DEBBIE HARRY (DEBORAH HARRY) 
My own Wikipedia handle is “Shocking Blue”, the name of a Dutch rock band that I have been particularly enamored with for several decades. “That is not the name I was born with, that is my Wikipedia name. Some day all of us will have special names,” as Brian O’Blivion might have put it; he is the “television prophet” who appears in the incredible 1983 David Cronenberg horror movie Videodrome that features among its cast members James Woods and Blondie’s Debbie Harry. (August 2012) * * * Holly Ramos wrote all but one of the songs for the Fur CD. The exception is “X Offender”, a track from Blondie’s first album, Blondie that was written by Gary Valentine and Deborah Harry. This song was also released as Blondie’s first single in June 1976, on Private Stock Records. This single did not chart, though two others from their first album did.
The title of “X Offender” is a double entendre; the reference is not to an ordinary ex-offender but to a sex offender. Fur’s version of the song is rougher and has somewhat lower production values, though I prefer it to the original. “X Offender” fits like a glove into the Holly Ramos songs that make up the remainder of the album, so I suppose you could say that Fur sounds like a punkier Blondie in their original incarnation.
(June 2013/2) * * *
Later, Deborah Harry in Blondie and Chrissie Hynde in Pretenders led two of the most successful rock bands of the 1970’s and 1980’s. The above record covers illustrate the difference in the way the women appeared within their groups, with Deborah Harry standing out among the men, though frankly, it could hardly have been any other way. Chrissie Hynde though is often regarded as being of equal status with the male bandmembers; what’s more, Hynde was also a guitarist in the band, whereas Harry primarily sang. This is a stance that alternative rockers would take later on, such as identical twins Kim Deal and Kelley Deal in Pixies and the Breeders. (October 2013) * * * Of more importance though is the ground-breaking song “Rapture” by Blondie – with a rap section that was performed by Deborah Harry – that was released in 1980 on their album Autoamerican. As noted in Wikipedia, this was the first song to top the American charts that featured rap, and also the first rap video to be broadcast on MTV. The rap section of “Rapture” is not conventional rapping by a long shot; it has a stream-of-consciousness quality about it and is mostly a strange science-fiction tale about a “man from Mars” who eats cars, bars, and finally guitars. The first line name-checks a hip hop pioneer – “Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody’s fly” – and this man later became the first host of Yo! MTV Raps, using this line as his musical intro. Also mentioned in “Rapture” is Grandmaster Flash. I saw an interview with him once where he talked about the effect that “Rapture” had on his musical vision, which led to the release of “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. I was amazed when I heard him say that. * * * The Blondie frontwoman comes up again in this story of the genesis of “Rapper’s Delight” that is taken from Wikipedia: “In late 1978, Debbie Harry suggested that Chic’s Nile Rodgers join her and Chris Stein at a hip hop event, which at the time was a communal space taken over by teenagers with boombox stereos playing various pieces of music that performers would break dance to. Rodgers experienced a hip hop event the first time himself at a high school in the Bronx. On September 20, 1979, and September 21, 1979, Blondie and Chic were playing concerts with the Clash in New York at The Palladium. When Chic started playing ‘Good Times’, rapper Fab 5 Freddy and the members of the Sugarhill Gang (‘Big Bank Hank’ Jackson, Mike Wright, and ‘Master Gee’ O’Brien), jumped up on stage and started freestyling with the band. “A few weeks later Rodgers was on the dance floor of New York club Leviticus and heard the DJ play a song which opened with Bernard Edwards’s bass line from Chic’s ‘Good Times’. Rodgers approached the DJ who said he was playing a record he had just bought that day in Harlem. The song turned out to be an early version of ‘Rapper’s Delight’, which also included a scratched version of the song’s string section. Rodgers and Edwards immediately threatened legal action over copyright, which resulted in a settlement and their being credited as co-writers. Rodgers admitted that he was originally upset with the song, but later declared it to be ‘one of his favorite songs of all time’ and his favorite of all the tracks that sampled (or in this instance interpolated) Chic. He also stated: ‘As innovative and important as “Good Times” was, “Rapper’s Delight” was just as much, if not more so.’ ‘Rapper’s Delight’ is said to be the song that popularized rap music and put it into the mainstream.’” (September 2016) * * * Since I am down to a quarterly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, my annual list is a lot shorter, so I will try listing all of the people that I have discussed in some depth rather than just the Under Appreciated Rock Band and the Story of the Month. They are all punk rock bands of one kind or another this year (2015-2016), and the most recent post includes my overview of the early rap/hip hop scene that an old friend, George Konstantinow challenged me to write – probably so long ago that he might have forgotten. September 2016 – 1980’s punk/rap band LIGHTNING STRIKE; Story of the Month on Patti Smith; also, Hamilton, School of Rock, MFSB, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Bob Dylan, Run-D.M.C., Aerosmith, LL Cool J, Snoop Dogg, the Fat Boys, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Kid ’N Play, MC Hammer, Rick James, Vanilla Ice, Blondie / Deborah Harry, Salt-N-Pepa, the Sugarhill Gang, Nile Rodgers / Chic, Ravales. (Year 7 Review) |
