Blondie's Parallel Lines mixed punk, disco and radio-friendly FM rock with nostalgic influences from 1960s pop and girl group hits. This 1978 album kept one foot planted firmly in the past while remaining quite forward-looking, an impulse that can be heard in its electronic dance music hit “Heart of Glass.” Bubblegum music maven Mike Chapman produced Parallel Lines, which was the first massive hit by a group from the CBGB punk underworld. By embracing the diversity of New York City's varied music scenes, Blondie embodied many of the tensions that played out at the time between fans of disco, punk, pop and mainstream rock. Debbie Harry's campy glamor and sassy snarl shook up the rock'n'roll boy's club during a growing backlash against the women's and gay liberation movements, which helped fuel the “disco sucks” battle cry in the late 1970s. Despite disco's roots in a queer, black and Latino underground scene that began in downtown New York, punk is usually celebrated by critics and scholars as the quintessential subculture. This book challenges the conventional wisdom that dismissed disco as fluffy prefab schlock while also recuperating punk's unhip pop influences, revealing how these two genres were more closely connected than most people assume. Even Blondie's album title, Parallel Lines, evokes the parallel development of punk and disco-along with their eventual crossover into the mainstream.
But I knew Howard Rosen, who was the head of promotion at Private Stock, because his grandfather and my father had been in business together years before, so in a sense I knew a lot about his family history. He was doing a very good job ...
Thoroughly revised and expanded, this entertaining musical companion provides original reviews of more than seven hundred albums, along with deailed information on recording and production details, release dates, artists and musicians, ...
From Blondie's earliest days, performing at legendary New York punk venues such as Max's Kansas City and CBGB's, to their ultimate ascension to global superstardom at the end of the 1970s, Roberta Bayley was present to record the dramatic ...
The band's second album, PLASTIC LETTERS, was moderately successful, but it really wasn't until the band's third album PARALLEL LINES was released that global success on a massive scale really took off.For the purposes of this book, to ...
As captured by one of its greatest artists and instigators, and designed by Shepard Fairey, this book is a must-have celebration of the new-wave and punk scene, whose influence on music and fashion is just as relevant today as it was four ...
Eighties Music Revisited Randolph Michaels. Roh Hirst Drummer for Midnight Oil Charted Hits: “Beds Are Burning”—1988 “The Dead Heart”— 1 98 8 1. How did Midnight Oil first come together as a band? Midnight Oil began when I met Jim ...
This book--with a foreword written by Harry herself--explores in depth, both visually and verbally, the unique natural charm and charisma of Debbie's "punk Marilyn Monroe" persona in its prime, and her successful reinvention of that persona ...
Phillips would strike gold in 1954 when he recorded the 19-year-old Elvis for his Sun label, but back in 1951 Sam leased his recordings to other labels, and the songs recorded that day ended up with Chess Records of Chicago.
In this large-format book, Mick Rock documents the beginnings, the highs, and the lows of the group--with particular emphasis on Harry--in 150 powerful images of Blondie at work and play.
Another Music in a Different Kitchen rants and raves about being "lost without a clue. ... A Different Kind of Tension closes out the first part of their career with a slightly heavier sound, more complex songwriting, and Shelley's ever ...