Ah, Blondie. Those happy days of glorious power pop, chilly disco and rich, fruity vocals — Debbie Harry yearning away like a very bad alleycat on heat. ‘X Offender’, ‘In the Flesh’, ‘Picture This’ and that one where she’s in the phone booth, apparently gagging for it. People knock it, but the late 1970s wasn’t a bad time to be a teenager. And while Blondie may have been a rather calculating act, cleverly positioned on the fringe of punk and the fringe of pop and the fringe of disco and later even rap, they were at least likeable and the tunes were, largely, effortlessly and simplistically terrific. And then there was Debbie. She actually did shag Johnny Thunders in a phone booth at the CBGB club in New Yawk — which, when I read about it, seemed cooler than anything I could imagine.
Debbie is now 71 years old, but it seems she’s still in that phone booth, the one across the hall, gagging for it.
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