New York City Sick & Pretty

Show Diary - March 1, 2013 - The Grand Victory

After a long month of preparing to play Blondie’s Parallel Lines from start to finish, we finally did it this past Friday. I was really proud of my guys- you know, with the old band I would’ve expected them to pick it up, just because they were pros (Joe even played with wedding bands). But the new group really put the time and effort in and I thought they blew it out of the water. And it was harder than we thought! A lot of those songs you think you know so well are actually pretty funny, and then there are the songs that were never at the forefront of your memory and just have a harder time sticking. I tried to really throw myself all in for this one- I dyed my hair blonde, I researched every song, I watched Blondie documentaries, I made a Pinterest of just Debbie Harry and her pretty head. Like a creep.

You read about my take on each song, so I won’t get way into the process. But we were lucky enough to get the assistance of my friend Derek on keyboards, which is essential for Blondie, and Hannah on some backup vocals. The day of the show, I went to the gym, did my nails, and went to Kelli’s to get my makeup done. She dug the blonde hair- I’m still figuring out how to wear makeup on my face now that it’s framed by a different color. Yeah, that’s a thing- every time you change your hair color, you have to adjust… usually, my eyes make me think I need heavier makeup, to compensate for how “off” I feel. Anyway, Kelli gave me these heavy black-smeared eyes with gold shimmer on the lids, cheekbones cheekbones cheekbones, and a hot pink lip. The funniest ever is leaving in my mid-getting-ready sweatpants and a full face of paint and eyelashes. Back at home, I finished assembling my outfit and styling my hair. We decided to do a traditional Manimals stripping moment at the top of “Heart of Glass”, and to wear disco outfits (well, basically just Derek and I… Chris and Matt just took off a layer and Brian was mostly naked the whole time). My ‘disco outfit’ was a black and white strapless romper with a gaudy gold belt, on top of shorts, on top of nylons, on top of underwear… using the bathroom was going to be a project. I wore over-the-knee boots, and a black tshirt dress on top of the whole thing.

I tried drinking some wine and eating a little dinner, but I was nervous. There’s a lot that can go wrong when you’re doing someone else’s songs that everyone knows! At Grand Victory, Aaron (who put the show together) was in full Ziggy Stardust garb and facepaint. We got some free and half-price drinks and loved on The Rave-ons, who are a Buddy Holly cover band (originally from the Off-Broadway show, Buddy)- the upright bassist stood on his bass and lifted it up and all kinds of crazy shit. We were next, and even though we had an awkward false start, I thought it went really well. The minor fuck-ups were mostly not obvious, and we had a lot of fun. I passed out shots for people who danced to “Heart of Glass”, and my voice held out really well for all twelve songs. Some great surprising people came, like Lindsay and Cesar! I haven’t seen them in years!

We drank and played and danced all night while Honey Apple played an amazing version of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and Aaron David Gleason blew us away with Bowie’s Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. Everyone was so incredible. For their encore, he had me jump up to sing along to “All the Young Dudes”. Great, great night. It was really special and I hope I get the chance to be Debbie again. If anything, I’d love to keep covering “Picture This” and Blondie’s version of “I’m Gonna Love You Too”- they’re more unexpected covers, and I feel like we sound really good on them. I learned a lot from this project- it improved my singing to work inside someone else’s range, and opened up my brain to new musical possibilities. It was really inspiring. I hope it can all feed into my music.

Just Go Away

And here we are, at the end of my Blondie-blogging project, just in time to start getting dressed for the show tonight! “Just Go Away” is the 12th and final track on Parallel Lines, and I don’t have a ton of backstory on it, but I can tell you that Debbie is credited for writing the lyrics and the music. The lyrics are unspeakably silly (“ya spell, ya read, D-O-O-R”) but it’s driven by a whining guitar riff that builds into a really epic instrumental moment mid-song. I also like the chorus on this song, the melody is just one of those things that’s nice to sing, and it’s punctuated by gang vocals, who doesn’t love gang vocals? The band shouts “get out! pack up! move out!” and then everyone screams “GO AWAY” like a bunch of angry Muppet monsters. No, it’s not the best of the non-singles, but I appreciate it for what it is, a solid album closer. There is that funny thing that the way you would end a live set is often totally different than the way you would end an album. A lot of times, the album closer is a bit of a throw-away, but you always want to close your set on a high note… that makes the whole “playing an album live” thing kind of problematic. I originally considered adding an encore of something like “Denis”, “X Offender”, or “Call Me”- but in the end, I didn’t want to overload the band. And this way we keep the integrity of the album. 

I just got home from Kelli’s, where she beat my face. It looks pretty awesome. I’m going to pop open some wine and start putting together my outfit… and I’ll see you at Grand Victory at 8!

I’m Gonna Love You Too

Track 11 on Parallel Lines is another cover- “I’m Gonna Love You Too”, originally recorded by Buddy Holly in 1957. Hilariously, if you come to the show tonight, you’ll hear this song twice- the first band, The Rave-ons, will be playing it as part of Buddy Holly [self-titled]. Blondie was encouraged to cover this song based on the success of “Denis”, their Randy & the Rainbows cover from Plastic Letters. Therefore, it was chosen as the lead single- but it failed to chart, until it was released as the fifth or sixth single outside the US, backed with “Just Go Away”.

Buddy Holly’s version is sweet and much slower, while Blondie’s version is frantic but fun. Clocking in at two minutes, this is one of my favorite things ever to sing in a single breath. The brash, noisy “ah-ah”s are the highlight of the song. And above, you can see Debbie again in that fantastic suit.

The show is tonight, and we’re all still freaking out about getting drum hardware into that club for all of the bands. There’s always something, right? I’m sure it will work out (I mean, it has to). I spent my morning at the gym, repairing a corset, hand washing clothes, and painting my nails. I’ll be heading to Kelli’s in an hour to do makeup- I don’t think I’ve seen her since October! There’s still a lot to do, and I’ll be doing it while crazily singing through all of these songs over and over. Covering twelve songs that belong to somebody else turns out to be a real task!

Heart of Glass

The most famous song on Parallel Lines- and probably in Blondie’s entire discography- is Track 10, “Heart of Glass”. It’s a great song, to be sure, but I can’t say I ever appreciated it as much as I do now. It was originally “Once I Had a Love” or “The Disco Song”- a sloppy, slower new wave tune with a very simple disco-inspired beat. For the band, it was a little bit of a joke (this was at the height of the rock vs. disco wars) and also based on a genuine appreciation for Euro-electropop. When they went into the studio with Mike Chapman, it evolved into what was, by all appearances, a full-fledged, sincere disco hit. The beat was based around a Roland CR-78 drum machine that Chris and Jimmy picked up one day on 47th St.- it provided the metronomic tikka-tikka-tikka that has since become iconic. Clem Burke had a tough time of it in the studio, but it paid off, as the drum machine paired with live drums was a perfect fusion of disco and rock.

Little nuances within “Heart of Glass” belie its tongue-in-cheek nature. Namely, random measures of 3/4 pepper the otherwise 4/4 tempo- almost a musical practical joke- Blondie made this straight-ahead disco song undanceable. Also, Debbie’s use of the phrase “pain in the ass” made it controversial for radio and television at the time- such a non-disco thing to do! The video shows the boys in the band screwing around in the background, playing with disco balls, basically saying “no, really, we don’t take this genre seriously”. And then Debbie said probably the best thing ever, of her lyrics: “I was tired of hearing girl singers write or sing about being beaten by love. So I said, ‘Well listen, there are also a lot of girls who just walk away.’” None of this rock and roll sociopathy stopped people from dancing though, and it didn’t stop Blondie’s old CBGBs pals from turning on them for selling out. The song went to number 1 on almost every major international chart, and Debbie’s beautiful apathy became a worldwide sensation.

Playing this song has been a gas. We all came at it like, “oh duh, ‘Heart of Glass’” and were promptly put in our place by the schizoid time signatures. However, once we got our footing, it became possible to just rock out. This song makes me want to party. I feel like I understand what Blondie was trying to do- there are so many shitty pop songs I secretly love that I wish I could bring into my music somehow. We all loved “Call Me Maybe” this summer, but if one of us ‘rock bands’ legitimately committed to writing a song that sounded just like it, we might be pariahs too. I don’t think Blondie was selling out at all, I think they were being brave, doing what was uncool at the time and fully immersing themselves in it- but with humor. This was just their take on a genre, which came to be their signature, whether it was calypso, 60s girl group pop, punk, or 50s rock. Oh! And the show is tomorrow. I hope I’ll see you there :)

Sunday Girl

Track 9 on Parallel Lines is my childhood favorite- “Sunday Girl” and “Denis” were played on repeat in my house. I remember discovering the liner notes to The Best of Blondie and staring at those sexy pictures of Debbie and feeling weird about myself. Haha. My instant sense memory of this song- which comes back to me every time I hear it- is the weekend before my starring role in the middle school play as Anne of Green Gables. The scene where we sang some terrible song called “Ice Cream”, I started to feel faint, and my understudy took over. I laid backstage on a set piece cot with a high fever, listening to “Ice Cream”. When my parents picked me up and took me home, my dad put “Sunday Girl” on the jukebox and, with a thermometer in my mouth on the couch, I noticed that my socks were decorated with little ice cream cones, as Debbie sang “cold as ice cream, but still as sweet”. And I burst out into hysterical fevered laughter. This story has nothing to do with anything, except the fact that the song is inextricably linked to my childhood and makes me wildly happy in the way that only things from your childhood can.

“Sunday Girl” is a darling little confection with a double backbeat and a 60s beach blanket bingo kind of feel. It was released internationally as the fourth single- sometimes backed by “I Know But I Don’t Know” and sometimes by a version sung in French- and was later re-released as a double A-side with “Heart of Glass”. It didn’t reach the success of some of the other singles off Parallel Lines, but is still a well-loved Blondie tune. Apparently- and I didn’t know this before- the song was written by Chris Stein as an ode to Debbie’s cat, named Sunday Man, who ran away. He meant it as a “plaintive song” but it turned out rather…. jaunty?

Will Anything Happen?

Tonight I’m bringing you Track 8 off of Parallel Lines, a punky powerpop tune written by (once again) the great Jack Lee of The Nerves. After Blondie contacted Jack to cover “Hanging on the Telephone”, they also managed to get this gem from him. Which is really cool to me, because The Nerves hadn’t gotten even a fraction of the recognition that Blondie had (they broke up less than a year before the release of this album), and these songs were a big payday for their author. For all of my googling, I’ve found no evidence that “Will Anything Happen?” was a previously recorded song- this was composed with Blondie in mind. Kind of oddly, it served as the B-side for “Hanging on the Telephone” (art shown above)- a Jack Lee single front and back, which sadly, not a lot of people realize.

My band and I refer to some of the songs by code names, as a mnemonic to recall what various intros sound like, etc. We call this one “Will Anything Batman?” because of the Batman-theme-esque frenetic riff that drives the song: dunadunadunadunabatman! It also has a fantastic instrumental bridge that just seems to build and build and climb and climb. The story of the song is simple and relatable- that person you know who made it big, and you called it first. You probably love this person and wonder if they’ll change, if they’ll keep coming home to visit… and if they do, will anything happen? I’m sure a lot of people from the downtown scene felt that way about Blondie. The Ramones were famously kind of resentful over the band’s disco “sell out”. Granted, so many of those bands have gone down in history… but Blondie reached a mainstream pop culture level that surpassed the rest and forever put them on a different plane, despite their long-time allegiance to the CBGB’s scene.

Today was a long and interesting day- I was up at dawn for work, then spent five hours getting my hair dyed blonde! It’s still spooking me, every time I catch a glimpse of myself, but I really really love it. Of course, this was Randy’s idea, inspired by Albums Night, but the show was really just an excuse to do something I’ve kind of always wanted to do. There is something sort of magical about the brunette going blonde and finding success… Marilyn, Madonna, Debbie, Gwen, Gaga… it does make me feel powerful. It feels powerful just to make bold decisions about my appearance. It’s been a long time since I’d dyed my hair or gotten a tattoo or anything like that. It was an easy four years, back at my natural color, barely ever setting foot in a salon- but my hair didn’t say anything before. I don’t know what the new hair says yet, it’s still too new, but it definitely says it loud. I think if you want next-level shit, you have to do things to elevate yourself. Even if it’s only superficial or psychological.

We rehearsed right after I got home, adding Hannah singing some back-up stuff. I think everything sounds really good- we ran everything a bunch, but on our last album-run-through, we got cut off by the studio right at the last verse of the last song. Obviously we know how it ends, but it still stressed me out, because ugh. Stopping before a song is over is such bad energy. I’m also exhausted, and forced myself to work out when I got home, so you can’t expect great energy from me regardless. The show will be great, I’m very excited, but I’m also going to sleep in 5… 4…

11:59

It’s a two song day! Track 7 was written by keyboardist Jimmy Destri (which explains the great Farfisa organ line), and served as the B-side on the American release of “Heart of Glass”. The Manimals joke that this is the song “with all the chords”. It has a really unique melody, and a fairly difficult-to-play key change in the last verse. I love it because of the clever and poetic lyrics- “sidewalk social scientist don’t get no satisfaction from your cigarettes”- I don’t know, alliteration makes me happy.

The general consensus on “11:59” is that it’s a reference to the Doomsday Clock. Of course in 1978, it was only set at 11:51, but the US and the Soviet Union were continuously updating their weaponry and SALT II agreements had stalled. Destri, and the rest of Blondie, were concerned about the arms race- a year later, he penned the song “Atomic” (which was not political, but was inspired by nuclear vernacular). The lyrics talk about a desperation to live in the moment, and possibly to escape the threat of armageddon. Debbie repeats, “Today could last another million years. Today could be the end of me. It’s 11:59, and I wanna stay alive.” That uncertainty about what the future holds, and the sudden immediacy of international crises, drives the song. I also read an (incorrect) interpretation of the song as being about a curfew, albeit in a life-or-death manner. In some ways, that can relate- there’s a loss of innocence involved, unable to continue in the naive teenage belief that you’ll live forever. The fun has to come to an end, so “take me down the freeway like a rocket to the ocean”.

I Know But I Don’t Know

Okay, there had to be one… a track I don’t LOVE on Parallel Lines. “I Know But I Don’t Know” is track 6, and the B-side to the fourth single, “Sunday Girl”, which itself was only released abroad. It’s sort of the definition of a deep cut- however in looking for a good video to post (couldn’t pick one), I was surprised to see that Blondie brought this song out on their 2008 tour. Really odd. Probably my main distaste for this song has to do with the fact that we have to play it- on its own, to a passive listener, it’s a fine enough song. Written by lead guitarist Frank Infante, who also supplies co-vocals, it’s a strange and complicated song with a nearly illogical structure. The lyrics don’t repeat, instead the chorus changes each time with different combinations of “I see but I don’t know” “I don’t care that you don’t know” “You know but you don’t see”… working on this song has mostly just pissed me off.

However, it is interesting- with an alien synth line, a breakdown in the middle of the song to just a drumbeat and a build back up one instrument at a time, Infante supplying very Iggy-esque vocals, Debbie taking a backseat, and a sound and structure that my bandmates have likened to “Blondie doing Rush”.

I also love the line “I’m your dog, but not your pet” (followed by a howl).

Pretty Baby

Track #5 on Parallel Lines is an upbeat, poppy 50s/60s-inspired number written by Debbie and Chris. She has said that this song is about Brooke Shields, the title referring to her movie of the same name that was released the same year as the album. In it, Brooke plays a twelve-year-old girl living in a brothel- the film was notable due to the actress actually being twelve, and naked a lot on screen. Debbie said that the lyrics were also inspired by the band’s young fans- it’s both wistful and joyful at the same time, thanks to some great lyrics and the “Teen Angel”-era spoken sections. They talk about falling in love with a teenage starlet, but there’s an element of a woman’s admiration for a younger woman, seeing herself reflected back in some way.

I’m always especially touched by the line “I was forming, some say I had my chance, the boys were falling like an avalanche”. From what I know about Debbie as a small-town teenager, she was restless and maybe promiscuous (she talks about parking with boys somewhere called “Cock Mile” in New Jersey), running off to the beatnik West Village any chance she got. She was hungry for attention, for love, and for contact, away from the sterility of suburbia. She moved to NYC after graduating high school, and worked as a go-go dancer, waitress at Max’s Kansas City, and as a bunny at the Playboy Club. Around this time, she developed a heroin addiction, married a millionaire only to divorce him a few months later, and moved into a Harlem drug den with an armed gang. The fact that all of this happened before she was 26, and that Blondie didn’t even release their first single until she was 31, is such an amazing trajectory- and one you never see in pop music today. 33-year-old Debbie sings this song, and it makes me think about well-used youth, wasted youth, beauty, how it fades, having your whole life ahead of you, and wondering how many best days you have left. She sings “long live innocence”, and you wonder if there’s any sincerity in that at all. Debbie wanted to have all of those experiences, to see the dark side. And pretty baby Brooke only projected an innocence, but never behaved like a child nor had any childhood to speak of.

The moral of all of this being, of course, you can totally break into pop music after 30. If you’re REALLY REALLY hot.

Fade Away and Radiate

The B-side of “Picture This” and the fourth track on Parallel Lines is a dreamy song called “Fade Away and Radiate”. With references to “silver pictures”, screens, and “dusty frames” that “die in 1955”, the lyrics seem to be about cinema or television. Opening with a dark organ-like keyboard and heavy bass drum beats, and escalating with some epic guitar by guest Robert Fripp, Debbie’s voice stays dark and haunting through much of the song. Chris Stein was responsible for penning this one, and while I love it, its moodiness definitely has a B-side feel to it.

Despite not writing the lyrics here, the cinematic theme makes me think about Debbie’s obsession with Marilyn Monroe, who she believed was her biological mother (Debbie was adopted at birth the year that Norma Jean Baker was 19 and just beginning her career as a model). When she sings “the beams become my dream, my dream is on the screen”, it’s easy to think of a girl fantasizing about the movies. Or, it could just be about passing out in front of the TV, maybe while high- “hidden voices” from the screen weaving their way into your dreams. That works for me, too. The phrase “fade away and radiate” appears again on their album Eat To the Beat, in the song “Dreaming”- there is definitely a connection between the two songs and their perspective on fantasy and daydreams.

The best part of this song is the ending. You’ve settled into the mood completely, when it suddenly drops into a reggae beat and plays out! I love it, and reggae generally makes me bored. This to me is a precursor to Blondie’s later forays into disparate styles, such as with “Tide is High” and “Island of Lost Souls”.