Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Spunkstains (1977-1979) : Volume Eleven


One of a fifteen-volume bootleg series from the early aughts full of raw punk noise from the likes of: Armed Forces, The Lightning Raiders, The Valves, Amber Squad and Anorexia!



Spunkstains Volume Eleven link is in the comments

This little swill bucket of joy's seems to be glitch-free...

Speaking of comments, whaddya make of this load of Spunkstains?

Monday, November 1, 2010

Blondie: Picture This Live (1978/1980)


Some of the choicer reactions to our first Blondie post:

draftervoi said...
My first contact was when my pal Neil wrote to them and bought a copy of their very first single "X Offender." They signed it! At the time (1976), they must have been surprised to get an order from the suburbs of San Francisco, as they had never played outside of the New York area.

BigScott1962 said...
Blondie was no doubt a band ahead of their time.....First album, Plastic Letters, and to a degree Parallel Lines and Eat to the Beat were great albums....Debbie had a voice that could be terrifying...Listen to "fan mail" on Plastic Letters...or just so damn CUTE (the line "Nitro...and accetalyne" from "The Hardest Part").....she also had, other than maybe Lita Ford, the finest ass in rock n roll in the late 70's...a musician friend of mine, now deceased, claims to have slept with her.....if he did, well, more power to ya bro.


Nazz Nomad said...
The first time I ever made out with a girl and got a girl semi naked, Blondie's video for "Dreaming" was on the telly.
Double bonus.

Woodworker said...
I went over to a friend's house to see his new projection tv and the first thing he showed was a Blondie video from MTV. I must have revealed my reaction, because my girlfriend got pissed for nothing right in the middle of the video.

Anonymous said...
People magazine's 1977 (or so) article on punk music had a photo of Debbie Harry crawling across broken glass---schwing!

Anonymous II said...
I can't remember the first instance but very early on in 7th grade i went to a party a friend threw. Heart of glass had just come out that week and he had the 45. he must have played a few hundred times during the nite. there was a strobe light on constantly , a long game of spin the bottle, a party crasher with weed who almost got us all in trouble, and a lifelong promise made to bum never to drink lite beer. Still love Blondie but will pass on ever listening to that particular song again.

Just8 said...
First time I heard of Blondie was when an article appeared in our local newspaper that the city council banned a forthcoming gig from 'soft-punk band Blondie' because there were afraid that there was going to be a fight at that gig.
Whether there had actually been fights at Blondie gigs or whether they just thought that everything with 'punk' attached to it was dangerous and should therefore not enter our city I don't recall anymore (I was probably eleven years old at the time).
And yes - they actually called it 'soft-punk' and went on to explain that the Sex Pistols were more 'hard-punk' and therefore a bit different.
Some time later (a couple of months, maybe), Blondie were allowed to perform in our town - and the same newspaper ran an interview with them where they explained that fights did not normally happen at their gigs, and that they were not into fighting at gigs at all (well, duh...)
And not long after that (weeks, perhaps), 'Denise' became a number one hit - and I really liked that song (still do), but at the same time thought: people were afraid of this?!?
Which led me to believe that if this kind of music provoked those kinds of reactions, all music before punk must have been incredibly boring...
It took me a little while to get rid of that prejudice.





Picture This Live link is in the comments

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Sunday, October 31, 2010

Cyanide Pills - S/T (+ This Week's Top Ten!)


For this week's top ten, please come visit The Big Takeover!

Leeds' The Cyanide pills are riffy, catchy, funny, crazy, zippy, punchy punk rock circa today!





As they say, "BUY OUR RECORDS SO WE CAN MAKE ANOTHER"

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(Lots more Blondie to come but before that, lets see one more CP video!)



Saturday, October 30, 2010

Blondie: Live at the Old Waldorf (1977)


Every generation gets the sex symbol it deserves; for many of us creeping towards puberty in the late 70’s Debbie Harry was our It Girl.




I remember seeing Blondie perform “Hanging on the Telephone” on TV at a tender age. Debbie Harry was doing her standing-still-at-the-mike pose and was decked out in a glowing-red dress. I didn’t fully understand my reaction to the line, “I'd like to talk when I can show you my affection” but it may have influenced my decision to buy a cassette tape of Parallel Lines soon thereafter.


Of course, a dream of Kristy McNicol may have convinced me to watch the execrable show Family but that phase passed. Blondie remained. However, these years later it seems that of all the class of CBGB’s graduates, Blondie still gets the least respect (well other than The Shirts or The Tuff Darts). The Ramones were lionized for milking every last drop from their distillation of rock history. Blondie accomplished the same thing but since they insisted on moving “forward” (in a manner –disco, rap, old reggae – not so different than the Clash) and had hits, they grew critically marginalized. Yet, as a singer, songwriter, bandleader and sex symbol Debbie Harry belongs on a rarefied list of performers (Maybelle Carter, Billie Holliday, Joan Jett et al) who re-defined the role of women in music. Plus, the hits Harry and her band (remember "Bondie is a band"?) livened up the radio and jump-started a thousand underground bands.


Live at the Old Waldorf (1977) link is in the comments

Speaking of comments, tell us of your first contact with Blondie.


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Thursday, October 28, 2010

The Pretenders: Live at Heatwave (1980)


I'm a bit of a fair-weather Pretenders fan; able to see the good in almost every album (including Chrissie Hynde's new one JP & The Fairground Boys) yet without a strong favourite past the first one. My loss, likely. But if punk rock had kicked off a bit of a uncivil war between the rock n' roll generations, Hynde and her highly-skilled band-mates were the re-constructionists bringing together America and Britain (Ohio meets London), the punks and the old guard (Chrissie, the former NME journo even married Ray Davies!), the critics and the radio (they had plaudits and hits) not to mention feminists and drunken rock fans (I didn't say that all these rapprochements were necessarily permanent).



For proof of some of that here's the band playing live at Heatwave 1980 in Toronto, a New Wave-styled festival that featured one HELL of a line-up.


The fierce-as-fire set sounds loud and clear and includes much of the debut album as well as a cover of "Louie, Louie".


Live at Heatwave (1980) link is in the comments


Speaking of comments, give us your take on the works of Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders.

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