Yeah. Worn by the old school classic rock types. Those guys (the same guys that the punks were rebelling against) were the anti-disco types. Punks seemed to pretty much ignore disco.
I remember hearing about Roseanne Cash intro-ing a song saying it “Puts the cunt back into country.”
Apparently her mommy and daddy were in the audience, and weren’t amused.
Now if that isn’t a punk attitude …
That line’s also been credited to Carlene Carter. Her parents were June Carter & Country musician Carl Smith. She was Johnny Cash’s step-daughter, although June & John referred to all the girls in their blended family as “daughters.”
Carlene was married to Nick Lowe for a while–making him one of the famous “ex sons in law of Johnny Cash”–a group including Marty Stewart & Rodney Crowell. I loved her Musical Shapes LP (with backing by Nick & Dave Edmunds)–again, more music that’s difficult to classify.
She went through some bad times with hard drugs a few years ago, but is making music again. (It’s a family tradition.)
She was an awful, drug-addled bitch during her drug years, apparently. My drummer was in her band back then. She was sleeping around on her then-husband, the aforementioned Nick Lowe, and skipped out on the band so she could use the money to fund her coke habit. Hope she is in a better place now…
Totally agree
Some are saying the band was Rap (Rapture) That was ONE song - ONE.
Ridiculous. That doesn’t make them DMC
Nine years later ;). Though, for what little it is worth, Chris Stein agrees. He considered Blondie a pop band. However I am pretty certain that he would have simultaneously have defined NYC punk as Wordman did. As a cultural phenomena, not a musical style per se.
Post-Punk
Post punk what?
Non-genre band. Did girl group, pop, rock, disco, reggae, etc.
Pigeonholes are for squares.
Definitely New Wave. Btw, when I first saw the thread title, my first thought was the comic strip Blondie 
. It took me a minute, I guess it’s one of those days.
They actually had some musical talent and didn’t look like derelicts. So, New Wave.
Bwahahahahahahahahahahaa. <wipes eyes> That’s one of the most wrong things I’ve ever heard. Just saw them with Billy Zoom on guitar again, btw. John Doe doesn’t age at all.
I’ve always seen New Wave starting as a sub genre of Punk. It’s still Punk, but it’s able to get played on commercial radio without the sponsors losing their minds for whatever reason.
I think if you’re describing Blondie as “punk” you are talking about the original punk scene in NY and not about detail obsessed genrefication and exclusion that happened after the fact. And you would not be wrong to do so.
It was a movement that had a lot of freedom at that time, because it was just starting out. And what’s wrong with that. I’d like to know.
Yeah, looking back 9 years ago when I first answered this question, I said punk/New Wave, and I’d still feel comfortable going with that, but that whole punk/post-punk/New Wave classification for bands can be a bit of a blur.
I’m a little too young to have understood any of this at the time.
But if X, Talking Heads, and the *Ramones *aren’t “punk,” then are Bad Religion “punk”? Are any of the retro-rock’n’roll and ska bands? If not, at that point punk is just bands imitating Black Flag and bands who can’t play. And maybe Jello Biafra.
And we have words for that: “Hardcore.” “Can’t Play.” Jello Biafra is always punk though.
In all fairness, the Blondie you hear on records was not the band that performed at CBGBs. They might have been more pop than others there, but they were not the Disco band that they became later.
Ramones are another genre-defying group. Seemingly punk but with songs like I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend and covers of Needles and Pins*, etc. they were sometimes just plain pop. The contrast between those songs and stuff like Beat on the Brat is vast. And then they mixed things up like in The KKK Took My Baby Away. What is that?
Sometimes you just gotta forgo labels.
- And not in a Sid Vicious My Way anti-style.
What the hell is this thing?
blondie was the 70s version of no doubt ,but the earliest known recording of them “you just had to laugh” * which was a demo they didn’t sound like hardcore punk them
*I don’t know if that was the actual name but I don’t have the rhino cd it was on anymore
according pbs’s history of rock heart of glass was originally reggae with guitars but the producer talked them into changing it