Word: parallelism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...kinky, you say? Kind of off-the-wall? Well, maybe. But WHRB sees its role as just that--giving airtime to avant-garde groups and offering parallel fare to that played on the large, popular radio stations...
...Parallel Lines, Blondie's latest, exhibits a new security and ease the group has developed in the last six months. Every song on it shows that Harry and her musicians aren't confused anymore. They drop any connection they had with the stream of deranged, safety-pin punk; and the band no longer seems self-conscious about borrowing from the '50s. One song on the album, "11:59," is perfect: a wonderful mix of lyrics that sound like they have meaning and a hard-driving pop tune that doesn't wear out after three hearings...
...MOST UNUSUAL cut on Parallel Lines is Blondie's experimental fling into the progressive electronic music of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, an expansive song called "Fade Away and Radiate." After an eerie flourish on the synthesizer, Harry coos some surrealistic lyrics; with no instruments backing her--only the thud of a bass drum--she toys with the tune, which seems to be in no key at all. Within a minute, though, the band is behind her; and Fripp (formerly of King Crimson) nearly steals the song with a wild, electronically treated guest guitar solo...
Even a cute blonde like Debby Harry can't get away with that. Aside from a few embarrassing verses like these, Parallel Lines is excellent--each of its 12 songs is backboned but not offensive, catchy but not insipid...
...members of this band stabbing their girlfriends and slitting their wrists with crushed light bulbs. Anyone who listens to Blondie will see that the group is closer to the Ronettes than to the Ramones. In fact, if Eno had produced the Ronettes, the result would probably have sounded like Parallel Lines...