clem Burke, bassist Gary Valentine, and a fanbase at punk haunts CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City. The arrival of keyboard player Jimmy Destri completed the picture.

Tracks from Blondie’s October 1974 and June ’75 recording sessions sound like musical DNA samples. Harry and Stein’s artistic vision (“Like a comic coming to life,” said Debbie) was still ahead of their abilities. But what’s fascinating about ’74’s The Disco Song is how rounded it already was, years before it morphed into the UK and US Number 1 hit, Heart Of Glass.

Before then, Hang On Sloopy co-producer Richard Gottehrer signed them to Private Stock Records and oversaw Blondie and Plastic Letters (the second with Frank Infante taking over from Valentine). Most of the pieces were in place on Blondie’s debut single, X Offender, where Harry’s deadpan voice tells the story of a prostitute falling for her arresting police officer. Later, Rip Her To Shreds’ verbal destruction of “Miss Groupie Supreme” floats over Destri’s rinkydink Farfisa organ, like a ’60s beat group with punk phlegm on their tonic suits.

Apparently, Clem Burke had returned from a trip to London, waving a copy of Dr. Feelgood’s Malpractice. But Kung Fu Girls, The Attack Of The Giant Ants and Love At The Pier could only have originated on Planet Blondie, with its eco-system of trash TV, surf pop, the paranormal and garage rock. All music was up for grabs there.