The group Blondie—vocalist and songwriter Debbie Harry, guitarist and co-conspirator Chris Stein, drummer Clem Burke, keyboardist Jimmy Destri, bassists Gary Valentine and Nigel Harrison, and guitarist Frank Infante—were one of the success stories of American punk rock, the only member of the 1975 CBGB’s class with No. 1 hit singles and Top 10 albums. They wrote pop hits that were still unquestionably rock’n’roll; Harry’s lyrics were direct and funny while maintaining an air of mystery. The band embraced disco before the days of Disco Demolition and befriended early rap pioneers when very few people outside of the South Bronx cared about this new musical form. They also deliberately cultivated their visual presentation, teaching a generation of kids how to thrift and look good doing it.
Harry grew up in New Jersey and crossed the Hudson to NYC when she was old enough to escape: “I didn’t have a career motivation; I had a personal motivation,” is how she described it. She held a variety of odd jobs while trying to figure things out—a waitress at Max’s Kansas City, a stint as a Playboy Bunny—and briefly sang in a folk group called the Wind and the Willows, though her heart was more aligned with the new, glammy guard down at the Mercer Arts Center. She formed a band called the Stilettos, and it was at one of their gigs that Harry met Chris Stein. They soon split off from the Stilettos to form Blondie and the Banzai Babies, eventually shortened to the moniker Harry heard when she walked her newly peroxide-blonde self past construction sites: “Hey, Blondie!”
Against the Odds is Blondie’s first archival presentation of their essential years, available in a variety of formats. The super deluxe collector’s edition contains their first six studio albums, four records of outtakes and rarities, a book of liner notes featuring new interviews with every band member, a 120-page annotated discography, and some bonus extras. If you already have the albums and just want the rarities, Numero offers that option on either vinyl or CD, both of which still come with a smaller version of the same liner notes. This shouldn’t be noteworthy but it is; it’s the difference between a detailed and respectful chronicle of a band’s legacy versus a label that sees dollar signs. It’s also not surprising given that the first “thank you” in the acknowledgements is to “Blondie Nation.”
Back in the day, the band handed out promotional badges that read BLONDIE IS A GROUP!—a clever but futile attempt to get radio DJs and music consumers to understand that this wasn’t the kind of joint where a svengali plucked an attractive woman out of obscurity and stood her in front of a bunch of hired hands. They were a project, a collective of like-minded folks who shared a specific love for Brill Building-era girl groups and 1960s pop songs, but not with the worshipful approach of nostalgia acolytes. Blondie weren’t trying to duplicate what had been done before, but instead cherry-picked the musical bits and pieces that they liked and refashioned them to meet their particular specifications, which was punk rock’s DIY ethos in action.