When I met you in the restaurant, you could tell I was no debutante

Continuing my trip back through the 1979 album charts.

16/12/79 : Eat To The Beat - Blondie

I'm not sure I was aware this album existed - I expect I'll recognise a single or two and be somewhat unimpressed by the rest of it.

Yeah, I recognised "Dreaming" (although I couldn't have told you that was what it was called) and "Atomic" (and what a fine song that is). I also particularly liked "The Hardest Part" and I reckon Beth Ditto listened to it before she wrote "Standing In The Way Of Control" - in fact a lot of this sounds quite influential on 90s/00s indie. And those were the bits I liked - where they're straying off that path on things like "Sound-a-sleep" (a weird slow ballad) and "Victor" (just too noisy) it doesn't work quite so well for me. But overall I liked this way more than I was expecting to - Debbie's voice is pretty good on it and the drums and guitars push things forward relentlessly which made this was a pleasant surprise. The album cover is strange though because there were at least five members in the group at the time.

We're even further down the chart at #17 this week on their twelfth week of a 38 week run, with it having peaked at #1 in its debut week. The top five this week were Rod Stewart and ABBA best-ofs, Pink Floyd, The Police and an Elvis best-of and the highest new entry was The Clash (#9). 

Wikipedia tells us its their fourth album and is "primarily pop" but "includes a diverse range of styles in the songs rock, disco, new wave, punk, reggae, and funk, as well as a lullaby". According to Mike Chapman, the producer, the volume of drugs consumed during the recording sessions did not make for happy times and he ended up thinking "Was this the record that the public was waiting for, or was it just the waste of seven sick minds?" - which doesn't sound like a great journey, but I guess it worked out OK in the end.  

There are also an interesting couple of names that pop up as backing singers on the album - Ellie Greenwich who co-wrote a load of 60s bangers including "Da Doo Ron Ron", "Be My Baby", "Then He Kissed Me", "Do Wah Diddy Diddy", "Chapel of Love", "Leader of the Pack" and "River Deep – Mountain High" (which is quite the list, so I'm surprised I didn't recognise her name) and Lorna Luft who is Judy Garland's daughter. The critics were nice enough about it, although they seem to be split between saying it was either not as good as or nicely building on Parallel Lines and it did well commercially but only made #1 here, getting to #2 in Sweden, #3 in New Zealand and Finland, #4 in Denmark and #17 in the US.

So how much will a copy set you back on discogs.com? For some strange reason, it's not offering me an average price but it seems like you're gonna have to pay about a tenner for a decent copy - or you could go for the signed copy for a mere £175! I'm not sure my wallet would quite stretch to that, but I thought this was a decent album which I enjoyed a lot more than I was expecting to. 

09/12/79 - Another enjoyable album
23/12/79 - Some well-done cheese

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