Tuesday, November 09, 2021

Song of the Day: 'Military Rap' by Debbie Harry

 

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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