This vintage ad for Debbie Harry's "KooKoo" popped up on social media the other day and made me smile. (I sure wish it were higher resolution so I could see the Top 60 that week, how I loved to follow the U.K. charts back in the day!) As it would happen, people weren't that keen on getting the Blondie chanteuse on her own -- "KooKoo" supposedly went silver in the U.K. and gold in the U.S. but surely that was for units shipped rather than bought, as evidenced by its ubiquity in cutout bins -- but I do have two anecdotes about Deb's ill-fated solo debut. AXS TV currently has a series called "A Year in Music" and rather bizarrely, the 1981 episode gives "KooKoo" a rather lengthy segment, including clips of the "Backfired" and "The Jam Was Moving" videos, neither of which I ever saw once contemporaneously(!).
Even better, my friend Greg used to regale us with tales of his playing the album's most outrageous track -- "Military Rap" -- on the overnight shift at Kinko's near the campus of the University of Nebraska in Lincoln back in the day. I can only imagine the looks on the faces of the customers!
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