Kicking off this week's trio of remastered and expanded reflections that appeared in The 20 Greatest Eponymous Albums Of All Time series (which you can find at No Badger Required) is a pair of New York legends, Blondie and Ramones.
In reality, I'd freely admit that I listen to Debbie Harry and the gang more often than Joey and his Ramones 'siblings' and that in both cases, their eponymous debuts were not the best albums they recorded, though thankfully not the worst either.
However, there was quite a gap between their respective placings on my NBR Musical Jury voting sheet. Blondie's self-titled album came in at #17 with 4 points, whilst Ramones managed almost the complete reverse, with a #3 placing and a whopping 18 points. How so?
Well, as I've said, Blondie by Blondie is not my favourite Blondie album perhaps, even though it contains some of my favourite Blondie songs, with In The Flesh, Rip Her To Shreds and Kung Fu Girls.
The first album of theirs that I ever heard - and then bought - was the superlative 1981 compilation The Best Of Blondie. I'm talking here about the 14-track UK edition that includes Denis, PIcture This and Union City Blue, not the 12-song US version that drops all three and adds One Way Or Another, excellent though it is. Best Of Blondie is so chock full of great songs that it's an essential album in any collection.
After that, it's a toss up between Plastic Letters and Parallel Lines as my personal favourite Blondie albums, so I guess that makes Blondie by Blondie my fourth favourite Blondie album. Doesn't scan quite so well, does it?
In The Flesh and Rip Her To Shreds were included on The Best Of Blondie, whilst Kung Fu Girls was one of two B-sides of the 7" single Denis, which I picked up secondhand at Plastic Wax Records in Bristol in the late 1980s. Sadly the latter was the reissue in the generic Chrysalis label sleeve, rather than the first version with the striking Debbie Harry cover.
So, I was very familiar with these songs, and they are arguably the high points of the album as a whole.
It's accepted that Blondie had an astonishing look and a mesmerising singer in Debbie Harry, but the debut album proved that they also had the tunes to back it up.
My starting point with Ramones was very different, 1980's Phil Spector-produced fifth album, End Of The Century, which contained a surprise UK hit in their cover of Baby I Love You. I loved - and still love - that album, but it isn't truly representative of Ramones' work up to that point.
Their eponymous debut came out in April 1976, eight months before Blondie, though Ramones were not the first of the CBGB set to release an album (that was Patti Smith Group with Horses in November 1975, pub quizzers).
Fourteen songs in under half an hour, yet packing ideas and energy so tightly, it’s a wonder the album doesn’t explode when played. Whilst Ramones by Ramones isn’t the first Ramones album that I bought, it’s my favourite and the one I play the most.
Blitzkrieg Bop, Beat On The Brat, Judy Is A Punk Rocker and I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend kick off like a Greatest Hits collection and the rest of the album is just as good. All Ramones songs spring from the same seed, but what they grow into is something else.
The other personal connection with Blondie and Ramones is that I got to see both bands live in concert, and coincidentally both outside of the UK.
Ramones were first, at the Silver Jubilee Pavillion in the Claremont Showground, outside of Perth, Western Australia on Saturday 2nd February 1991. You can find my memories - and 32-song setlist recreation - in a Dubhed post from October 2022.
Blondie followed on 8th August 1999, at the open air Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, just outside of New York. This was Blondie's second coming, on the back of smash hit comeback single Maria, and album No Exit. Again, I shared my reflections - and the setlist - on this blog, twenty three years later, to the day.
Today's completely unrelated cover photo is Gordon Jackson as Dr. Johnson in 1978 movie The Medusa Touch, snapped off the telly moments before the dramatic conclusion. Jackson was already a legend to me at the time for his starring role in TV series The Professionals.
Careful. With that title Alyson might leap to the conclusion you are praising the Bee Gees parody band of that name. If she does you'll be in big trouble. I speak from experience.
ReplyDelete