Blondie: the pop Queen still reigns

Sometime during the show an ancestry of strong female performers start to emerge: Madonna gets all the inch-columns she can wish for, heaving learnt her lesson from this woman, Deborah (formerly Debbie) Harry, the heart of Blondie, whose examples must have been Cher and Marianne Faithfull. Of course we shouldn’t forget Patti Smith and Cyndi Lauper…

It all originates in the jazz-age when ‘Mama Gob’ – Mae West - came to notoriety. There has never been a woman like her and everyone since has only been a fluffier edition. The ‘Material Mum’ will never be convicted for obscenity like the woman whose good points caused a vest to be named after. All Maddy’s attempts to undermine social moral codes – ‘Sex’ book, onstage shag-simulations, Britney’n’Christina kissing antics – have been undermined with Janet Jackson’s ‘dropped-out’ embonpoint.

Maddy’s smart and yet strangely bon-motless but still made the best use of obvious limitations: not a great voice, dubious talent but stubbornly ambitions. Well, less of a ‘dirty blonde’ and more of a stained-by-manipulation one.

The new generation of liberated-femmes, in spite of all braggadocio, such as Courtney Love and Brody Dalle, are somehow grotesquely diluted: it ain’t clever, it ain’t new and far from sexy… As if we’ve been trying to get kitsch to go up; there’s no doubt we’ve succeeded…

Ms Harry and Blondie stayed apart for over 16 years and it is good to have them back to show how it is done, with style, charm and catalogue to require a separate book. The trouble with all comebacks, or even long-lasting artists such as The Stones, The Who, Lou Reed to name but a trio, is that fans want the long-cherished favourites rather than new material. Thus, from the opening ‘Atomic’, via ‘Hanging on the Telephone’, ‘One Way or Another’ to ‘Union City Blue’ and ‘The Tide Is High’, plus ‘Rapture’, every tone is adored, clapped to, sung along… Party-time people on a moody Monday.

Blondie sound brilliant although all old hits are re-arranged a tad too much and it is painfully transparent that this 4+ thousand salivating fans didn’t rush out to buy the latest album, ‘Curse of Blondie’. Only the comeback hit ’Maria’ [off ‘No Exit’ album from 1999] gets the recognition to match the ancient smashers while other newer songs are… well, politely tolerated. And accordingly applauded.

Deborah looks resplendent in her black evening dress and with little touches [no costume changes for this ‘diva’] manages to transform herself from a pop-vogue’d Audrey Hepburn into a rocking lady and then, as the show neared its end, into a veteran artist who uncannily recalled that Faithfull woman. Although Debs is a focus, she is not the only star onstage as Clem Burke is such a powerhouse of a drum-meister, his hitting can’t be ignored and is a spectacle in itself. Chris Stein prefers to guitar in a dignified statuesque pose that is contrasted with keyboardist ‘throwing’ his organs in the best Keith Emerson impersonation…

With Ms Blondie in the pop arena, all other female crown contenders are still simply Princesses.