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33⅓ Main Series #111
Parallel Lines
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.
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.
- GenresMusicNonfiction
165 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 24, 2016
8 people are currently reading
198 people want to read
About the author
Kembrew McLeod
14 books42 followersKembrew McLeod is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property and Owning Culture: Authorship, Ownership, and Intellectual Property Law, and co-creator of the documentary film Copyright Criminals.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
March 1, 2022
Coming out of the 1970s downtown New York City scene(s), the members of Blondie were not only influenced by punk, which in turn had been influenced by “bubblegum” pop; but by disco, which they first knew in its underground scene. Donna Summer’s big disco hit inspired Blondie’s 'Heart of Glass.' The “disco sucks” movement—a backlash against homosexuals and Latinos—had started and in some of their old circles Blondie received criticism—judging by the press, a backlash against women—for a song that was a big hit and is still played.
Though it seems common, I’m always amazed by performers like Deborah Harry who say they are shy or introverted. Starting with her musical beginnings in a retro-50’s-style-girl group, she donned a persona(s) and continued doing so as the Blondie frontwoman. Early on they’d been influenced by the proto-punk, pre-glam rock of the campy New York Dolls. Physical trappings were part of the message.
A lot of art history (visual, music, theatre) is packed in these 138 pages. It might seem a particular story of NYC; but the effects didn’t fade away, they radiated.
Though it seems common, I’m always amazed by performers like Deborah Harry who say they are shy or introverted. Starting with her musical beginnings in a retro-50’s-style-girl group, she donned a persona(s) and continued doing so as the Blondie frontwoman. Early on they’d been influenced by the proto-punk, pre-glam rock of the campy New York Dolls. Physical trappings were part of the message.
A lot of art history (visual, music, theatre) is packed in these 138 pages. It might seem a particular story of NYC; but the effects didn’t fade away, they radiated.
March 17, 2016
New York of the 1970s was one of those scenes; a thriving, vital hotbed of freaks, dropouts and weirdos getting artistic whilst the Big Apple rotted around them. It started roughly with the kinky subversion of Warhol and the Velvet Underground and would end up manifesting itself in a myriad of forms; Patti Smith’s punk poetry, the geek funk of Talking Heads, the rampant sleaze of the New York Dolls and the heads down ramalama racket of The Ramones. Even the musical forms which ended up being culturally dominant (disco and hip hop) began as the songs of the marginal. Blondie’s Parallel Lines is a document of that scene; a record of how it grew, evolved, splintered and eventually how it was refracted in one of the finest and most stylish pop albums of all time.
Very little of the book focuses on the album itself; perhaps only in terms of what Mike Chapman brought to producing the album and how remarkably the album was broken by the fourth single; a song buried halfway through side two. In modern times it’s insane to think that a song which still sounds like it should be an instant pop smash was almost sneaked out apologetically. It’s a wise move on McLeod’s part; he’s correctly divined that whilst Parallel Lines is a magnificent pop album what really makes it interesting is how it messes with what pop should be; you can enjoy Harry’s femme fatale persona as performance act or simply as an iconic pop star; you can enjoy the ridiculously infectious songs or enjoy the subversively provocative lyrics; you can enjoy the album or marvel at the sources it’s drawing on. It’s a melting pot of New York influences; punk, power pop, disco and they’d even stir in hip hop later on. In many ways they were as magpie as Bowie but playing with a 50s trash aesthetic rather than sci-fi and mysticism (they’re minor strands in Blondie’s music). Further parallels with Bowie come in Harry’s awareness of the power of image; the band’s at its strongest when Harry has control of the visual imagery. Harry and Bowie share an instinctive understanding of the importance of image and presentation in pop; something they were ahead of the game in as they broke through in the pre-MTV era. What’s really treasurable is how the book reminds us that it’s an underdog story; how no-one thought Blondie would make it let alone be the most commercially successful band of the scene.
The whole thing’s laced with the interviews from important people in the story; the band members themselves and those around the scene at the time. It doesn’t shy away from less glamorous aspects of the band’s story (the money troubles, the state of the area they lived in, the sex and drugs, Chris Stein’s illness) but it’s all covered compassionately and with proper context. And that’s the triumph of the book; to put the band and album in context of the scene it came from; in its importance in the band’s history and the little tricks they were pulling beneath Chapman’s immaculate pop sheen. A sharp enjoyable tribute which fills in the details lost in the dazzle when the spotlight hit the glitterball.
(STANDARD DISCLAIMER – The copy I read was an advance eBook provided gratis by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review).
Very little of the book focuses on the album itself; perhaps only in terms of what Mike Chapman brought to producing the album and how remarkably the album was broken by the fourth single; a song buried halfway through side two. In modern times it’s insane to think that a song which still sounds like it should be an instant pop smash was almost sneaked out apologetically. It’s a wise move on McLeod’s part; he’s correctly divined that whilst Parallel Lines is a magnificent pop album what really makes it interesting is how it messes with what pop should be; you can enjoy Harry’s femme fatale persona as performance act or simply as an iconic pop star; you can enjoy the ridiculously infectious songs or enjoy the subversively provocative lyrics; you can enjoy the album or marvel at the sources it’s drawing on. It’s a melting pot of New York influences; punk, power pop, disco and they’d even stir in hip hop later on. In many ways they were as magpie as Bowie but playing with a 50s trash aesthetic rather than sci-fi and mysticism (they’re minor strands in Blondie’s music). Further parallels with Bowie come in Harry’s awareness of the power of image; the band’s at its strongest when Harry has control of the visual imagery. Harry and Bowie share an instinctive understanding of the importance of image and presentation in pop; something they were ahead of the game in as they broke through in the pre-MTV era. What’s really treasurable is how the book reminds us that it’s an underdog story; how no-one thought Blondie would make it let alone be the most commercially successful band of the scene.
The whole thing’s laced with the interviews from important people in the story; the band members themselves and those around the scene at the time. It doesn’t shy away from less glamorous aspects of the band’s story (the money troubles, the state of the area they lived in, the sex and drugs, Chris Stein’s illness) but it’s all covered compassionately and with proper context. And that’s the triumph of the book; to put the band and album in context of the scene it came from; in its importance in the band’s history and the little tricks they were pulling beneath Chapman’s immaculate pop sheen. A sharp enjoyable tribute which fills in the details lost in the dazzle when the spotlight hit the glitterball.
(STANDARD DISCLAIMER – The copy I read was an advance eBook provided gratis by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review).
December 5, 2017
This book, ostensibly about Blondie's album of the same name was incredibly fascinating. It's not so much an analysis of the album, or account of its making, but an exploration of the 1970s downtown scene in NYC and how the different subcultures there factored into Blondie's shift towards a more pop sound. McLeod delves into glam, disco, and punk and how the three scenes developed and interacted both musically and socially. It's a much more interesting and complex history than often portrayed in pop culture, and all three of these subcultures had a much more far-reaching and lasting effect on American culture than is often acknowledged.
December 1, 2019
There is not much to go wrong here. It is short, features punk, disco, New York in the seventies, urban squalor and most of all, Blondie. Considering that one would think that a book about Parallel Lines would be a dissection of the album, there are very few pages dedicated to it. What you get instead is a bit of a potted history of Blondie pre-Parallel Lines as well as one of the New York punk and club scene of the time. There is a lot to tell so a book of a 130 pint size pages was never really gonna tell it all but as a short, interesting read (think of it as a really long magazine profile), there is a lot to like.
February 4, 2022
It's not one of the series that's very focused on the making of the album it is about. It has some of that but also a general overview of scene that spawned Blondie. If that sounds like the kind of thing you might be into, I think the one from this series about Television might be a better choice.
December 17, 2024
3.5. Covered a lot of ground in very little space which means the author jumped around. Thoroughly enjoyable.
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August 27, 2016Another Netgalley review!
There’s no shortage of books about the late 1970s New York scene, from Please Kill Me to loads of Ramones books to several others in the 33 1/3 series. McLeod covers some of the same territory in the early pages — the Velvet Underground, Max’s Kansas City, CBGB, the New York Dolls, Wayne County, Suicide, Television, Patti Smith, etc — but soon enough turns his attention to Debbie Harry and Chris Stein and the development of Blondie and its predecessor bands. The book offers a quick history of Blondie up to the breakup and mentions the reunion, but it largely focuses on the making of and reception to Parallel Lines.
Blondie was one of the few bands from the punk scene to break out into mass commercial success. They were never a noisy punk band, more on the performance art side, but they also loved classic girl group pop, and were willing to work with a big producer who could push them to the next level. And it all came together on this album.
McLeod differentiates his book from other NY scene books by looking at the punk and disco scenes, what it meant for Blondie to record a song like “Heart of Glass,” etc, and how Blondie navigated issues of gender and sexuality. He discusses camp and the way Debbie Harry, whose image was originally intended ironically, was turned into a conventional sex symbol as part of the move to the mainstream, not entirely the way Blondie intended, despite Harry’s openness and positivity about sex. He also occasionally points out how another New York bottle blonde would build on this in the 1980s.
There are a couple of moments where McLeod starts sounding like he’s writing a cultural studies paper, and others where he gets slangy and bloggy, but in general he maintains a straightforward and readable prose style. He also interviewed a lot of the key players, including most of Blondie.
All in all, not the flashiest entry in the 33 1/3 series, but a solid and thoughtful exploration of a great moment in pop, disco, and punk/new wave history.
There’s no shortage of books about the late 1970s New York scene, from Please Kill Me to loads of Ramones books to several others in the 33 1/3 series. McLeod covers some of the same territory in the early pages — the Velvet Underground, Max’s Kansas City, CBGB, the New York Dolls, Wayne County, Suicide, Television, Patti Smith, etc — but soon enough turns his attention to Debbie Harry and Chris Stein and the development of Blondie and its predecessor bands. The book offers a quick history of Blondie up to the breakup and mentions the reunion, but it largely focuses on the making of and reception to Parallel Lines.
Blondie was one of the few bands from the punk scene to break out into mass commercial success. They were never a noisy punk band, more on the performance art side, but they also loved classic girl group pop, and were willing to work with a big producer who could push them to the next level. And it all came together on this album.
McLeod differentiates his book from other NY scene books by looking at the punk and disco scenes, what it meant for Blondie to record a song like “Heart of Glass,” etc, and how Blondie navigated issues of gender and sexuality. He discusses camp and the way Debbie Harry, whose image was originally intended ironically, was turned into a conventional sex symbol as part of the move to the mainstream, not entirely the way Blondie intended, despite Harry’s openness and positivity about sex. He also occasionally points out how another New York bottle blonde would build on this in the 1980s.
There are a couple of moments where McLeod starts sounding like he’s writing a cultural studies paper, and others where he gets slangy and bloggy, but in general he maintains a straightforward and readable prose style. He also interviewed a lot of the key players, including most of Blondie.
All in all, not the flashiest entry in the 33 1/3 series, but a solid and thoughtful exploration of a great moment in pop, disco, and punk/new wave history.
August 8, 2020
More of a well researched history of the lower east side art scene than a track by track discussion of the album. And it is an eye opening history. This book is a great compliment to “please kill me” by Legs McNeil. Blondie is a more interesting band than I realized. And I have a fuller picture of where and how disco and punk happened. The village people are an amazing prank/art project. Hedwig owes a huge debt to Jayne County. I better understand Andy Warhol’s (and his superstars) influence on glam, disco, and punk. The Loud family pops up again! The chronology is a little difficult to follow, you have to pay close attention to the years.
What I learned: Robert DiNiro’s stage debut was in a play with Jakie Curtis and Candy Darling, from Lou Reed’s “walk on the wild side.” Television did not start the scene at CBGB’s. Punk as a description of music goes back to ‘71 or ‘72. Punk has always had a tense relationship between performance and authenticity. David Bowie got a lot of ideas from New York. Pemphigus Vulgaris is an autoimmune attack of the skin and mucus membranes. “To be a woman is to be an actress. Being feminine is a kind of theater, with its appropriate costumes, decor, lighting, and stylized gestures.” -Susan Sontag 1972
What I learned: Robert DiNiro’s stage debut was in a play with Jakie Curtis and Candy Darling, from Lou Reed’s “walk on the wild side.” Television did not start the scene at CBGB’s. Punk as a description of music goes back to ‘71 or ‘72. Punk has always had a tense relationship between performance and authenticity. David Bowie got a lot of ideas from New York. Pemphigus Vulgaris is an autoimmune attack of the skin and mucus membranes. “To be a woman is to be an actress. Being feminine is a kind of theater, with its appropriate costumes, decor, lighting, and stylized gestures.” -Susan Sontag 1972
January 27, 2018
barely mentions the album. should be titled "author rehashes the same stories about nyc's downtown scene in the 70s"
Read
April 19, 2025I usually prefer my 33 1/3s a little further from the canonical mainstream, and I'm not even entirely sure why I own this one, but after Clem Burke died I figured if not now, when? And he does come across as possibly the coolest of the lot, wry and unflappable, less bothered about succeeding than Harry or Stein. On the other hand, yes, my fears regarding any album that's also on Mojo's list of the 20 acceptable topics were not without foundation, especially because McLeod cheats – maybe 30 pages of this are actually about Parallel Lines, and the rest isn't even wholly about Blondie so much as the scene from which they emerged, the inspiring but by this point well-trodden saga of scuzzy seventies NYC giving the world punk, disco and hip hop. Still, McLeod at least puts a pleasingly polemical spin on it, emphasising the way that a particular, too widely accepted version of events downplayed the influence of girly bubblegum pop on punk, and minimises the subcultural agency of female fans and musicians more generally. I particularly enjoyed the damning quotes from male hacks being pervily dismissive of Debbie Harry, all the more flabbergasting for not being over-editorialised as I suspect they might have been had the book come out a little later. Because from the first page's upbeat "It paved the way for everything from punk and disco to the gradual acceptance of gay and transgender life", it's clear that this is a book from an earlier, happier time – published in 2016, you can almost see the onrushing tsunami over its shoulder. This is particularly painful in the sections on the Village People, which treat their entryist gay mission as pretty much accomplished, blissfully unaware of the big gig they'd be playing a decade down the line for a regime that's basically 'Disco Sucks!' with the Bomb. Still. And if the book didn't tell me anything new about the big picture, it certainly shaded in some detail. Most surprisingly, I knew that casuals and the aforementioned leches tended to refer to Blondie as meaning Debbie Harry, necessitating the 'Blondie is a group!' merch, but I hadn't realised that to an extent so did she, referring to a persona she had before the band coalesced. Which, come to think of it, maybe I was happier not knowing, because it makes them look less wrong. Gah!
February 7, 2018
Considering that the 33 1/3 series have already focused on the Velvet Underground and Nico, Marquee Moon, Horses, The Ramones, Blank Generation, Daydream Nation and Fear of Music, I would have expected that the New York punk movement to be exhausted and in a way a lot of the material in this volume has been said before.
Instead on focusing on the album, as such, McLeod discusses the infiltration of disco and pop with punk and how Parallel Lines was one of the pioneering albums to do so. Also McLeod's back history of Blondie is pretty detailed and makes interesting reading. Really this book is enriching the material of the past New York punkcentric 33 1/3 volumes.
What will make things more interesting is that soon we'll get a modern update of the scene as the LCD Soundsystem book is on the horizon and we'll be getting the Modern Lovers book in a month or so as Jonathan Richman has been mentioned a lot.
August 20, 2019
While I do live the premise of the 33 1/3 series, and I do find Parallel Lines to be a pretty great, cutting edge album, this book was just a bit so so for me.
I get that context is important and even crucial subject matter when writing about an important album, but it really felt like what was going on in that downtown NY scene was more the feature than the actual Blondie album was. My roots aren’t from that punk background, so I only found that so interesting.
If that’s a big deal to you, you may enjoy the book a bit more than I did. The writer has written a couple of other books on that subject, and unfortunately I think that overwhelmed the subject here.
I noticed a missed opportunity when a club called the Continental Baths gets a mention because Blondie played an early show there. That place also could have gotten mentioned for fostering some of the early house DJ’s, but the connection is never made.
Not a bad read, but just not great either.
I get that context is important and even crucial subject matter when writing about an important album, but it really felt like what was going on in that downtown NY scene was more the feature than the actual Blondie album was. My roots aren’t from that punk background, so I only found that so interesting.
If that’s a big deal to you, you may enjoy the book a bit more than I did. The writer has written a couple of other books on that subject, and unfortunately I think that overwhelmed the subject here.
I noticed a missed opportunity when a club called the Continental Baths gets a mention because Blondie played an early show there. That place also could have gotten mentioned for fostering some of the early house DJ’s, but the connection is never made.
Not a bad read, but just not great either.
March 10, 2022
Four-and-a-half stars. I liked this better (and found it wider in scope) than both Please Kill Me and Just Kids...even if the album this book shares its title with has never been a favorite.
Blondie were at the crossroads of punk, bubblegum, and disco.
Also a product of drag and camp, New York punk's subcultural roots may have left as the homogenized punk scene became a (mostly) white (mostly) boys' club in the 80's...but, before the mainstream moved in, the subcultural elements were also a part of disco. All this is to say Andy Warhol's Factory, the Velvet Underground, and Max's Kansas City didn't just beget CBGB's and the Ramones; it may also have beget Studio 54.
Blondie were at the crossroads of punk, bubblegum, and disco.
Also a product of drag and camp, New York punk's subcultural roots may have left as the homogenized punk scene became a (mostly) white (mostly) boys' club in the 80's...but, before the mainstream moved in, the subcultural elements were also a part of disco. All this is to say Andy Warhol's Factory, the Velvet Underground, and Max's Kansas City didn't just beget CBGB's and the Ramones; it may also have beget Studio 54.
August 5, 2017
I'd give it 3.5. A very good, surprisingly comprehensive picture of the bands background and what created and informed them as a band, but also skimps on the details behind 'Parallel Lines' specifically. Mixed bag that talks more about the culture around them and their impact on it than the actual recording.
October 4, 2018
Another fine selection in this series! Fond memories of "Heart of Glass" at sixth grade dances. Now I am up to speed on the backstory to the song, the album, the group, and the NYC scene that saturated it all. Blondie has always intrigued me with their mix of punk and early sixties pop. Good little read on a good little album.
December 2, 2018
This is pretty near perfect in regards to how I like books in this series to come across. Some background info on the time and place of the album, historically speaking. A little bit about the album, though that's the one area this was lacking. Then just the album's role in the grand scheme of things. Done. Easy to read. Four stars, story over.
January 30, 2024
Very little about the album itself and loads about the 70’s New York scene. Lots of information about people I have no interest in and not a single mention of Sunday Girl. I’m not sure how they got away with using the album as a title for this book.
July 22, 2025
This title in the 33 1/3 series was very well researched and written. Kembrew McLeod amassed a fantastic assortment of quotes and tidbits throughout. I really enjoyed reading it, even though I already read a biography on Debbie Harry and her recent autobiography.
McLeod focuses on the music / art scene in New York City in the 70s. Yes, it is important to get a sense of what is going on at the time, what Blondie's peers are doing and who the band's influences / contemporaries are. But the background could have scaled back.
Some of the songs on Parallel Lines are barely mentioned if at all, including the single "Sunday Girl" and one of my favorites "Will Anything Happen?," as well as the less memorable "I Know but I Don't Know," "I'm Gonna Love You Too" and "Just Go Away."
I did catch an error in this book. McLeod credits the song "Walking in the Rain"to The Shangri-Las, not to the Ronnettes. The former had a similarly named song, "Walkin' in the Sand."
Despite these points, this title is highly recommended for Blondie fans and those who love the groundbreaking, pioneering rock scene in NYC in the 70s.
McLeod focuses on the music / art scene in New York City in the 70s. Yes, it is important to get a sense of what is going on at the time, what Blondie's peers are doing and who the band's influences / contemporaries are. But the background could have scaled back.
Some of the songs on Parallel Lines are barely mentioned if at all, including the single "Sunday Girl" and one of my favorites "Will Anything Happen?," as well as the less memorable "I Know but I Don't Know," "I'm Gonna Love You Too" and "Just Go Away."
I did catch an error in this book. McLeod credits the song "Walking in the Rain"to The Shangri-Las, not to the Ronnettes. The former had a similarly named song, "Walkin' in the Sand."
Despite these points, this title is highly recommended for Blondie fans and those who love the groundbreaking, pioneering rock scene in NYC in the 70s.
May 25, 2017
Excellent.
June 19, 2017
Great overview of how straight white cis men determine that disco 'sucked ' but punk was 'cool'. whatever, guys.
December 6, 2024
im so sad they didnt like the album cover
October 15, 2016
I noticed that I have a few Facebook friends who are friends of Kembrew McLeod, which made me want to read one of his books . . . but I don't have the energy right now to read one of his academic interventions. I noticed this book on Blondie's "Parallel Lines," so thought this might be worth a read. It was. I might even read one of his more serious books now!
Blondie's Parallel Lines is very good. It's success is that it is a highly compressed story of New York in the 60s and 70s, with Blondie at the center. If you know nothing about Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, the cultural geographical of lower Manhattan, then this book is for you. I'd recommend listening to Blondie's first three albums while reading it.
In 1977-78 I was a high school senior and then a college freshman, and I religiously read the Village Voice every week, so I was aware of Blondie pretty early. Because of the articles in the Voice and New York Rocker, I think I knew early on that Blondie was playing around with the bubblegum and girl group traditions, while being super campy. "Parallel Lines" was total ear candy and I listened to it a lot. It seemed like the culmination of the first two albums, but included more rock and more archness. I loved it. The book respects the album's camp, its innovations, and its commercialism, and does a good job helping the reader understand what it meant for the producer Mike Chapman to collide with these New York guttersnipes.
The book gets a lot right. The main thing is that it situates Blondie squarely in the performative scene of downtown New York: experimental, edgy, poor, gay -- and someone what later, its integration of black sounds. One thing I like is that it pegs the Legs McNeil / punk scene as being (stupidly) anti-disco with all of the awful words that went with that.
There are a bunch of little details that bugged me. The book claims to have a thesis that is sort of about fixing up the history of rock that makes it all about the boys -- McLeod quotes Susan Douglas about how the "impact of the girls was fleeting, superficial, trivial" (p. 7). That's an interesting claim to make, but it's not exactly about Blondie. For one thing, you could easily argue that the girls were the big force, namely the kids who bought all of the Beatles singles and screamed at their concerts. Maybe the claim could be tuned up a bit to say that in the 70s the impact of the girls was trivial, but still: I'm not so sure even about that. I remember in high school that it was the girls who got Bowie instantly while the mainstream boys were mystified. The last chapter of the book also goes kind of haywire with a lot of words about Wayne/Jayne County and Susan Sontag (134-138), but it's all pretty far from "Parallel Lines." With regard to the album: The book has nothing to say about "I Know but I Don't Know" favoring "Fade Away and Radiate" -- but I tell you, as a listener back then, the minimalism and simplicity of "I Know but I Don't Know" really resonated. Another oddity is that in the last pages you get a lot about the hits from "Autoamerican": Yeah, well, what about "Eat to the Beat" which audaciously taps the Abba vein and is so all about the girls? Another song that is weirdly neglected is, strangely, "Hangin' on the Telephone" -- yes, we learn that it was originally recorded by the Nerves, but please could we learn more about the sheer weirdness of kicking off an album with a cover? Who does that? It was unusual then, and it's unusual now.
Another thing that is underplayed in the book is that essentially, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein were sixties people. They were with the hippies. This accounts for so much of their irony, their camp, their loving distance from the genres they played with. I think more could have been said here, and it would have aligned Debbie and Chris even more with Patti Smith and Television. These were different people than the generation of Clem Burke and Gary Valentine.
So . . . This gets more right about "Parallel Lines" and Blondie than anything else in such a short compass, and I hope that some people younger than me read it and go nuts to read more about the scene. Recommended!
Blondie's Parallel Lines is very good. It's success is that it is a highly compressed story of New York in the 60s and 70s, with Blondie at the center. If you know nothing about Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, the cultural geographical of lower Manhattan, then this book is for you. I'd recommend listening to Blondie's first three albums while reading it.
In 1977-78 I was a high school senior and then a college freshman, and I religiously read the Village Voice every week, so I was aware of Blondie pretty early. Because of the articles in the Voice and New York Rocker, I think I knew early on that Blondie was playing around with the bubblegum and girl group traditions, while being super campy. "Parallel Lines" was total ear candy and I listened to it a lot. It seemed like the culmination of the first two albums, but included more rock and more archness. I loved it. The book respects the album's camp, its innovations, and its commercialism, and does a good job helping the reader understand what it meant for the producer Mike Chapman to collide with these New York guttersnipes.
The book gets a lot right. The main thing is that it situates Blondie squarely in the performative scene of downtown New York: experimental, edgy, poor, gay -- and someone what later, its integration of black sounds. One thing I like is that it pegs the Legs McNeil / punk scene as being (stupidly) anti-disco with all of the awful words that went with that.
There are a bunch of little details that bugged me. The book claims to have a thesis that is sort of about fixing up the history of rock that makes it all about the boys -- McLeod quotes Susan Douglas about how the "impact of the girls was fleeting, superficial, trivial" (p. 7). That's an interesting claim to make, but it's not exactly about Blondie. For one thing, you could easily argue that the girls were the big force, namely the kids who bought all of the Beatles singles and screamed at their concerts. Maybe the claim could be tuned up a bit to say that in the 70s the impact of the girls was trivial, but still: I'm not so sure even about that. I remember in high school that it was the girls who got Bowie instantly while the mainstream boys were mystified. The last chapter of the book also goes kind of haywire with a lot of words about Wayne/Jayne County and Susan Sontag (134-138), but it's all pretty far from "Parallel Lines." With regard to the album: The book has nothing to say about "I Know but I Don't Know" favoring "Fade Away and Radiate" -- but I tell you, as a listener back then, the minimalism and simplicity of "I Know but I Don't Know" really resonated. Another oddity is that in the last pages you get a lot about the hits from "Autoamerican": Yeah, well, what about "Eat to the Beat" which audaciously taps the Abba vein and is so all about the girls? Another song that is weirdly neglected is, strangely, "Hangin' on the Telephone" -- yes, we learn that it was originally recorded by the Nerves, but please could we learn more about the sheer weirdness of kicking off an album with a cover? Who does that? It was unusual then, and it's unusual now.
Another thing that is underplayed in the book is that essentially, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein were sixties people. They were with the hippies. This accounts for so much of their irony, their camp, their loving distance from the genres they played with. I think more could have been said here, and it would have aligned Debbie and Chris even more with Patti Smith and Television. These were different people than the generation of Clem Burke and Gary Valentine.
So . . . This gets more right about "Parallel Lines" and Blondie than anything else in such a short compass, and I hope that some people younger than me read it and go nuts to read more about the scene. Recommended!
September 14, 2016
A pretty good entry in the 33 1/3 series of books about albums. It's not one of the best, but it's entertaining. Perhaps the main problem with it is that while it's 138 pages, the band doesn't form until about page 64, and doesn't start work on this album until even later. Most of the book is about the downtown NYC scene, and the beginnings of punk and disco. And while it's actually a pretty interesting read, it's not really what one would pick up the book for. There's plenty from interviews with the members of the band, but there's just not enough about their work together, their situation leading up to this career-changing album, thought processes, and so forth. So while it's still a nice read, be warned about what you're getting.
September 20, 2017
The 33 1/3: Parallel Lines (2016) by Kembrew McLeod is a good overview of Blondie's influence and the context of the the late 70s New York music scene that helped form the band. The book starts with an introduction then has five main sections: "Downtown New York in the 60s and 70s," "Blondie's Arty Antecedents," "Parallel Scenes, " "From the Bowery to Blondiemania," "Disco Sucks! Chicks Can't Rock, Blah, Blah, Blah," followed by a conclusion. To be honest I would have liked more analysis on the album, but overall informative and entertaining.
April 8, 2016
The stories of Blondie's development and the New York scene are great but the narrative and analysis are weak. Professor McLeod conveys little enthusiasm for the music. The story of the co-mingling of disco and punk had potential but there's no depth--just one sentence declarations by people who were there rather than conveying how it was to be there or ruminations on set lists. Disappointing
July 9, 2016
I read this about the same time as I read the Sleater Kinney book. Both are interested in the context (particularly social/political/cultural) of the time in which the band operated, but this one gets closer to the actual music. The author demonstrates that the New York was much less fractured in the punk vs. disco sense that many believe.
April 6, 2016
More of an examination of the NY music scene than an in depth album analysis, this is a provocative counterpoint to the dominant narrative.
http://fedpeaches.blogspot.com/2016/0...
http://fedpeaches.blogspot.com/2016/0...
May 27, 2016
One of the more straightforward volumes of this series--a history rather than a personal essay, still less a novel.
September 1, 2016
A great contextualisation of the time/era and influences that created both Blondie and then this great record.
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