Cats Are Grey

(click image to enlarge)

On June 22nd, 2008 Blondie played at the Nokia Theater in New York as part of their tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of their 1978 masterpiece Parallel Lines.

The lineup for the tour featured Debbie Harry (vocals), Chris Stein (guitar), Clem Burke (drums), Paul Carbonara (guitar), Leigh Fox (bass) and Matt Katz Bohen (keyboards). Of the six, only Harry, Stein and Burke were founding members of the band so I chose only to draw the three of them. Ms. Harry is depicted as a bunny, Mr. Stein a dog and Mr. Burke a tiger.

The drawing takes place on the set of Blondie’s 1981 music video Rapture, as seen in the still frame below. You can click the picture to see the full video.

Along with Blondie, the video features dancer William Barnes, graffitti artist Lee Quinones , hip hop icon Fab 5 Freddy and artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. The same year as the Rapture video Basquiat starred in one of my favorite films, Downtown 81, which featured cameos by Quinones and Freddy as well as Blondie members Harry, Burke, Stein and keyboardist Jimmy Destri. The film was written by Glenn O’Brien who hosted the public access show TV Party which often featured Stein, Basquiat, Freddy and Harry.

Setlist:

From Parallel Lines:

Hanging On The Telephone

One Way Or Another

Picture This

Fade Away and Radiate

Pretty Baby

I Know But I Don’t Know

11:59

Will Anything Happen?

Sunday Girl

Heart Of Glass

I’m Gonna Love You Too

Just Go Away

Whiteout (from Necessary Evil)

Screaming Skin (From No Exit)

Necessary Evil (From Necessary Evil)

(I’m Always Touched By Your) Prescence, Dear (from Plastic Letters)

Rapture/No Exit (from Autoamerican/No Exit)

Encore:

The Tide is High (from Autoamerican)

“My Heart Will Go On” (Celine Dion cover)

“Get Off My Cloud” (Rolling Stones cover)

I’m sure better wordsmiths than I have said plenty about the show so I’ll simply say that it was amazing and I look forward to many more Blondie shows in the future. Here is a photo I took of Debbie and Chris:

As a side note, I recently found a copy of Jimmy Destri’s solo record Heart On A Wall. I am completely surprised by how much I love this record and encourage any Blondie fans to check it out. Clem Burke drums and Debbie and Chris appear as well. You can check out the whole record here. Recommended!

11:59 – Blondie (from The Platinum Collection or Parallel Lines)

“Numbers Don’t Count (On Me) – Jimmy Destri (from Heart On A Wall)