My New York: Blondie

source: nypost.com

One way or another, new wave icon Blondie has retained their punk aesthetic since banding together 35 years ago. Founders (and former lovers) Deborah Harry, 65, and Chris Stein, 60, bemoan the demise of grass-roots stomping grounds such as CBGB and Mother. “The whole nature of culture in New York has really taken a nose dive, basically,” says Harry, a longtime Chelsea resident. “It’s much harder for musicians and artists to do what they do without really having to scuffle.” Blondie, meanwhile, continues to do what it does. The group, which also includes drummer Clem Burke, plays at the Nokia Theatre on Tuesday night and plans to release an album of new material, “Panic of Girls,” later this year. This is their New York.

1. Hudson River piers, West Street at 23rd Street

Harry: “I liked the area when I first moved there with Chris in the late ‘80s. It was very quiet, relatively speaking. There were some real colorful people walking around on 10th and 11th avenues. We really liked going down to the piers — there was a great sort of crumbling-edges-of-New-York feeling to it. It wasn’t a popular area. No restaurants; there wasn’t even a laundromat when I first lived there. Sort of remote, you know? It was delightful, in a way.”

(more…)

Debbie Harry on Blondie’s Staying Power

source: nymag.com

Blondie is the coolest, sexiest, most luscious band to tumble out of New York City back in 1974, but its most impressive attribute is itsstaying power. There’s a reason Blondie’s current romp across the globe is called the Endangered Species tour — name another band from the city’s punk-heyday that continues to release new, original material. Vulture caught up with Debbie Harry on the road where she’s promoting Blondie’s ninth studio album, Panic of Girls (due in 2011). Harry spoke about the vital importance of expressing herself in the here and now, missing her peers, and the ins and outs of naming songs.

Panic of Girls is a great, evocative album title. Where’d it come from?
We were recording a song, it’s sort of a story of a street person, and I had a question at the end that said, “Is it really the end of the world?” You know, because those people who get out on the street and they’re yelling about the end of the world coming, their lives are sort of miserable (laughs). I was just saying that and Chris [Stein] just popped up and said, “Oh, change it to the ‘Panic of Girls.’” The first version was, “The Panic of Truth.”

(more…)

Blondie to Spread ‘Panic’ with First Album in 7 Years

source: billboard.com

Blondie is planning a staggered worldwide rollout this year and next for “Panic of Girls,” the group’s first set of new material since “The Curse of Blondie” in 2003.
While label and distribution deals are still being formulated, drummer Clem Burke tells Billboard.com that he expects the set to come out in Australia in time for Blondie’s November-December tour with the Pretenders. Following that, the band plans to release it in 2011 in other territories, including the U.S. “There’s a lot of politics involved,” Burke says with a laugh.

Blondie recorded “Panic of Girls” during November and December in Woodstock, N.Y., which Burke says is only the second time the band has made an album outside of Manhattan (the first was 1980’s platinum “Automamerican,” which was done in Los Angeles). “We were living in the country out there, kind of the antithesis of the urbanite kind of atmosphere that exists around Blondie,” explains Burke, adding that the album photos shot by Bob Gruen feature the band members posing with farm animals. “We tried to make the recording process as organic as possible and tried to stay away from programming as much as we could, because ['The Curse of Blondie'] had a lot of programming on it. So in the spirit of Woodstock, we kept going in the studio and playing.”

(more…)

Debbie Harry looks forward to Kenwood performance

source: hamhigh.co.uk

Debbie Harry has been a legend of the music industry for so long that many of her contemporaries who set off on the same journey are no longer around.

Harry admits it is a thought that often troubles the iconic lead singer of the band Blondie but one she tries her best to ignore.

“There are days when I think, Jesus, I would love to hear the Ramones sing,” she says. “I would really like to go and see them live, but I can’t do it. It’s sort of like your extended family in a way. I don’t think about it constantly, but it is a factor.”

Blondie are back in Britain for the first time in two years for a short tour which includes a date at Kenwood House on June 26 as part of the summer series of concerts.

(more…)

source: yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk

Music interview: Debbie Harry

A new interview with Debbie can be found on the bournemouthecho.co.uk website.

Blondie in the flesh
9:30am Sunday 13th June 2010
By Nick Churchill

THEY wouldn’t have realised at the time, but the few hundred or so young punks and slightly older pub rockers that gathered at Bournemouth’s Village Bowl on May 20, 1977, were witnessing the start of something huge.

Most had probably gone to see an emerging London new wave band called Squeeze.

A few would have been there to see a group from New York, called Blondie, whose first two singles, X-Offender and In the Flesh, had made a small dent in the lower regions of the charts and garnered a bit of press in the music papers.

It was their first British gig.

“Oh God, I haven’t thought about that in years, but I remember that show really well,” says Debbie Harry, her quietly spoken voice suddenly sharpened by a rush of excitement in anticipation of returning to play the O2 Academy, Bournemouth, next weekend (Saturday, June 19).

(more…)