Search Results for: blondie week

TO CELEBRATE THIS WEEK’S RELEASE OF OUR 33 1/3 ON  PARALLEL LINES, WE’RE PLEASED TO BRING YOU THE FOURTH AND FINAL INSTALLMENT OF BLONDIE WEEK BY AUTHOR KEMBREW MCLEOD! Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” music video doubles as an allegory of their journey from the margins to the center of pop culture. It begins with a series of establishing shots of New York City’s streets, moving from Lower Manhattan to midtown and finally zeroing in on Studio 54. “The beginning of ‘Heart of Glass’ is a shot of the outside of Studio 54,” Blondie guitarist…

TO CELEBRATE TODAY’S RELEASE OF OUR 33 1/3 ON  PARALLEL LINES, WE’RE PLEASED TO BRING YOU THE THIRD INSTALLMENT OF BLONDIE WEEK BY AUTHOR KEMBREW MCLEOD! “Heart of Glass” was one of the first songs Chris Stein wrote for Blondie in 1974, and it was included on their 1975 demo as “The Disco Song.” Valentine recalled, “It was a joke, sort of. It was ironic—that’s the way I always took it—because it was just called just ‘The Disco Song.’” Blondie had largely abandoned this trifle until Parallel Lines producer Mike Chapman asked…

TO CELEBRATE THE UPCOMING RELEASE (MARCH 24th) OF OUR 33 1/3 ON  PARALLEL LINES, WE’RE PLEASED TO BRING YOU THE SECOND INSTALLMENT OF BLONDIE WEEK BY AUTHOR KEMBREW MCLEOD! Blondie drummer Clem Burke often prepared for CBGB gigs by applying a motley combination of DIY hair products: beer, sugar water, or whatever else was around. He then placed his head inside a preheated oven until his ’do baked to perfection. “You would put the back of your head in the oven,” Burke explained, matter-of-factly, “kind of leaning back in a chair.”…

TO CELEBRATE THE UPCOMING RELEASE (MARCH 24th) OF OUR 33 1/3 ON  PARALLEL LINES, WE’RE PLEASED TO BRING YOU THE FIRST INSTALLMENT OF BLONDIE WEEK BY AUTHOR KEMBREW MCLEOD! After Parallel Lines went multiplatinum, the number of adolescent fans outnumbered the group’s adult hipster contingent by a wide margin. We can get a glimpse of Blondie’s new audience by combing through the “Pen Pal” section of their fan club newsletter (which was run by a young Jeffrey Lee Pierce, who later fronted the L.A. cowpunk group The Gun Club). Blondie’s Pen…

To celebrate the release of our 103rd 33 1/3 on  Live Through This by Anwen Crawford, we bring you the first installment of Hole week: a look the prologue that didn’t make it into the book! A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMERICAN BLONDES Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our lovely contestants to the stage. Tonight they are competing for the title of American Blonde — a great honour, ladies and gentlemen, a glittering prize. The winner will be part icon, part anti-hero, part sign of the times. Audacity, ambition, determination, poise:…

Every month, we will compile the best, weirdest, most interesting music and sound news from the past 30 days and serve it up to you in one handy, easy to digest list. May we present 33 Things that happened in March. This list is brought to you by our 33 1/3 intern, Mike Doub.  This month saw the release of our latest 33 1/3 title, Blondie’s Parallel Lines. Authored by Kembrew McLeod, the book details Blondie’s efforts to straddle the line between the mainstream and the underground, and their success in exposing the fraudulent…

Every month, we try to put together a fun, exciting, and sometimes silly list of 33Things that happened in music. We’ve followed the Twitter evolution of Kanye’s new album and hoped for the return of Wolf Parade; we’ve analyzed Justin Bieber’s sad face and pondered drinking Queen beer; we’ve questioned Sufjan’s fashion choices and Lil B’s Vegan Emoji App; we could not stop talking about Meow the Jewels and the phenomenon of Nickelback hate. But today, on this long short month, it’s my turn to 33Thing you all, and I’ll…