Timeless Blondie brings new music to State Theatre

source: washingtonexaminer.com

Debbie Harry’s time has arrived — again.
The confident sexuality, streetwise sophistication and breathy vocals that made her an icon in the 1970s and 1980s again have gained her and the band she co-founded with guitarist Chris Stein major attention a second time around. Now, the group is back again, touring behind its upcoming release “Panic of Girls,” and Harry continues to be featured in many national magazines and touted as a role model for other singers.

“I am stupefied by that,” Harry said about the number of women who still regard her as a role model. “I honestly haven’t done that much. It is [just] such a small world today that we gain so much information about other people’s lives.”
Certainly the Web chronicled some of the ups and downs of Harry’s life, but she’s more than those headlines. She has a solo career that not only includes her own albums but work as part of The Jazz Passengers and collaborations with other artists. She’s also an actress with more than two dozens credits.
Many of her younger fans, though, may well have found her through her participation on Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors” tour and other high-profile gigs. But however she came into their consciousness, it’s clear that the young fans embrace and embody her style, wrote Melena Ryzik for The New York Times:
“Legions of downtown girls imitate her Blondie-era style, from the shaggy dyed hair and red lips to the vampy shredded dresses. … She follows her progeny, counting M.I.A., Lily Allen and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs among her current favorites.
“ ‘She just never stopped being cool,’ said another descendant, Johanna Fateman of the post-riot-grrrl band Le Tigre.”
Certainly Harry was a style and musical icon long before the Internet was a daily habit, even before it was a twinkle in a developer’s eye. Blondie’s breakthrough songs “Heart of Glass” and “One Way or Another” received constant airplay on the radio, and MTV projected her fiery, sexy image that recent concertgoers report is still much in evidence.
And just how does Harry manage to keep it all going when so many of her contemporaries have fallen into the “where are they now?” file.
“Music has an incredible effect on me,” Harry said. “It always did and it still does … I’m incredibly lucky to be paid to do this.”

by Nancy Dunham

My New York: Blondie

source: nypost.com

One way or another, new wave icon Blondie has retained their punk aesthetic since banding together 35 years ago. Founders (and former lovers) Deborah Harry, 65, and Chris Stein, 60, bemoan the demise of grass-roots stomping grounds such as CBGB and Mother. “The whole nature of culture in New York has really taken a nose dive, basically,” says Harry, a longtime Chelsea resident. “It’s much harder for musicians and artists to do what they do without really having to scuffle.” Blondie, meanwhile, continues to do what it does. The group, which also includes drummer Clem Burke, plays at the Nokia Theatre on Tuesday night and plans to release an album of new material, “Panic of Girls,” later this year. This is their New York.

1. Hudson River piers, West Street at 23rd Street

Harry: “I liked the area when I first moved there with Chris in the late ‘80s. It was very quiet, relatively speaking. There were some real colorful people walking around on 10th and 11th avenues. We really liked going down to the piers — there was a great sort of crumbling-edges-of-New-York feeling to it. It wasn’t a popular area. No restaurants; there wasn’t even a laundromat when I first lived there. Sort of remote, you know? It was delightful, in a way.”

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Debbie Harry on Blondie’s Staying Power

source: nymag.com

Blondie is the coolest, sexiest, most luscious band to tumble out of New York City back in 1974, but its most impressive attribute is itsstaying power. There’s a reason Blondie’s current romp across the globe is called the Endangered Species tour — name another band from the city’s punk-heyday that continues to release new, original material. Vulture caught up with Debbie Harry on the road where she’s promoting Blondie’s ninth studio album, Panic of Girls (due in 2011). Harry spoke about the vital importance of expressing herself in the here and now, missing her peers, and the ins and outs of naming songs.

Panic of Girls is a great, evocative album title. Where’d it come from?
We were recording a song, it’s sort of a story of a street person, and I had a question at the end that said, “Is it really the end of the world?” You know, because those people who get out on the street and they’re yelling about the end of the world coming, their lives are sort of miserable (laughs). I was just saying that and Chris [Stein] just popped up and said, “Oh, change it to the ‘Panic of Girls.’” The first version was, “The Panic of Truth.”

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Blondie to Spread ‘Panic’ with First Album in 7 Years

source: billboard.com

Blondie is planning a staggered worldwide rollout this year and next for “Panic of Girls,” the group’s first set of new material since “The Curse of Blondie” in 2003.
While label and distribution deals are still being formulated, drummer Clem Burke tells Billboard.com that he expects the set to come out in Australia in time for Blondie’s November-December tour with the Pretenders. Following that, the band plans to release it in 2011 in other territories, including the U.S. “There’s a lot of politics involved,” Burke says with a laugh.

Blondie recorded “Panic of Girls” during November and December in Woodstock, N.Y., which Burke says is only the second time the band has made an album outside of Manhattan (the first was 1980’s platinum “Automamerican,” which was done in Los Angeles). “We were living in the country out there, kind of the antithesis of the urbanite kind of atmosphere that exists around Blondie,” explains Burke, adding that the album photos shot by Bob Gruen feature the band members posing with farm animals. “We tried to make the recording process as organic as possible and tried to stay away from programming as much as we could, because ['The Curse of Blondie'] had a lot of programming on it. So in the spirit of Woodstock, we kept going in the studio and playing.”

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Debbie Harry looks forward to Kenwood performance

source: hamhigh.co.uk

Debbie Harry has been a legend of the music industry for so long that many of her contemporaries who set off on the same journey are no longer around.

Harry admits it is a thought that often troubles the iconic lead singer of the band Blondie but one she tries her best to ignore.

“There are days when I think, Jesus, I would love to hear the Ramones sing,” she says. “I would really like to go and see them live, but I can’t do it. It’s sort of like your extended family in a way. I don’t think about it constantly, but it is a factor.”

Blondie are back in Britain for the first time in two years for a short tour which includes a date at Kenwood House on June 26 as part of the summer series of concerts.

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source: yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk

Music interview: Debbie Harry

A new interview with Debbie can be found on the bournemouthecho.co.uk website.

Blondie in the flesh
9:30am Sunday 13th June 2010
By Nick Churchill

THEY wouldn’t have realised at the time, but the few hundred or so young punks and slightly older pub rockers that gathered at Bournemouth’s Village Bowl on May 20, 1977, were witnessing the start of something huge.

Most had probably gone to see an emerging London new wave band called Squeeze.

A few would have been there to see a group from New York, called Blondie, whose first two singles, X-Offender and In the Flesh, had made a small dent in the lower regions of the charts and garnered a bit of press in the music papers.

It was their first British gig.

“Oh God, I haven’t thought about that in years, but I remember that show really well,” says Debbie Harry, her quietly spoken voice suddenly sharpened by a rush of excitement in anticipation of returning to play the O2 Academy, Bournemouth, next weekend (Saturday, June 19).

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Blondie exclusive with Debbie Harry ahead of Forum gig in Hatfield

BLONDIE open their latest UK tour at the Forum in Hatfield next week and ahead of the gig singer Debbie Harry spoke exclusively to Welwyn Hatfield Times reporter Ross Logan.

SOMETIMES, when people ask me what I do for a living, I don’t get the sort of response I’m hoping for.
“Local journalism” seems to conjure up an idea of endlessly writing about cake sales and village fetes, and while I personally like cake sales and fetes, I get the impression other people don’t think it’s very cool.
But like most jobs, you have good days and bad days.
Like the other day, when I get a phone call from New York telling me Debbie Harry, the iconic singer/songwriter from new wave punk legends Blondie, is on the other line and waiting to speak to me. Pretty cool, no?
I’m speaking to 64-year-old Debbie shortly before Blondie arrive on these shores to begin their new tour, which kicks off on Wednesday at The Forum, in Hatfield.

“We’re all pretty excited about it,” says Debbie, in that distinctive, New York drawl of hers.

“We’ve a bank of new material, which is brilliant and so long overdue.”

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A brand-new interview with Debbie was posted on heraldsun.com.au.

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A new interview with Debbie and Clem can be found in the latest (May/June 2010) “Go Belfast” edition. The article has been added to the deborah-harry.com press section.