BLONDIE | LIVE REVIEW
****
Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff, fri 10 Nov
From the lighting to the line outside the Motorpoint arena last Friday night, Blondie’s return to Cardiff, as part of their tour for latest album, Pollinator, showed signs of pop, punk and promise.
As Debbie Harry, Chris Stein and Clem Burke et al. burst onto the stage for their opener, the set, the screen & the strip-lights collaborated to blast a fresh work of monochromatic art at the gathering masses every few minutes for the entire evening – and whilst the spellbound congregation were quick to find their seats, wowing at the scene before them, Blondie were even quicker to rock them back to their feet.
Anyone expecting Ms Harry & the boys to ride the slow train to a climax of classics before the gig gathered momentum was in for a welcome shock – when they smashed the roof off the arena with an early offering of Call Me.
And what a stunning offering it was. Giorgio Moroder’s high-energy production for the classic 1980 movie, American Gigolo, had the crowd punching air & kicking back chairs, from the very first chord.
Whilst half of the crowd turned into an army of Debbies at that point, the other half – those who misspent their younger days obsessing over Richard Gere’s wardrobe, swagger & little black-book – suddenly became him. But all were treated to a foot-stomping treble shot of adrenaline by the powerhouse rendition.
The night continued as the band peppered the classics over a selection of new tracks, keeping both generations of fans bouncing to their feet every few songs.
Although Blondie’s latest album is a welcome return to raw rock – since the band reformed to record it live in studio, abandoning the computer-generated techniques employed for the previous few albums – the audience of predominantly older fans (their latest generation of web-browsing fans possibly found the ticket price a little out of range) were at their most riotous when treated to the music of their youth.
And so was Debbie. At 72 years of age it would have been an easy choice to rest the pipes & the dancing shoes and simply promote the new stuff…but Blondie haven’t lasted four decades by doing things the easy way.
As Clem Burke attested in his interview with this magazine, the band have proved unmovable on the music scene because they make the tough choices, because they experiment with genre and because they persistently walk the line between offering new sounds, whilst never forgetting their roots… or their true fans.
Other stand out classics in the setlist were, of course, Rapture, Heart of Glass, Maria and an encore of Union City Blues. But what no one anticipated was a cover of the Beastie Boys. As the crowd screamed “fight, for your right, to paaartay!”, they nearly blew the doors off the hinges.
Although there were a few drunken murmurs questioning the whereabouts of Sunday Girl and Denis, Denis leaving the arena, most of the fans left the arena satisfied and happy to have booked their tickets early.
words JON SUTTON
photo MARTIN JONES
