Mary and I were at the grocery store last Wednesday (our local Kroger considers everyone over 55 to be a senior citizen and gives us five percent off). While we were shopping, what should come on the piped-in music but Blondie doing “One Way or Another.” I guess the Baby Boomers really are retiring now.
Blondie is the name of the band, of course, and not just a clever name for Debbie Harry, lead singer and frontwoman for the band. She and guitarist Chris Stein founded the band in 1974 (forty years already? Doesn’t seem possible) and they became popular in Europe and Australia, but were considered an underground band in the US until the release of Parallel Lines, their third album, in 1978. They enjoyed mainstream success after that, but tensions in the band, brought to a head by Stein contracting pemphigus, a life-threatening autoimmune disease that causes blisters to form on the skin, caused a splitup in 1982. The band reunited in 1996, and has released four albums since then, the most recent being this year’s Ghosts of Download. Of course, they have a website, Blondie.net.
First up today is “Call Me,” their 1980 hit that was the theme song from American Gigolo starring Richard Gere. It reached #1 in the US, Canada and the UK, certified gold in the US, platinum in Canada, and silver in the UK.
Second is “One Way or Another,” from 1978’s Parallel Lines. It made it to #24 in the US, #7 in Canada, and #98 in the UK in 1979.
Blondie, your Two for Tuesday, August 26, 2014.
The Sound of One Hand Typing 
BTW, John. Last Saturday I was in our local Wegmans and noticed that Alice Cooper was playing on the piped in music. I laughed, said “now I know I’m old” and sang along. Of course, people looked at me weird because I was talking out loud to myself….
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I always remember Debbie Harry’s guest spot on the Muppet Show. Kinda liked Blondie in spite of myself.
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I like the music from my early adulthood, and Blondie is one of the bands from that era. And Debbie Harry was a great singer, and still is.
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