Blondie's new cd

[Tim Grayson]

Can anyone tell me if Blondie has or will make a new cd this year??? In 2008 Debbie Harry said that they would have a new cd out in sping of 09, well its summer now and I hope they do make a new cd!!!

Hope someone can help me out with this!!

Tim Grayson

[Kristen]

If not by the end of this year I would assume sometime next year. According to Chris they have a lot of material ready for it.

[DKNY]

Blondie looks to build on hits with summer tour and new album
By Alan Sculley | Special to The Morning Call

For Blondie, this summer's tour with Pat Benatar will be more than opportunity to entertain fans and earn some money. It will bring the band a step closer to creating its next CD.

"Actually we're doing this tour to kind of get ready to do a new record," drummer Clem Burke says. "On this tour, we're probably going to debut one or two new things, [along] with our back catalog things. Obviously we've got to play the hits. And we try to dig a little deeper into the Blondie catalog to have some alternative songs to pull out depending on how we feel. We keep the well-known hits in it and try to move the set around a little bit. But our main thing is in the course of rehearsing for the tour, we have also been doing pre-production for a new record and just working out new ideas."

Burke says that while considerable work remains to be done on the CD, which the band hopes to record this fall and release in 2010, he's pretty sure it will be a musically eclectic work.

Of course, eclecticism is nothing new for Blondie. Just consider the range of such hits as "One Way Or Another" (a rocker), "Heart Of Glass" (a disco-influenced track), "The Tide Is High" (with its island sound) and "Rapture" (one of rock's early rap-influenced songs).


Burke says the idea of blazing stylistic trails and being musically original has been part of Blondie's ethos from the band's beginnings in the mid-1970s, when the group was part of a New York so-called punk scene that also included The Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and the Dictators.

Each of those bands had a distinctly different sound and made the mid-to-late-1970s New York rock scene the rare local scene that did not coalesce around a similar style or trend.

The New York bands got lumped in with the punk/new wave movement of the late 1970s, but in truth, their music didn't fit those labels.

Burke has an explanation for how such a diverse group of bands all emerged around the same town in the same city, as well as what he considers a better title for the scene that spawned Blondie and its New York contemporaries.

"The catalyst to it would be the club CBGB and [owner] Hilly Kristal," Burke says. "I always make the analogy to it being like a workshop. That's what CBGB was. The main criteria was the music had to be original. All of the bands were able to learn about performing and also all aspects of being in a band and being creative. We were able to do it on stage in front of people. It wasn't always great, but we always got feedback. I would call that whole era of those bands, I would call it the CBGB sound.

"All the bands were different, but there were common denominators, Hilly Kristal allowing the difference of the bands and his criteria being about originality," he says. "I really think Hilly Kristal should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and without his input and his help as far as cultivating the music and the club and making the atmosphere very conducive to creativity, I don't think you would have had what came out of New York."

Blondie -- members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame themselves -- broke beyond New York City to become one of the most successful bands of the punk/new wave era.

Formed by guitarist Chris Stein and singer Deborah Harry, with Burke joining early on (and guitarist Jimmy Destri, bassist/guitarist Frank Infante and bassist Nigel Harrison rounding out the band's original lineup), the group didn't make many waves with its first two CDs, "Blondie" and "Plastic Letters."" But that changed with the third album, 1978's "Parallel Lines," which included the breakthrough hit "Heart Of Glass," as well as such fan favorites as "Hangin' On The Telephone" and "One Way Or Another."

The next CD, "Eat To The Beat," with its hit "Dreaming," followed in 1979. "Autoamerican" in 1980 produced two more hit singles in "The Tide Is High" and "Rapture." But after the 1982 release of "The Hunter," internal tensions and business problems tore the band apart.

Harry went on to release a string of uneven and commercially overlooked solo CDs and act in several independent movies. Stein contracted a near-fatal skin disease near the end of Blondie's tenure. He and Harry ended what had been a long-running romantic relationship after Harry helped nurse Stein back to health.

Stein began lobbying for a Blondie reunion in the mid-1990s, but it took several years before Harry, Burke and Destri agreed to rejoin forces. (Infante and Harrison were not invited back.)

The band returned in 1999 with "No Exit," which included a hit single, "Maria." The follow-up album, "The Curse Of Blondie," didn't spawn any hits, but it solidified the notion that Blondie was once again an active band.

Over the years, Blondie has gone from being perceived as part of the rebellious punk scene of the 1970s to a band which crosses genres and can be paired with a wide variety of bands on tours. This is one reason a tour like Blondie and Pat Benatar can happen now.

Back in their early 1980s commercial peaks, the band was perceived as being quite different musically, with Blondie seen as new wave and Benatar as mainstream hard rock.

"I've been getting this question a lot about how it all came together, " Burke says "And I think it was just really more or less about two bands that had two pretty good, long careers now and were compatible for the United States. But back in the day, at the height of things, I don't think we would have played together."

The edition of Blondie that is touring now, though, is missing one notable long-time band member, Destri. Destri had stepped up as a significant songwriting contributor, particularly on "No Exit" and "The Curse Of Blondie." He also wrote "Maria," the hit single from "No Exit" that helped re-establish Blondie as still-relevant band.

"The road basically didn't seem to really agree with Jimmy," Burke says. "He's a good songwriter. We were hoping to get some more of his songs on the next record. He's still involved in Blondie, but he doesn't go on the road with us.

"It's funny because basically the beginning of the band was Debbie Chris and myself, back when I was about 18 years old and I met them in 1974, when we started the band," Burke says. "It seems to be the three of us are the ones that are left standing."

THE DETAILS: BLONDIE w/PAT BENATAR & THE DONNAS

Blondie, Pat Benatar, and The Donnas, 7 p.m. Aug. 7, Sands RiverPlace. Tickets: $24-$49.