Brighton witness Blondie ‘In The Flesh’

BRIGHTON CENTRE 8^th NOVEMBER 2017

Blondie are undeniably one of the most trailblazing and influential new wave/rock/pop/punk bands of our time. They have performed over 200 concerts in the UK alone and are certainly back on form tonight at the packed out Brighton Centre.

The current line-up of very accomplished musicians is made up of founding members Debbie Harry (on vocals who was previously a Playboy Bunny), Chris Stein (guitarist, who was Debbie’s long standing boyfriend), and Clem Burke (drummer, who tonight performed within a transparent perspex screen), along with bass player Leigh Foxx, guitarist Tommy Kessler and Matt Katz-Bohen on keyboards.

Their recent album ‘Pollinator’ was released in May and fans old and new were making a bee-line to the record shops (and their computers) in order to purchase it and as a result, it deservedly climbed as high as No.4 in the official album charts. This was their highest chart position in over 18 years. ‘Pollinator’ (their eleventh album) has been proving to be a great success for the band and so the guys are out on tour promoting it. The stand out tracks for me on the eleven song ‘Pollinator’ album are ‘Already Naked’ (alas not played tonight) and ‘Fragments’.

The band have hot-footed it from Nottingham last night and will have a days rest before performing in Wales at the cavernous Motorpoint Arena on Friday. They will also be visiting Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and London on this tour.

Although I was a really massive Blondie fan during the second half of the 1970’s when I purchased and played to death their first four albums ‘Blondie’ (fave track ‘In The Sun’), ‘Plastic Letters’ (fave track ‘Denis’), ‘Parallel Lines’ (fave track ‘Picture This’) and ‘Eat To The Beat’ (fave track ‘Shayla’), somehow by the time their tamer fifth album ‘Autoamerican’ came along with their changed sound, I became less interested. I don’t think for one moment that Blondie would be the slightest worried about me not purchasing later albums as they have already sold well over 42 million of them and have been inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. However tonight three of our gang, including us, did in fact purchase the reasonably priced £8 new ‘Pollinator’ CD as Blondie had performed six songs from it tonight.

I do however, have fond memories of leaving school and starting college at the time the Blondie single ‘Denis’ came out. Alas this was not played tonight either. I was then unaware that it was a cover version of a 1963 song called ‘Denise’. I can fondly remember (like a million other 16 year old boys!) Debbie on Top Of The Pops and the Smash Hits photos!

Surprisingly, I haven’t actually seen Blondie live before. The nearest I ever got was seeing Clem Burke on drums for The Eurythmics Brighton The Top Rank gig on 6^th March 1983, so tonight was going to be a real treat!

The support act tonight were Mustang who were ‘trois garçons et Français’ based in Paris who and are made up of Jean Felzine (chant, guitare, orgue/synthétiseur), Johan Gentile (basse, guitare, choeurs) and Rémi Faure (batterie, machines, choeurs). As you might surmise, they sang in French and for quite a number of the crowd, they were a good warm up act. They partly looked like rockabilly boys, but didn’t really sound like it.

Blondie’s set tonight was around 90 minutes long, but with 11 albums of work to choose from, in my mind, they could have possibly performed for a tad longer to be honest and for me, there were so many of my fave tracks missing too!

But hey, I am finally seeing Blondie live, what is there to complain about? I mean, tonight, Debbie’s voice sounds just as good as it ever did and Clem’s drumming is still awesome. The stage set with three background screens are terrific and liven up the set. The relatively mature audience are well up for it, clapping, dancing and shaking their thang! Debbie is praising our off-shore Rampion Wind Farm as she clearly is into saving the planet these days and everyone’s having a ball.

There were to be thirteen singles played tonight from their seventeen song set, which included highlight tracks ‘Hanging On The Telephone’, ‘Atomic’ and ‘Heart Of Glass’ with it’s nod to Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ in the middle. Although I have to say that the slightly slower version of ‘Picture This’ was a little surprising. But having said that my wife enjoyed every track, so that was important.

Tonight’s 17 song setlist reads:

‘One Way Or Another’ (1979 single taken from UK No.1 ‘Parrallel Lines’ 1978 album)

‘Hanging On The Telephone’ (1978 No.5 UK single taken from UK No.1 ‘Parrallel Lines’ 1978 album and a cover of the 1976 opening track of the only EP by Los Angeles based trio The Nerves)

‘Fun’ (2017 single from the new 2017 ‘Pollinator’ album)