Svengaliobit: Kim Fowley

Kim Fowley, the man who brought together Joan Jett and Sandy West to form The Runaways, has died.

Fowley had survived polio in childhood. He attempted a solo career, but it was as producer, writer and general mover-and-shaker that he made his name. He worked with everyone - Lennon, Modern Lovers, Helen Reddy, but The Runaways were his finest hour. After they stopped working together in 1977, Fowley tried to recreate the magic with a number of other acts, but never quite got the formula right in the same way.

More recently, he tried his hand in the movies as well as keeping his hand in the music world.

Clem Burke issued a statement:

"Kim was a great and often misunderstood individual. When Blondie first came to Hollywood Kim was one of the legends we wanted to meet. We did meet him at the Tropicana motel and became friends. I had the privilege of sitting next to Kim at a screening at SXSW of the Runaways film. When it ended, I turned to Kim and told him he was the hero of the film. He seemed happy to hear that."

Fowley had recently been receiving treatment for cancer. He was 75. And he co-wrote this, with Joan Jett:

Glastonbury 2014: View from the sofa

"We're not going to go on about it" reassure Mark Radcliffe and Jo Whiley, leading off the late night live chunk of Glastonbury coverage on BBC Two.

But they do, of course.

And then when they hand over to Lauren Laverne in another part of the field, she can't help but talk about it, too.

And why wouldn't they? This year, clearly, isn't the Glastonbury of Metallica; it's the Glastonbury where the lights went out.

Trouble is, although Lauren had rather a good anecdote - about being chided for asking the bear-slaughterers if they'd bought the heavy metal thunder with them - the stuff that was most interesting about the power outage wasn't touched on.

(Incidentally, it wouldn't be Metallica's heavy metal thunder; Dolly Parton has brought a rainbow with her, and we all know what you have to endure to get one of those working.)

Normally, the BBC's Glastonbury coverage is padded with films of people who've paid silly money for tickets doing really dull things - giving us a taste of the "festival experience". This year, when it'd actually be really interesting to know what it was like to be in a city of tens of thousands of people when the electricity stopped being in the wires and was just in the sky - nothing.

Apart from Mark Radcliffe saying something about communal singing in a tattoo tent, there was no answer to the question 'what was it like on the site?'

Instead, the crisis was reduced to a short snatch of footage of Rudimental walking off the stage.

The big disappointment this year is the red button coverage - clearly all the love has been poured into the website. Three channels of music, more or less lobbed on screen; with whatever happens to be on TV given (it appears) a free pass.

So, at one point, you could have watched Elbow on BBC Three, or something else on BBC Two. If those options didn't delight you, you could press red to get three more bands - except one was Elbow and one was BBC Two.

What's the point of pushing the stream that's already on TV through the red button service?

And doing it so badly - for a good ten minutes, the "BBC Two" Glastonbury feed was so locked in to simulcasting BBC Two that it pushed out a great chunk of Newsnight. (If Jean-Claude Juncker was actually being inducted in the cabaret tent, my apologies to the red button team.)

I suppose it's fair to say that it's more surprising that there's a red button at all - with SmartTVs and Chromecasts and whatnot, it's easier than ever to get the rather good bbc.co.uk experience onto your TV.

(Slight grumble here - the Glastonbury content from iPlayer doesn't show up on the iPhone version of iPlayer, which makes it harder to enjoy on a TV. I know this is a bit like complaining that the handle on the cup the ambrosia comes in is a little fiddly to hold, but... worth mentioning.)

So, what of the bands themselves?

Arcade Fire, it's clear, have edged ever closer to vanishing over the Bono Horizon.

I know, I know...

... how can I possibly think that?

You know when the fireworks (literal fireworks) are at the start, not the end, of the set, that you're watching a band who are overdoing the spectacle.

Men made out of mirrors; the bobbleheads; two-faced skeletons (one of whom, distractingly, had a brand name of a morphsuit maker on his ass); a stage full of around thirty people at one; racoon make-up; pyrotechnics... it's just so fucking tiring to watch, and it's dressing up music that doesn't really need all this extra packing. You've written songs that are packed full of strong, striking images - why are you hiding them in the worst circus ever?

Elsewhere, Blondie were a little ragged around the edges - doing the high bit from Rapture would be difficult under normal circumstances, but Harry just-about nailed it on a stage, early in the day, outdoors. And the cover of (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party) was a delight - especially watching the ripple of 'oh! this is what this is!' run through the crowd at different speeds.

Sidenote: After last year's fuss about whether jokes about the Rolling Stones being old were okay, it's worth mentioning that Debbie Harry is 69 on Tuesday. But people don't obsess over it because jokes about Blondie being old were never a thing.

Also because she'd kick your butt.

Chvrches were great; and Drenge are still on course to become Mudhoney by the end of next year.

I collect, I reject: Bobbleheads

A message arrives from a retailer of bobbleheads, announcing a new toy in the range:

The [name redacted] figures have finally arrived (we just took this photo on the right). We apologize for the delay, but Drastic Plastic did an amazing job with her likeness and details.

Ah, yes. The delay while the bobblehead manufacturers were doing such a great job.

Here's their work:

Any ideas?

Apparently meant to be Debbie Harry.

Debbie Harry: A piece of cake

Admittedly, turning yourself into a cake effigy isn't everyday behaviour, but the NME's headline on the Debbie Harry story misses the point a bit:

Blondie's Debbie Harry butchers nude model of herself onstage

Or 'slices a cake onstage', if you want to be less extreme about it.

The NME admits it's just copied the story direct from the Daily Mail, but - not for the first time - you wonder if the point of being the NME should be not simply nodding along with everything it reads on the internet:

An inside source, meanwhile, described the performance as "controversial and unnecessary" before going on to add: "This is appalling for women all over the world who suffer domestic violence."

The Mail actually doesn't even pretend this is a "source", simply ascribing the quote to an "insider".

An insider of what? You wouldn't expect the Mail to bother with the question, but surely the NME might show a bit of curiosity about the quote it's typing out. Especially since it's potentially the sort of issue the NME used to care about - is it okay for a woman to cut up a cake of herself on stage? Or does it really represent (as the Mail suggests the audience claimed) violence against women?

Gordon in the morning: Wig out

This is an entire Gordon news story from this morning:

BLONDIE goes whitey as singer DEBBIE HARRY tries out the platinum look.

But Debbie, 65 - known for her yellow locks in the '70s - was sporting a wig at a New York charity bash.

Let's not even worry about how platinum and white hair colours are different. Let's not even worry about the suggestion that Debbie Harry was known for her hair rather than her music. The real oddity in those two sentences is the "but".

Now, I don't subscribe the idea that you can't start a sentence with "but", but...

Still, it's better than the jokey approach to Billy Ray Cyrus' divorce, which titters over how Miley will have an "Achy Breaky Heart". I guess we should be lucky it's just a divorce and not a death which Gordon's wheeled that out for.

You Keep Me Hanging On: 1974 Revisited - The new bands

1974. While the UK was thrashing about trying to decide who was in charge - last time round - these bands were coming together:



The Nits - Dutch Beatle-influenced pop briefly intersecting with Golden Earring. Actually, given The Beatles had recently been having a go at everything they could think of, it must have been hard for anyone to launch a record without someone spotting some Beatles influence.

[Buy: In The Dutch Mountain]



Poised to somehow pass off pub-rock and strippers as being punk, The Stranglers had their first rehearsal while Wilson chewed his nails.

[Buy: Decades Apart]



Hey, ho, let's go... The Ramones came together at a school in Forest Hill. Which is odd, considering they're all related, right?

[Buy Anthology]

Across New York...



Working for the time being under the name Angel And The Snake, the band who would become Blondie were wrestling themselves out of The Stilettos.


[Buy: Parallel Lines]

But while punk was coalescing, something else was stirring - a band who wouldn't release a record for four years, but would be a leap forward:



Japan. They'd be along to save us during the early Thatcher years.

[Buy: The Collection]

Part of You Keep Me Hanging On: 1974 revisited]

Glastonbury 1999: Blondie

More pickings from the festival a decade ago, and even a reactivated Blondie is still Blondie:



[Part of Glastonbury 1999]

Managerobit: Gary Kurfirst

Former manager and label executive Gary Kurfirst has died while holidaying in the Bahamas.

Kurfirst started out promoting gigs in Manhattan, and in 1969 created the New York Rock Festival, inadvertently providing one of the inspirations for Woodstock. He also ran his own record labels and publishing businesses, but it as a manager that he really secured his career. In his time, he represented The Ramones, The Talking Heads, Jane's Addicition, Mick Jones, Shirley Manson and The Eurythmics.

The cause of his death at the age of 61 is unknown; he is survived by his wife, his mother, two children and two grandchildren.

Debbie Harry's embryo face

We love Debbie Harry - even when she tried to insist on being called Deborah Harry, we still loved her. The only thing is...

"I had these cells injected in to me in my early thirties," Debbie reveals. "I read that the famous heart surgeon Christian Barnard was involved in a Swiss clinic researching fresh cell replacement.

"I went along to Switzerland to have a course of 11 injections, from the embryos of black sheep.

"They would take from the liver, glands, bone and whatever and make up these injections.

"It turned out that I was the youngest person to ever have the treatment. Whether that treatment lasted this long, I don't know. But I feel great."

... we don't think we'll kiss her on the cheek, thank you.

Thirty years of straight lines

Coming soon, according to stuff leaking onto the internet, a 30th anniversary celebration tour of Parallel Lines. Whitney Matheson suggests this could be why Debbie Harry hadn't been doing Blondie stuff on her recent jaunts; presumably, also, the UK festival dates will be a chance for the band to get their grooves sorted before kicking off on the birthday dates.

Are Blondie, EMI ripping off Peter Leeds?

That's what he believes. He managed Blondie during 1978 & 1979 and, for some reason, has been earning a percentage of the band's take ever since. We're not quite sure why.

It looks like Blondie are a little less than thrilled to be paying a guy who hasn't done a thing for them in nearly three decades, and have decided that instead of calculating his slice of the cake on gross earnings, they're subtracting the payments to producers before coming up with a figure. Leeds insists this is a "renegotiation" of the 1979 contract of pay-off, and is dragging the whole thing to court.

He's taking a risk - if the courts do agree with Blondie's reading of the document and their new interpretation, Leeds could be leaving himself open for a counter-action reclaiming twenty-five odd years of overpayment.

Dreaming is free

The coming together of two of the creeping weeds choking theatre ("two of the great themes of modern theatre") as the play-adpated-from-a-well-known-movie meets the musical-based-on-back-catalogue, as someone pokes Blondie songs into Desperately Seeking Susan. Debbie Harry's even written a single new song to go with the old songs, which makes it even more like a greatest hits collection.

Coming next week: Romancing The Stone, with Carter USM songs dropped in at random points.

Debbie Harry's charmed life

As if the story of surviving one maniac - Ted Bundy - wasn't enough, now it turns out Debbie Harry also has a tale about coming face-to-face with not convicted of any crime as of this moment gun love Phil Spector:

"He pulled a gun, that notorious thing he does. He stuck it in my boot. And he went 'Bang.'

I thought, 'Get me out of here! I want to go home!'

It's his schtick, you know but why a person would be walking around carrying a .45 automatic in their home... and now he's finally gone and done it."

Or maybe not, depending on what the jury thinks. Let's hope Debbie doesn't now find herself besieged by bloodthirsty NRA gunophiles explaining that if everyone walked around their homes carrying 45s, then Pearl Harbour would never have happened, or some equally guff-like guff.

Dunst defends doing Debbie

In perhaps a sign that prepublicity for the movie isn't going as smoothly as the studios would probably have hoped, Kirsten Dunst has started trying to defend her casting in the lead on the Deborah Harry biopic:

"Debbie chose me for this role so anyone who disputes this can take it up with her.

I'll work hard on this character because she is the coolest woman of all time."

Just as a general point, you probably shouldn't ask someone "who would you want to play you in the story of your life" - for example, in No Rock - The Movie, I'd cast John Simm to play me. The rest of the world, though, would be putting in a call to Danny DeVito.

Tony Snow prepares a "takes one to know one" response

Only a sister paper of Fox News like The Sun could think that calling George Bush an "arsehole and a cunt" could harm Lily Allen's chances of selling records in the US. Her target market, surely, is vaguely young, not-quite-sure-why-they're-disaffected young folk who will lap this sort of thing up mistaking it's political satire of some sort. It's not like she's going to be selling to the Texan country market anyway.

An eyewitness did see this assault on Bush:

“George Bush is an arsehole and a cunt.” She also called Tony Blair a “cunt’s bitch”.

Londoner Lily — who is dating DJ Seb Chew — went on to announce she was “probably bisexual” because she was tired of men with “little dicks”. One fan at the concert in San Diego, California, said: “Lily got really drunk on stage.

“She then started calling Bush names and the audience went a bit quiet.

“She also said that San Diego has the best crack whores she’d ever seen, and that she was thinking of becoming a lesbian.

“And she moaned she was tired of her own songs so did covers of Keane, Kaiser Chiefs and Blondie.”

We're a little lost as to what "probably bisexual" is - you dont know what you find sexually attractive by your age, Lily? Still, we're glad you're as bored of your songs as the rest of us.

Jack off into Oxford

The slightly bemusing Jack radio format, which is often described as "whatever radio" or "like an iPod shuffle but on radio" is coming to Britain this month. Oxford, in fact, which means Morse will be turning in his grave.

The basic idea of Jack, a station with revolving music instead of fixed playlist, sounds appealing. But the trouble with an iPod shuffle is its attractiveness depends on who's filled the device, and it's clear that the people suggesting the Jack playlist are the same people who produce more standard radio playlists. After all, this is what the BBC says Jack in New York played one hour:

Queen - Fat Bottomed Girls
Adam Ant - Goody Two Shoes
The Killers - Somebody Told Me
Fleetwood Mac - You Make Lovin' Fun
Van Halen - Jump
Hootie and the Blowfish - Good Times Roll
Cars - Good Times Roll
Gary Numan - Cars
Billy Idol - Eyes Without A Face
Blondie - Heart of Glass
Guns 'n' Roses - November Rain
Boston - Peace of Mind
The Police - Every Breath You Take
U2 - Vertigo

(BBC News points out that "in the end, it will be the listeners who decide if they'd rather Jack - even if it does play Fleetwood Mac.")

This might look like a radical playlist if you've spent a month with your head trapped in a box with Magic for a month, but a load of mostly MOR light-rock isn't really risk taking. And if the attraction of a station is it's like putting your iPod on random... wouldn't you be better off putting your iPod on random and avoiding the adverts?

music radio

Living in the reel world

Coming soon from Hollywood: A Debbie Harry biopic. A proper one, rather than a low-budget TV movie one. Apparently Kirsten Dunst is being lined up for the title role, which may prove to be one of the more questionable casting decisions of our age.

music debbie harry blondie kirsten dunst

TRADITIONAL VALUES

Of course, their PR people will go into overdrive announcing they're like The Ramones crossed with Blondie and a dose of Romeoe Void bunged in for good measure.

But they sort of do manage to check off quite a few of those, and a few more besides.

And they're much more fun than the Scissor Sisters.

Meet The Human Value, about to release last year's debut album for the first time in the UK. And they're going to running around throwing their clothes all over the place:

Thursday 4th September: Business and Pleasure at The Enterprise, Chalk Farm Road
Wednesday 6th September: Tigertrap Records Clubnite, at a London venue yet to have the deposit paid
Thursday 7th September: Blue Cat Café, Stockport
Saturday 9th September: Cherry Bomb Disco at Carter's Old. No 7, Barnsley
Wednesday 13th September: The Loft at The Graduate, Cambridge
Saturday 16th September Venue: Sugarcubes Night Club, Lincoln
Wednesday 20th September: Korova, Liverpool
Thursday 21st September: Live at the Witch Trials at The Venue, Dumfries
Friday 22nd September: Misery of Sound at West Coast Rock Café, Blackpool
Saturday 23rd September: The Face at The Tube Club, Archway
Thursday 28th September: Go Ape at Moles, Bath
Friday 29th September: Redi Nights at Central Station, Wrexham
Monday 2nd October Dublin Castle, Camden
Friday 13th October: Vale, Glasgow
Thursday 26th October Club: Hang The DJ's at Isaacs, Barnsley
Friday 10th November Club: X-TRA Light at The Bar on Fryer Street in The Chubb Building, Wolverhampton
Friday 24th November: Burn Down The Disco at The Arches, Barnsley

All over the place, although Barnsley quite often, for some reason.

music the human value

REMODELED CARS; BLONDIE CONCLUDING

The Cars are returning, although Ric Ocasek isn't going to be on board. It's not that the band didn't want him, it was just every time they sat down to send him an invite by email nobody could remember how to spend his name. After a nasty moment when contracts were nearly exchanged with Rick Okasec of Idaho on lead vocals, they finally decided to get Todd Rundgren to front up what they're calling The New Cars.

The New Cars. Bless them. Obviously they wouldn't have been honest enough to go with The Old Bangers, but The Vintage Cars might have been nearer the mark.

The band are releasing new records, and plotting a tour with the bits of Blondie still functioning after the Hall of Fame unpleasantness.

Blondie, apparently, are thinking of taking their bow from live music after this tour, although they might knock out another record at some point in the future. There are no plans for Todd Rundgren to take over on vocals.

music todd rundgren the cars blondie

THIS IS NOT A NEWS STORY

We can't even bring ourselves to name the telephone company we've barely heard of who has decided to carry out a poll to find - of course - the greatest phone-related song of all time. We don't know how much these things cost, but clearly it's regarded as cheap publicity. In case you care:

1. Hanging On The Telephone - Blondie
2. I Just Called To Say I Love You - Stevie Wonder
3. Call Me - Blondie
4. Call On Me - Eric Prydz
5. Ring Ring - Abba

Eh? No Rah Band? No Hello, This Is Joanie? None of ELO's telephonic songs? And surely Call On Me isn't about telephoning?

music blondie marketing