Still 'Koo Koo' for Debbie Harry

Chris Stein reports on Twitter that he just signed off on his U.S. book deal for his memoir -- this is going to be good! -- that the new Blondie album is terrific ("if I do say so myself) and the Debbie/Giger book with all the intel on their collaboration with him is out in April 

I joked to my friend that this was the book "dozens have been clamoring for" as I reached for my book about the film "Union City"(!). 

Exciting times to be a Blondie fan! Pre-order HERE.

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!

Song of the Day: 'Inner City Spillover' by Debbie Harry

This quirky, reggae-infused ditty was always one of my favorite songs on Debbie Harry's debut solo album, "Koo Koo," which is about to become a jigsaw puzzle. (FYI: My birthday is June 8!

Song of the Day: 'Now I Know You Know' by Debbie Harry

I never shy away from an opportunity to overanalyze Debbie Harry's solo career, so you can imagine how thrilled I was when my friend Greg sent me a new article by Ted Mills for Open Culture, When Debbie Harry Combined Artistic Forces with H.R. Giger. As a overarching theory, I've always felt her solo records failed to catch on because the material was noticeably weaker than Blondie's heyday. But if one was to have worked, the first -- with Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards hot off revitalizing Diana Ross's career producing and Blondie riding the wave of three straight No. 1 singles -- was the most likely. In the past I've hypothesized that "Backfired" was too urban to have been the first single -- ditto for "The Jam Was Moving" as the second -- and thought maybe "Surrender" would have been a better pick. I've also admitted that despite an overall affection for the album, it could have used a couple more strong songs. (Forty years on and without hearing them, I'm still a little hazy about which one is "Chrome" and which one is "Oasis," a confusion that doesn't exist on any of the classic six Blondie LPs.) 

But now Open Culture theorizes that the partnership with H.R. Giger -- whose work Debbie and Chris Stein fell in love with after seeing "Alien" -- is what likely doomed "Koo Koo," resulting in a commercially unfriendly album cover and two videos whose style is completely ill-suited for the music -- a fatal misstep the same year MTV launched and was in dire need of content. This isn't the first time the artwork has been faulted -- it was banned in the U.K., after all -- but is perhaps the best explanation as to why. 

One commenter described this video as "that one time when Debbie Harry escaped Blondie, visited the set of Alien, and told everyone that she was Kate Bush" -- something I suspect very few people were hoping for from the Marilyn Monroe of punk. 

Might fans have surrendered to this?



Here's a great contemporaneous interview from 1981 that comes and goes from YouTube. Enjoy it while it lasts!

'Koo Koo,' Too?

I don't know about you, but I'd love for Nile Rodgers to take another crack at "Koo Koo"!

Debbie Harry's 'Koo Koo' Turns 35

I've written a lot about the Blondie singer's solo debut -- HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE to point you to a few. But still I can't resist marking its 35th birthday after coming across this poster, which I amazingly did not have. 

QUESTION: What's your favorite Deb solo album?

I did, however, have the (very cool) light box and combo "Koo Koo"/"Best of Blondie" promo poster.

Rod Serling Presents 'Rebel Heart of Glass'

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#LoveIt

'Koo Koo' for YouTube

Google didn't pay $1.65 billion for YouTube back in 2006 because it wasn't the greatest invention ever, yet it still never ceases to amaze me what new things pop up every day. Last night I was referred to this interview with H.R. Giger, Chris Stein and Debbie Harry that aired on BBC2 the day "Koo Koo" was released in 1981. The chat took place in Giger's home in Switzerland, where he was working on the "films" for two unidentified tracks from the album, which presumably turned out to be "Backfired" and "Now I Know You Know." The piece makes makes effective use of "Europa," the haunting instrumental opener of "Autoamerican," which my friend Greg and I always dreamed about using as the soundtrack for a film we never wrote. Giger is every bit as weird as you would expect the guy who won an Oscar for the monsters in "Alien," but his English as a Third, Fourth or perhaps Fifth language explanation of his inspiration for the "Koo Koo" cover -- a mixture of his experience receiving acupuncture and Debbie being hte queen of punk, which makes him think of safety pins -- is a revelation after all these years. Debbie and Chris are as awkward as ever, if not as difficult to pull answers out of. But Debbie has her cute moments, and they seem really on top of the world. A must-watch for any hardcore fan. And to think there once was a time when you would base your life around not missing things on television for fear they would never air again!

And then there was the Giger documentary in 2006, in which Debbie reflects on her "Koo Koo" experience:

Color Me Your Color, Baby

Wow. This is the first time I've ever seen the original Brian Aris photo that H.R. Giger painted to create the controversial album cover for Debbie Harry's 1981 solo album, "Koo Koo." Strikingly beautiful.

And speaking of the '80s ...

Just came across this incredible footage of Stephen Sprouse ...

Song of the Day: 'Get Lucky' by Daft Punk

Chart Rigger explains the year's most hyped song to date this way: Pharrell does the vocals, Nile Rodgers does the disco and the robots do the razzle dazzle. The Chic beat is unmistakable, and comes on the same day that my remastered and expanded copy of Debbie Harry's "Koo Koo" arrived in the mail. (No joke: Not even counting the light box, I've bought Deb's first solo album at least five times. I feel like I've paid for both of her face lifts!)

In addition to adding exended versions of "Backfired," "The Jam Was Moving" and "Inner City Spillover," the "Koo Koo" reissue also boasts a beautiful new booklet, chock full of photos and a lengthy, song-by-song essay about the making of the album by Christian John Wikane. I've cut way back on buying CDs, but this was an exception I was willing to make.

Music Box: Cuckoo for 'Koo Koo'

Couldn't help but smile when I saw Erasure singer Andy Bell choosing Debbie Harry's ill-fated solo debut, "Koo Koo," as something he "advocates" on the back page of the new Advocate magazine. "The first solo album ... is full of quirky rhythms, raps, and groove. It's proof that this lady has always been way ahead of the curve." Couldn't agree with Andy more, even if nearly 30 years later I still maintain my contention that it wasn't as good as it should have been given the people involved in the album's production (the legendary Chic Organization, Deb and musical genius Chris Stein). Rather than sounding like a collaboration of these four gifted artists, some of it still strikes me as a "project" that could have just as easily been presented to, say, Cher, Sheena or Liza, people who are vocalists rather than musical artists, like Debbie. 

Perhaps the fact that they foursome -- Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards being Chic, of course -- only collaborated on two songs ("Oasis and "Under Arrest") played into this feeling, although I can't say it's totally obvious who wrote which of the other eight tracks. Maybe my expectations were just too high, or maybe I let its lack of success influence my reaction -- which would bolster Andy Bell's "ahead of its time" sentiments. 

Either way, I'm sitting here listening to "Inner City Spillover" -- having just heard "Surrender," "Chrome," "The Jam Was Moving" and "Jump Jump" -- and while I don't think to myself, "THIS should have been a smash!," the way I do when I hear "I"m Gonna Love You Too" or even "French Kissing in the U.S.A.," which was perfect for 1986, I do think this is a really interesting album. So like Andy Bell, I too ADVOCATE a little "Koo Koo" in your collection, even if I'm not quite cuckoo about it.


Rings a bell

It Makes the People Keep Grooving

I've got just one word to describe this little-seen clip of Debbie Harry promoting "The Jam Was Moving," the second single from her debut solo album, "Koo Koo": Wow!

It's made to look like she's actually recording the song -- but clearly she's lip-synching for the camera. (Anyone know what this was actually from?) For reasons that are completely unclear to me, the funky Nile Rodgers-Bernard Edwards-penned song stalled at No. 82 on the Billboard chart -- and failed to chart at all in the U.K. (And all this time I "they" had such better taste than we do!) However, the album's first single -- the prophetically titled "Backfired" -- just missed the U.S. top 40 (peaking at No. 43, sadly Harry's biggest solo single to date) while hitting No. 32 in the U.K.

Clockwise from top left: The U.S. "Backfired" single; the U.K. "Jam Was Moving" (even though it was a bigger "hit" in America, I don't remember ever seeing a single here; the Mexican and Japanese "Backfired" singles

Read all Music Box posts HERE.