One Song - Blondie's "Call Me"

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

The importance of Blondie’s “Call Me” can’t be quantified in sales alone. Sure, it was a global hit. But it’s also a part of cinematic history: It’s played during the iconic opening sequence of the movie American Gigolo, starring Richard Gere. It is one of the signature compositions of the man they call the “godfather of disco”, Giorgio Moroder. And let’s not forget the vocal and lyrical contributions of the legendary singer, Debbie Harry. Join hosts Diallo Riddle and LUXXURY as the break down this classic track.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So Diallo, today's song was a monster hit. It topped the Billboard Hot 100 for six weeks. It was the biggest selling single in the U.S. in 1980. Is that true? It is true. This was the biggest hit of that year, and it was also number one in the UK and Canada. But this song's importance can't be quantified in sales alone because it also brought us, Mr. Richard Gear, driving down the PCH in a Mercedes-Benz,

drop-top convertible looking hot. And it also gave us a mainstream pop song about male sex work. Yes, it did. And it also gave us a genius Italian composer. dubbed the godfather of disco. He's also a personal hero of mine. All of this in one song. Mine, too, luxury.

The song is Call Me by Blondie. The movie it's featured in is American Gigolo. And that genius composer, who will be discussing at length, in addition to the band, is the one and only Georgio Maroder. It's one song, and that song is Call Me. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddell. And I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter luxury, aka the guy who talks about interpolation on TikTok.

Luxury, let's talk about Call Me. Let's start with Blondie, the band, and the scene that they emerged from. Right. Well, it's funny because we had an episode a few months ago, we talked about, yeah, yeah, yeah, as we talked about maps. This feels a little bit like a companion piece because... Totally. New York... It's 20 years earlier.

It's art rock. It's downtown. It's punk rock. It's the convergence of lots of different scenes. And the geography matters. New York has a history of, like, cross-pollinating different areas of, like, in the 60s, you've got Andy Warhol, and then there's the Velvet Underground, and there's music. and art.

There's like this vibrant art scene. Fashion. It's all convergent. Yeah. But it's still New York in the 1980s, so there's still a thriving music scene. Right. There are still people trying to find the next Beatles, the next Led Zeppelin. And specifically in the mid-70s, we have this place called CBGB, which was...

What does CBGB stand for? It stands for country, bluegrass and blues. Crazy. Right? The gentleman hilly crystal, or crystal, I'm not sure, who founded it, you know, once upon a time, it was intended, I guess, to be focusing on those genres. But in the mid-70s, it was just kind of a run-down place and a rundown part of town. And if you lived in New York, it was down on the Bowery.

Yeah. And, uh, it's on Bowery, literally. You know, what's funny now is like the Bowery is still like, you know, it's still got a little bit of that New York grind, but not really. Like it, but back then, like, this is like crazy Bowery. Oh, yeah. It was a grimy place. It was a little bit sketch.

It was dangerous. Like, literally not a place that was safe to necessarily walk around at night by yourself, you know. So the Bowery is the scene. CBGBs is the venue. And you've got a bunch of. really famous bands that come out of this scene. Now, we often kind of overly simplify and call it the punk movement, but really what Blondie

exemplifies is how diverse punk was. So you've got television, you've got the Dead Boys, you've got Blondie, you've got talking heads, all of these bands are formed in this moment in the mid-70s, but they all sound the Ramones, how could I leave them out? And then I always associated the New York Dolls with this, but I think you were telling me earlier, like, it sort of goes the Velvet Underground, and that segues into the New York Dolls, and we're still sort of based around Maxis, Kansas City, which is a little bit uptown.

Right. And then it kind of like, not uptown, but like it's a little further up on Park Avenue. And then the center of gravity shifts towards CBGBs, which I love this one quote, and David Byrne, I think we talked about this on a really early episode of this podcast, but David Byrne said to create a scene, and he was a part of the CBGV scene. He's like, you have to have an area that's cheap enough where artists who just do art, you can afford to live and commute there. And also you have to have a.

night where the drinks are basically free. So that, you know, because none of these artists have money. So they have to be able to come for free, you know, imbibe and then play the music. And they aren't necessarily very, like, skilled on their instruments. So the alcohol probably helps the sloppiness look, feel good and sound good to the audience. That's a great quote. And I love that idea because it really brings us to this moment in New York where it's not New York 20, you know, today.

At the time, it's a grimy place. It's a dangerous place. Way cheaper. So this is possible for artists of all stripes to kind of like hole up in the warehouse and like try new stuff, maybe not even focusing on what's on the radio or even focusing on getting great at their instruments, but just trying to get out there and make something.

And Blondie and all these bands kind of fit. That's one thing that brings them all together. They're just like, let's make music in front of an audience no matter what our skill set may or may not be. You know, hearing you talk, it's actually depressing because it's clear to me that as much time has passed between Blondie and the yay-a-as as and right now. Yeah.

Oh, damn. That's a good point. So if we went to New York right now, I'm not sure that we could even find, like, a scene right now just because it is so expensive to live in New York. I hear people talking about, oh, if you go to Detroit, you know, there are artists in like these abandoned old beautiful homes that were built in, like, 1906. Right. So maybe we all need to move to Detroit. But there's a cultural stew that Blondie, you know, is in. That's right.

How does that group come together? So another thing that people don't always think about when they think about punk rock and CBGBs as kind of a monolith is that. But as Chris Stein from Blondie himself, the co-founder with Debbie Harry, Oh, Christine, yep. And original songwriter, the two of them, for the core of the band to this day. Chris Stein talks about how CBGBs at the time had two factions. And I don't know how warring they were versus friendly, but musically and with their intentions and with their ambitions, there were a group of punks in CBGBs that were more art-focused

and more just like, we're going to try to make a noise, get our voice heard, be loud and fast and whatever. Maybe the dead boys are more in that category. I think the Ramones might be in the middle. But Blondie themselves were striving to create something that would be on the radio. They were trying to be big. They were swinging for the fences. Wow. So it's interesting. Is Talking Hands are part of that? You know, he didn't mention them by name. And it's, I don't, when he said that quote, I was like, I wonder which camp the Talking Hands are in, because I'm not really sure. I know that they were coming from literally a RISD art school background. So they would technically be in the art rock camp. But like, they seem to, they ambitious to me too. They're making a pop song. Even with the lyrics that don't make sense, it does seem a little bit more like eyes on a larger audience than television, which you get the sense of like, they were just... They were being experimental. They were trying to do what they hadn't heard. They were trying to put it together and their songs were longer. They had meandering solos, et cetera. And the lyrics were not necessarily, they're ambiguous. You wouldn't necessarily understand, like, the storytelling would be more sort of poetic as opposed

to like a narrative. So all this... I'm glad you bring up storytelling because, look, on the show, we talk about art versus commerce. And I think about, like, Andrew Bajowski's movies are decidedly less ambitious than some of his contemporary. What are some of his movies? I don't know. I mean, well, you can look over it. He's sort of like, he's known as sort of like the founder of mumblecore in movies or whatever. But like, if you look at Lena Dunham, she's sort of kind of from the same area.

Yeah, yeah, I guess you could lump that in. I think they had sort of like, like talking heads, like Blondy had like a larger audience in mind. Yeah. As opposed to some who just make the movies and it's entirely just for themselves to stay. in that sort of like art corner. And to be clear, I don't think it's necessarily a mon-like only one thing. I think that all artists, all creators probably have a little bit of both. They want to tell their story.

They want an audience. They want to be heard. They're always balancing that a little bit with like, what's something new and innovative I haven't seen before. But I'm also going to mix it with, say, a story structure that has been used successfully time and time again with like, you know, your inciting inches and is on page 10 of the script, you know, that kind of stuff. So you're always balancing a little bit, being innovative, but also being like...

Which rules do you? commercial. Yeah. Yeah, which roles do break. Perfectly put. So Blondie is not just bringing in their different commercial ambitions. Like if you listen to early Blondie records, you'll hear 60s sounding girl group sounds. You'll hear, I mean, it's a little bit later, but they do a rock steady cover. They do the Tide is high, which is a reggae rock steady song. So another thing about Blondie's eclectic taste is that they genuinely love, they adored, in fact, disco. They even covered Donna Summers, like, one of Diallo and my collective favorite songs of all time. They covered, I feel, Love by Donna Summer. And that at CBGB's in the late 70s would definitely have turned a lot of heads,

rolled a lot of eyes. Did we have a recording of that? I did find Blondie playing I feel love. This is the first time I'm ever hearing this. Me too. Is this the first time you've never heard this before? I've never heard this before. First time listen. I've only known that it exists. So let's hear Blondie. Let's hear what they did. It sounds like country. This is great. Wow, that is so cool. We've never heard that before. I love that. Now the first thing you said when you started playing is like, oh, they use guitars. Well, so we're going to talk about sequencers a little bit later, because how do you make 16th notes happen in the 70s? Well, it's an early technology to make da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

On guitar, you can do it by using your... It's hard, though. It's super hard. It's easier on guitar than it is with a synthesizer to get the perfection. Oh, okay, yeah, the perfection, yeah. The synthesizer, you can kind of go da-da-da-da-da-da-d-d-on the same note. But to actually have it sound robotic and craftwork-like. It's challenging, but it's starting to happen. And we're going to talk more about that in a minute.

We're going to talk about it, but can I just say, there's the first time neither of us have ever heard it. The cool, the funny thing about this is that it sounds like country music. Like when Georgio does it, it sounds sleek and it sounds like the future. There's something about those guitars. Yeah. Where it sounds like, it sounds like you should be like, it should be like, it needs the precision.

No say it no. It matters like to play a 16th note baseline or a guitar part version of the baseline, it's definitely not the same vibe as the Georgio version. Which is okay for a cover. But, you know, I'm just, I'm drawing connections that may not be there. Okay. But we know that the Italians did those spaghetti westerns. Right.

And maybe when he was using his sequencer, because he doesn't, I don't know that, I think Georgia is a genius. We're going to talk about our fandom. Maybe he was like trying to accomplish something that sounded kind of American, kind of Western with the sequencer. And then because it was created on the instrument that it was, it created a future sound. that is completely removed vibe-wise from American country music. That's an interesting theory.

We'd have to ask him. Thankfully, at the time of this recording, he's still alive, so maybe we'll reach out to him. He still lives here in L.A. I'm not, yeah, I think he does live in L.A. I was just going to say, I'm just, I have this one picture from 1981 with the models. I'm hoping that's where he still lives. I'm hoping he still lives there. Have you seen the one with the green carpet?

Oh, I don't think I think I think he had like a green, like literally a green. I hope he hasn't changed that. Maybe I hope he's cleaned it even, but, yeah, been a lot of parties. he's there, I'm sure. So yeah, Blondie covering, I feel love is such a pleasure, such a joy to hear. And I love the fact that they were doing it. I found a quote from Debbie Harry who said, we used to do heart of class to upset people

because the rock crowd thinks we sold out and the disco crowd thinks were punks. So you really can't please anybody in 1979 by covering that song. Everyone's going to walk out the music. You know, the hip-hop crowd's like, they better never come for this. But they love disco, they love Maroder. The other song they do is Atomic

around the same period of time, which is a straight-up disco song, which I love. You know, it's so fast. I sometimes don't think of Atomic as a disco song, but you're totally right. I forgot how much I loved that song, and it is so disco, unabacheloretal. They're swinging for the fences of the disco crowd with that one. I like to think that that song was playing at the premiere party for Flash Gordon. If you and I had been co-D-Js, and I had been the DJ, I'd be dead. We would have been fighting over who gets to play on that one because we would have both loved it so much. But Heart of Glass, Atomic, tight as high. This is a group that's not afraid to...

I'm not afraid. Pin a, pin or cover a great pop song. Yeah, within the context of the CBGB, you know, art rock and punk rock crowd. But it's important to talk about timeline here. So we talked about the New York dolls. They're more like 74, 75, but there's already a sort of nascent disco that's out there. Right.

So I'm thinking specifically of the song, Rock Your Baby, 1974 by George McCray. You can hear the coming of disco. So that's proto-disco right there, George McCray, Rock Your Baby. I mean, and it's so funny, because like hearing that, I totally forgotten that it starts out, not just with a drum machine, but with a drum machine with the same exact, like, samba preset with the clave. Is that the limb?

Duh, da, da. I don't know what George McCrae is using, but the song I'm about to play you is using a Roland CR 78. And listen, it's the exact same, not just the fact that it is a drum machine, but it is also the same beat. Like, programmed in a drone from drum machine, but it's the da, da, da, da, da. It's rock your baby spit up. It's rock your baby. Spat Up. I never noticed that connection.

That's so cool. So that's Harder Glass, obviously. Yeah. The first time they record Harder Glass, this is one of my favorite Blondie songs, actually. It was called the disco song. So George McCray came out in 74. This song comes out in 1975. So, and to be clear, that was never released.

That is just a demo that, us Blondy fans. Yeah, it's an early version, a demo. It's a very early version of the song. Which then evolved into the disco banger we all know and love to this day. Absolutely. And by the way, we have to mention the band's important connection to hip-hop. Hell yeah. Because I believe Rapture is the first charting song by a white rapper,

aka Debbie Harry. So she gets that distinction. She does. And it's one of the first raps a lot of people heard, myself included. I think I would have heard that on the radio, probably. I might have heard rappers delayed. I don't remember. But they were both within a year of each other.

Both big hits. And that was definitely the first rap that I fully memorized. Cars, guitars, eating bars. Fats 5 Freddie said everybody's fly Yeah DJ Spin and I said in my mind Flash is fast Flash is cool That's Grandmaster Flash and Fab Five Freddy

Both get shoutouts there Absolutely you can tell they were absolutely part of that scene I also really respect how Blondie by way of Chris Was involved in Wild Style If you haven't seen Wild Style It's a great movie It encapsulates a special time in New York And I would argue two special times

Of hip hop history Because here's a composition by Chris Stein It goes by a couple of names. You sometimes see it as South Bronx subway rap, sometimes it's South Bronx theme. But this is from the Wild Style soundtrack. Love this, too. And that came into my life.

I didn't even know that song at the time. It really came into my life. It's played in the background of the opening of Nazas' Opus Illmatic. Yeah, I mean like Chris Stein playing on possibly the greatest hip-hop album of the 90s.

By way of a sample. And between that and Rapture and the Fab Five Freddy and the Grand Master Flash, the bonafides of Blondie being part of multiple scenes at once. Of hip-hop. They're punk. They're disco. They're hip-hop. They're everything at once.

And the Chris Stein participation in the soundtrack, he was a crucial part of it. He's on every track. It's funny because, like, those beats are so sick. And it's by this drummer, Lenny Ferraro. By the way, his drums are wonky. Can you tell us that real quick? Cool story behind that, because the whole thing starts with Lenny Ferro playing drums to nothing.

The concept was it's DJ Grand Wizard Theodore took his favorite breaks and he gave him to the drum This is by the way, Fab Five Freddy is the person behind the soundtrack. So he brings together Lenny Ferraro on drums, David Harper on bass,

and then Chris on guitar and effects and everything else. He brings in Kaz to do a lot of rapping. But step one is DJ Grand Wizard Theodore pulling together his favorite breaks giving him to this drummer Lenny Ferrarwin saying, vibe off of this for two minutes, just play whatever you want.

So he's playing to nothing. There's no song. He's just playing two-minute it loops like a human drum machine. That's insane. I didn't even know that. He's playing, or a human pause tape basically with those breaks, right? And then David Harper plays bass with those sick bass lines. And then

Chris comes in and does that final layer on top with the synths and the guitar. If you haven't seen it, please rent Wild Style and report back to us. Let's talk about Calm Me because Call Me is different from other Blondie songs because it's not purely the band who created it. It's a mix of the band, some session musicians, and importantly,

Georgia and Marauder. Before we tell the story of the song, we're a huge Marauder fans. We are. Tell me how you came to love Maroder. I'm happy to do that. So we've mentioned this man a few times already on this episode. He's the king of disco. He's an Italian man living in Munich and making some of the greatest hits of the 70s. Most famously, a lot of the stuff he did with Donna Summer. We mentioned I feel love iconic, possibly the greatest song ever recorded, ever put to tape. And don't forget Love to Love You Baby, which I think that song is so epic. And I love the story how I gets made. So apparently, you know, the song is already

sort of a modest success in Europe. And then Georgia of Marota brings it to Neil Bogart at Casablanca Records here in L.A. used to be right up there on sunset. Right across, once again from the Standard Hotel, that building is gone now. Okay. They have like a giant camel in the lobby. I wish it was still there.

And basically, he was like, please put this out. Every other American label has passed on because it's just too long. And Neil sort of, you know, he sort of goes in the other He's like, you know, I'd like to have a song that's even longer, you know, because when we're doing a lot of drugs at our parties, we want... No one wants to go to the turntable. We want to put on something that can last for about 20 minutes.

There's no CD changers yet or Spotify playlist yet. Yeah. There was no auto play. So, Neil's asked for a version that's like 20 minutes long. And Georgio gives it to him. But this is literally Donna Summer's first single. Yeah, in her first hit in America. Yeah, it goes to number two on the Hot 100.

And it is an entire album side. It's 16 minutes, 49 seconds, album version. It's crazy. Here's a snippet for those who've been living under Iraq for the last 40 years. When you're lying so close to me, there's no place of that you're breathing with me. That just hits. Like Neil heard that and he was like, hey, it sounds great. Give me 19 more minutes.

These are 1975 decisions. Would you have an office on the sunset strip? But a lot of blows. But that is, you know, that is George. Sergio's first foray into, you know, this American market. Right. And hit making and Donna Summer and her. The two of them together have this incredible career together,

hit after, hit after hit. And then he has some that, you know, like you can't think about Midnight Express without thinking about the chase. Well, that's a perfect segue into the answer to your question, which is this is the first time I ever heard, Giorgio Maroder. It wasn't because of the movie,

which, by the way, when I was a kid, I did see some of on TV. You can't. Hunted me for life. Oh, my God. Do not see me. Midnight Express. No, don't let your kids watch Midnight Express.

Weak stomach, my God. But I think the first time I heard, I think it was like a bumper for the Olympics or something. What? And I heard the music sort of, you know, come in a little flash of 20 seconds. I had never heard anything like it in my life. So here's the song that changed my life. And it took a long time for me as a musician to, like, absorb. It was something that I wanted to make for like decades until I finally became a musician.

But here's what I heard. Little Blake Robin. Little luxury. That. song, those pummeling, you've heard me say it many times, pummeling 16th notes. There's something about, we were talking about 16th notes, when they are done with a sequencer and a synthesizer to perfection so that they are all uniform. Now, of course, the sound of da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, has like a flange or a phase kind of sound

so that it does modify the sound, so you're not just hearing the same exact sound over and over again. But that does something to my brain that I cannot control, which is ecstatic. And yeah, it really affected me greatly. And this is, by the way, an instrumental song. There's no vocals on it. It is a little bit of a kind of redo of I Feel Love. Like they have a lot in common. Which you always say is your favorite song of all time.

I'm neck and neck, man. Hearing the chase right after hearing I feel love, I can't decide which is better. But it is reminding me why I love Marauder so much. Yeah, I mean, I just, I love Marauder so much, too. I definitely have a love of what I call his galloping bass. You know, like, and I feel like it just created a whole genre. We've talked on the show about how Bowie and others just felt like, oh, I've heard the future of music.

That's right. Brianino came out. When he heard, I feel love, he ran, apparently, maybe to Bowie, and said, I've just heard the future. And he wasn't wrong because you can really trace the history of all modern electronic music between craftwork and Maroder. To this day, it all sounds modern and contemporary. It doesn't sound old. But as far as, like, four to the floor, like house and dance and techno, like so many fraction versions of house music and dance music, it begins with... This is the birth of something new. It's the birth of something new. After the break, more pummeling Marauder sounds and galloping bass, triplet shuffles and American jigilos. Don't you dare go anywhere.

Don't do it. Stay right here. All right, welcome back to the one song. Luxury, walk us through it. Tell us how this song got made. The story begins, my friend, in Munich. Marauder in Munich. Murrota and music, making music at Musicland.

That is the name of his studio. And it's important to start there because the song takes life originally as an instrumental that Giorgio Moroder produces and puts together with his crack team of engineers and right-hand men. So he didn't create it for Blondie. He just created a song. The song was created for the movie, but we didn't have an artist yet for whom it was intended. And there were some original lyrics, by the, which we'll get to a little bit later,

which were a little bit different. And importantly, there's a second individual who's a big part of this story. And his name is Harold Faltermeyer. He is Marauder's right-hand man. You may recognize the name. I do, but please continue. Well, many people, 80s kids may remember that name if for no other reason than for this song, which was a big hit in the 80s when he went solo a little later.

The song is from Beverly Hills Cop and it's called Axel F. Can I just say real quick about Faltermire and Marruder? In a way, I'm jealous because I feel like they were working with new instruments and everything that they played felt like the future. You know what I mean? They're just playing. You're right, because no one had heard these sounds before. You're right.

It doesn't sound like 1972. too. It sounds like we're making music in the moment. And just the other day, I was thinking like, what do we have now that feels like, no matter what the output feels like the future, this might be a hot take, but it might be AI. And the only reason I say that is because if somebody, you know, like King Wallonius or some of these other people who are putting out, you know, AI songs, when I see what is clearly the AI cover art, because it sort of has a look. Yeah. Uncanny Valley. It doesn't look, it's uncanny Valley. It's not quite, it's so hyper-reel

that it's unreal. Yeah, you can kind of tell there's a part of me that's like, don't reject this outright. Because, you know, you don't want to be that guy in 1982's like, I just want to listen to the blues. Like, you know, in a weird way, I'm almost like maybe we just got to embrace the technology.

I don't know. I think that you're on to something. I would say that the sound of right now that is definitely new and is technologically driven. And in a few years, we'll sound like this time now because it will be sort of preserved in amber because we'll have moved on in a way. so then we can refer to it is the artifacts of AI.

I would say it's when AI is trying to do a genre and it's a little bit off. And you can tell that it's... Yeah, the mistakes sort of like... It's like, you know, Ariana Grande doing a Dolly Parton song and the mixture of those two things based on what they've trained the AI on has these weird artifacts that sound like you're underwater.

Do you know what I mean like what I'm talking about? Totally. That's very now. That's very AI now. I agree. And by the way, that was my point, but I do want to also play Devil's Advocate and say the problem with AI is that it's just copying what came before, whereas Faltermeyer's keyboard on there sounds like something we had not previously heard. So all I guess I'm saying is that if we can invent some new sounds, I'd be all for it. But let's get back to call me. You were telling us about the actual recording of the song.

Well, Mr. Faltermeyer, whose Axel F would be a hit a few years later. At the time he was Marauder's right-hand man. He actually came on board around the time that that song Chase that I played for you was being put together. He also co-wrote Hot Stuff with Donna Summer. and he's one of the implementers, I would say, of Marauder's grander vision. Here's a quote I found from an interview in 2014. This is Harold Faltermeyer talking about Mr. Maroder. He says, Giorgio is a genius, one of the most gifted writers in pop music ever. I'm going to emphasize that word.

Not the greatest player. He was a composer. And when he played demos, he would play a chord on the left hand and a chord on the right. In other words, he wasn't like a technically proficient instrumentalist. And he would say, Harold, you have a look. I have this new song. and Harold would go, okay, interesting. In other words, Faltermar was a bit of the translator

from a more big picture idea to the specifics of how do we make this an actual produced and recorded song. Harold Faltermar in other words was kind of the person who helped morode or implement his ideas. And that's important because on this song, as we're going to talk about in a minute, a lot of the specifics of what you hear sonically, to your point that sort of in 1980 would have been new

and exciting sounding, is coming from Faltermeyer's technical. and instrumental abilities to execute Marauder's vision. Again, to be fair, it's the two of them together. It's that collaboration. I love that. Getting back to the song, which becomes Calm Me, it starts life as an instrumental, which was recorded in L.A.,

and they originally offered it, I don't know if you know this. Do you know what they originally offered it to? Calmie was supposed to be for Stevie Nix. Oh, I could totally see that. This was meant to be because Stevie Nix was the huge star. Blondie was an up-and-coming star, too. A little bit different world. Stevie Nix was like mainstream pop radio superstar.

It almost goes Stevie Nix. Yeah. Blondie Debbie Harris. Mary Madonna. You know what I mean? In terms of a quick succession of like she's the vocalist you want. Right, exactly.

She's the A-list. She was unable to do it because her contract with her record label wouldn't let it. It wasn't that she turned it down because she didn't like it. She just literally wasn't able to do it. So they threw it to Blondie.

And here's where the story gets interesting because Blondie is a band. Five people, punk rock band from New York, but the bandiness starts to get complicated when Maroder and Faltermeyer come into the picture. That's not you.

That's not how they're used to making music. They're used to having complete control. They're using electronics. They're putting together tracks. They're not necessarily playing with instruments and the temperament of different band members in a band dynamic. So when it comes...

Said the first time Maroon 5 came in and Adam LeVee was like, hey, I got the song finished. They're like, we're Maroon 5, dude. No, it's really just me, and you guys are hired guns who will play what I tell you to play. It's a little bit of the... It can be the dynamic sometimes. That could be a tricky thing.

It can. And in this... case when Marauder brings this track to the band, they all insisted that they would play their own parts, and it becomes a little bit of a situation where... A little push and pull. I think there's some diplomacy happening on Marauder and Fultramar's End. Who do you think is a diplomat? These guys are basically...

Chris Stein, I just heard an interview with him recently, and they'd be the first to admit that in the early days they were not technically proficient instrumentalist. They would require a lot of time in the studio just to get it right. Not because they are perfectionists. This is literally, I'm quoting from him in a... in a Questlove interview. He's saying, we took a lot of time in the studio, not because we were Steely Dan, basically, trying to get technical proficient. It just took us a long time to get it right. So Maroder and Faltermeyer are getting a little impatient. The band's insisting they

play their own parts. Apparently Chris Stein's guitar and the amplifier were buzzing and noisy, and so they were trying to get a clean recording, but it was difficult. They had a difficult time locking to sink. Remember, these are like this original track is coming off of this sort of perfect precision coming from the sequencer. And the band is just not used to it. They're used to a human drummer, Clem Burke playing the drums, having a little leeway with how the tempo's going. It's a lot of trouble, and as Maroder later explained to Billboard,

his experience working with recording the song is what led him to never work with a band ever again. He said, quote unquote, there were always fights. I was supposed to do an album with them after that. We went to the studio. The guitarist was fighting with a keyboard player. I called their manager and quit. It was just too complicated.

It reminds me. of James Murphy working with the rapture on House of Jealous Lovers and having it go so south that he was just like, I'm not going to work with the rapture. I've heard that that's really interesting to hear that. And there is some power that the producer has once all the things are recorded. And they can start making choices about what to use

and what not to use. And that's a perfect segue into the stems because I am not 100% certain of who the performances are on every track. There's some Roshaman, especially, for example, about the drums who actually played, we may never know because there's also like the desire to not hurt anybody's ego. You want the band to think they're on it.

They may or may not be on it. So essentially, the five members of Blondie, play through all their parts. Debbie Harry sings, Jimmy Destri on keyboards, Frank and Fontaine guitars. They all play their parts. And then they're sort of dismissed from the process. And then Maroder and Faltermeyer take the master tapes back themselves. They get their studio musicians to replace some of the parts and make decisions about what's capable in what needs to be replaced.

And we'll talk about that at a micro level when we listen to the stems in a minute. But it just sort of talks about, like you were just mentioning, what was the expression? The primacy of the producer holds all the cars. It's sort of like in Jamaica we were talking about in the Sister Nancy episode.

Once you get the recordings in, you can decide what to do with them. Yeah. And if you have the session musicians, you don't have to deal with all those opinions that you don't necessarily want to do with. They will do what you tell them to do. They will not even take a cut of the publishing.

A lot of advantages to having those session musicians in. which is what ends up happening on the songs. All right. We have stems. Luxury, where do you want to start? Well, I'm going to start with the drums. And so here's where we have a little Roshaman. So Harold Faltermeyer in that same interview I referenced earlier.

It's a 2014 Red Bull interview. He mentions that the drums are being played by Keith Forsy, who's a session drummer. He's on a lot of the big Don Summer hits. He also later played for Billy Idol. But then later on, in an interview I heard with Chris Stein, he mentions that it's Clem Burke on drums. I'm not sure who's playing drums.

I think it might be Keith Forsey, but it might be Clem Burke. Either way, they're amazing. And let's listen to them, isolated. These are the drums from Call Me. Sounds like glam drums. Sounds like glam rock to me. Yeah, you're hearing the triplet 6-8 feel. And this whole song has that feel, which gives it a little bit of a bump,

a bum, bum, because that's literally... But it's also that flourish of the... The bam-bom-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-l. Like, that's not a modest... No, that don-d-d-that's what makes the song a blonde-more. corroboration, because that's Chris Stein with those rock and roll guitars. But I want to talk a little bit more just for a minute before we move on about this shuffle beat. Now, this is a fast song, it's 142 BPM. That shuffle beat with the triplets, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

A shuffle beat means, you're hearing the da-da-da-da-da in the other instruments, but on the drums, you're just getting da-da-da-da-da, which is basically like a swing, like a jazz, da, da, da, da, and you just leave out the second of the three triplets. And that's how you get the shuffle beat. And you've heard it in a lot of other songs, I'm going to play for you a little fun medley I made, a bunch of pop songs that use that beat, and it's alternative version, which is a halftime version called The Purdy Shuffle. That's funny, because when you said 142, I'm thinking 71. Yep.

Well, you're going to hear 71 and 142 right now. Here's a little medley I put together. Here are some other songs with that same shuffle beat. I made it a little fun mashup for you. I thought I was a DJ. That's not a feature. that's not fair okay i had too much fun with that i started getting into that i was like no there's also this one-man band set we got flea wood mac we got the blondie we got the fleetwood mac we got full in the

rain by led zeppelin which is the purty shuffle so it's half time tears for fears uh what else i put in there oh higher ground by stevie wonder yeah stevie one the stevie meshed real nice yeah right i'm such a dj it's ready to happen some of these are way slowed down some of these are little sped up i had to cheat it a little bit like right in the in the in the pocket I had to cheat it a little bit. Yeah. And then we ended with a couple more purdy shuffles in halftime with Rosanna by Toto. And the final one was Babylon Sisters by Steely Dan.

That's good. So those are all examples of the shuffle beat. I'll play a little more of the isolated drums. And this is the verse pattern. I love these open hi-hats, how it creates kind of a riff with the open high hats. And then here's another chunk I like, I'm going to play this chunk for you because it's got a lot of fun fills in it. And you know, I'm going to throw in some synth, so everyone knows where we are. Well, let's move on to the bass.

As I mentioned before, since this was the process involved, starting with the track, adding Blondie, and then apparently removing a fair amount of Blondie from the mix, I actually could not find a credit anywhere, not on discogs, not on Wikipedia, not anywhere about who is playing the bass here. It might be Nigel Harrison from Blondie. It might not be. It might be Chris Stein himself doubling it. But let's listen.

Here's the isolated bass line from Call Me. I mean, already a good enough song. my book. Yeah, you can just stop right there. Already sounds cool and like sneaky. Ooh, sneaky is a good word. What makes you think it's sneaky sounding? Like, I don't know, man.

It just sounds like, you know, I'm walking down Vermont Avenue and freaking Los Phyllis and there might be somebody following me. It's very cinematic. So I dip into the alley by Pinky. Shout out to Pinky's no longer there. Oh, it's so, we're so sad that Pinkies was fun. We're going to find our new place. For our little shindigs.

Our shindigs. But, so that's what the baseline is doing. Yeah. But, you know, when you were playing that other, earlier. It occurred to me how much I love the keyboards on this song. Well, guess what you're going to get next? Keyboards? Let's hear him. So we know that this is definitely Harold Faltermeyer and definitely not Jimmy Destry, the Blondie keyboard player, because in all of the interviews I've seen, there was some tension behind the recording of this part, but also the technical nature of how to create

this. And I'll play it for you in a second. You'll hear what I mean. But these are the Maroder slash Faltermeyer 16th notes that are sequenced to perfection. And, and I'll play it in a second. And And it requires a certain amount of technical skill to do it. Now, Blondie had done this before. They had done with Heart of Glass, a different producer with Mike Chapman. They had figured out how to do that da-da-da-da-da-da-da thing. But in this case... It's a slower tempo, though.

It's a slower tempo, right. And in this case, Faltermeyer and Marauder just took out the Blondie performance and read it themselves, including, importantly, the solo. Yeah, you know I like that. Yeah, you know we both like that. I mean, that sounds like... I could just listen to that all the me. That sounds like some Tron stuff.

That sounds like the lost soundtrack to Tron. I could just listen to that sound over and over again. I just want that. You hear a little bit of organ in there. There's a bunch of synths in the mix there. There's the main rhythmic one that's sequenced. And then you've got an organ in the background. It's interesting, too, that there's a second version of that sequenced synth line,

which is not 16th notes, it's eighth notes. And I'll play that for you now. In the mix, you can't really tell. happening, but it adds a little bounce. I'll play for you isolated first. And that gives you more of that swing, that shuffle and swing feel. Almost sounds like a march. It's very, I was thinking the same thing. It's almost sounds like a march. It's got some, it's a little Teutonic sounding. It sounds very German. Oh no. Are we giving into fascism by liking call me? I don't know. I mean, look, when I saw in Munich. It is difficult for me, even when I was watching Kroftwerk the other night.

Incredible lie, but like there is something about the Germanness that made me a little. little uneasy. So every now and then, the technical perfection in all the German words. One, two, three, four, four German guys getting together. Alert, alert, alert. Ein's five, it's simultaneously like a child. You will dance. And now I'll play both of those sequence synths together. That second one is very subtle, but now that you've heard it, I mean, I can hear how it adds a little bit of bounce to it. Yeah. And let's add back the drums just for, just for sheer pleasure's sake. Gosh, we've lost to you.

That's like perfect music. You can't do better than that. You can't do better than that. You can't do better than that. Why try? Okay, so this is back to that modulation part, the bridge. This is fun to listen to because you can hear. I never noticed it in the mix until I listen to the stems. But that organ is doubling the melody.

So that's this part here. And so that organ is doubling this. Ape de moire. There are so many lyrics of the song I did not realize I didn't know. Yeah, me too. I filled in the blank on a lot of these lyrics. I didn't even realize she was speaking Italian in one part in French, Italian. The whole first, I mean, I must have sung out loud and karaoke and otherwise the first part of this song a million times.

And it wasn't until preparing for this episode that I finally figured out what those lyrics were. But we will get to that. We will talk about it. Just a moment. Just a moment. First, we have a little more synthy goodness before we get to the guitars and then Debbie. So here's the synth solo, which Harold Faltermeyer performed, not Jimmy Destry from the band Blind. And he very noticeably, if you ever watch footage of them playing the song, Jimmy Destry does not play this part.

He was not happy about it. He felt like his solo was better, but he lost the battle to what stays on the recording. And here is that synth solo. One of my favorite parts is towards the end, there's this sort of insistent D that keeps on, that's kind of like, I think it's called an inverted pedal where it's just the same note. You'll hear that in the mix here. It adds a sense of urgency. It's all my favorite price of the song. Yeah.

It adds a tension. It's a tension. Exactly the right word. It's staying the same while everything else is changing. I like it. I call that the insistent D in my notes. Just if anyone wants to start using that. That might be my new DJ named Insistent D.

I don't think it should be for reasons that we don't need to get into. I think you're wrong. All right. And now let's get into the guitars. This is Chris Stein. And it's not second guitar. Frank and Founti, he too, was booted off the final recording. There was the issue that they had when they were recording

that there was a lot of noise, and they couldn't quite find... It took all day, apparently, to record these guitars because they couldn't really find the source of the noise. And every now and then you can kind of hear it when he stops playing for a moment. But these guitars are so great, and they're huge, they're pan left and right for this giant sound. And as we talked about before,

that combined with the synths, really make this a very modern-sounding clash of punk and disco in particular, that stands the test of time 40 plus years later. Chris Stein on guitar, isolated guitars for Call Me. I mean, that's rock god stuff, right? That's rock god stuff right there.

He loved playing that. He had a good time playing that part, yeah. Here he is in the chorus. So good, right? So fun. So wild. It's wild when you hear it isolated. It kind of reminds me when we listen to the print stems, right?

Sometimes, I mean, we knew that there's big rock guitars in here. But the fact that they're balanced out with the synths in such a way that neither is too heavy. Like it comes across as a pop song with rock and disco leanings, I suppose, or maybe synth pop. Like the way to classify the song, not that it really matters, but like what even genre? Is this a rock song? Is this like a dance song? It's kind of a disco song. It's a disco rock.

But it's also like super sped up and fast. Yeah, it's so fast for the dance floor, right? You can't, it's really hard to find 142 BPM. songs to play before and after. Totally. Yeah. And this is the anytime, any place, anywhere part. And I'll bring that in so you can hear it in context.

Because I love that high guitar thing. It didn't quite do that. I can't get to that note. I can't do it. I can't find that note. I want to play that again because that's one of my favorite parts. That is such a rock god. Doodda-da-do-da-do-da-do-do-do-de.

It's you gearing up to hit the solo. Like, bo-da-no-no-no-no-no-no. That's like some heavy metal. Like, that's not a punk rock choice, that one. You know, one of my favorite things on any song, I always love hearing the vocals with nothing on them. You know, Debbie Harry has one of the most iconic voices ever. She wrote these lyrics, and she wrote them after watching a little bit of a movie, and she said that she loved the shot of him driving up the coast of California.

Yeah, that's what the movie begins with. Yeah, and she writes these lyrics, which, you know, again, I don't know that I knew the lyrics to call me. I know what I was singing. If you put a gun to my head and he said, please don't put a gun in my head. But if you did, but if you did, and you play verse one and you said, what are the lyrics to the first verse, I would have been like,

call on me, oh, come on, baby, call on me, oh, call. Which doesn't make sense. O call does not make sense. Feel comforted by the fact that I made this same mistake all these decades. The lyrics are literally, color me your color, baby,

color me your car. Color me your color darling, I know who you are. Come up off your color chart. A color chart. So poetic. I know where you are coming from. So that's news to me.

Now, when she gets to the course, she does say, call me, call me on the line and all that. But, like, you know, there's a lot more going on here lyrically than I think that we knew. Yeah, Debbie says that she had the color palette of the movie made an impression on her. And that's why the song starts with it. Yeah. Can we hear a little bit of verse one just so we can know that the audience could know that we're not making this up? Debbie Harry, isolated vocals from Calming.

I mean, that's super cool. there's another part, a lyric that I don't know that I even had a substitution for. But now that I know the lyrics, I kind of want to hear it in the mix. This is in the second verse where she says, now I did hear Role Me and Designer Sheets, I'll never get enough. But then she has this next line that I want to talk about on the other side. Can you just play me that end of verse two real quick? Yeah.

I don't know why cover up loves the alibi. Yeah, that's a great. That's very poetic. I love that. Yeah, that's not your typical pop song. I mean, if I'm trying to break that down, I think she's saying like, why hide what we feel? But like it's a little bit, what do you think? Cover up Love's alibi.

I'm only assuming from the movie because she watched the movie that it's got something to do with the plot line at the movie, right? Because you've got Richard Gear and he needs to have an alibi for the crime. That's right. Yeah, there's some murder involved. Yeah. Yeah, I was just thinking about it in the context of the song, but you're right. That might literally come directly from the movie. Like we said, in the bridge, she speaks.

English, French, and Italian. I probably just thought it was gibberish, but maybe we can hear a little bit of the, Oh, Amore. Okay, there's another word that for all these years, Chiamami. Chiamami. It means...

I probably thought she said, like, camamil or something. Like, call me in Italian, literally. Oh, yeah, now we know. But chiamami, chemami. Like, I never would have guessed that until I, like, finally took the moment and looked at the lyrics. And then she moves into French. Appel moi

Apele more, mon cherie, Appel moi Moe. There's the punk punk rock attitude, right? A little snoddy.

Appel Mo. Absolutely. I mean, call me. We didn't really mention it, but Debbie, you know,

at one point she had been a Playboy Bunny at the at the Playboy Club. At the Playboy Club in Chicago. She moves to New York

while the band is still trying to find their identity, their name. You know, old New York, so the construction workers are,

nowadays it would absolutely be harassment. as it should be. But they used to call out to her, hey, blondey, hey blondey. And that is why the band was called Blondie. That's how they have their name. You know, there are people who confuse her name for being blonde.

No, Blondy's the name of the band. Yeah, she even tells the story that early on she tried to convince the rest of the band to also bleach their hair blonde. Just for that reason, she was like, hey, I'm thinking about all of us. And nobody wanted to do it. She was like, at the time, it would have been unusual, too. She's like, it would have been, it would have been, as she puts it what wrestlers do. So they would have all looked like a band filled with wrestlers.

It's so funny you bring up wrestling because, you know, from, the Teutonic march to the soaring, you know, keyboards. Like, there is something extremely and almost goofily dramatic about this song that did make me think. I can totally see, like, in an earlier era wrestler coming out to, like, these guitars and that, you know, like, coming out to that. I wanted to also just go back and play some of the really beautiful harmonies in that second verse.

Harmony is achieved by doubling up, Debbie. So this is Debbie going back and singing harmony to herself, exactly. And I'll just play the second part of that isolated so you can hear that harmony. It's really beautiful on its own. Ooh, I love it. That is some minor sugary greatness. That's a beautiful blend, right? Yeah, that's really nice.

I just noted some background noise, too. They are recording in New York, presumably in a studio, but that sounds like, It reminds me of one of my favorite... It reminds me of one of my favorite moments of hip-hop in the last 12 years. I got to close the window before I record because New York don't know how to be quiet. There you go. I mean, how... That's definitely real, yeah.

Is the opening Acef. Ferg's work remix. You got to keep those adlives. They get some little character in there. And here are just some fun little adlips towards the end. You can hear these isolated. And I always love, because we have access to the stems, we can hear what was recorded, but either wasn't used because it's an outtake or maybe in this case it's muted it. Or in this case, it's the fade out.

So here's, when you listen to the song and it fades out, yeah. This is what happened right after the song ended. There you go. Just a little bonus beat there. Her voice, she can get up there, man. Yeah, she's a belter. She's way out there. It's such a great.

And the quality of it, too, it's got power, it's got emotion. and it's high and it's strong. There's something, yeah, there's something powerful. I was going to say there's something like catlike about it that I can't quite put my finger on. She's very feline. There's something felonics. Slinky. Is that a word?

She's slinky like a feline. Can't figure it out, but, man, it still gets you. Oh, and let's not forget one more thing. We do have the call and response part. Let's listen to that. Yeah, exactly. Call me! Let's hear another one of those.

It's just one guy. I always thought it was like a chorus of dudes, but it sounds like one guy would reapers. It sounds like a couple guys We'll get one more in there, let's listen Call me! It's either one guy doubled. I think it's the same guy doubled. One more.

Call me! And I wonder, is there a little German accent there? I could, maybe detected... I think you've been listening to too much Croftvovok. It could be too much Croftvike is making me think everybody, German. Those are some great vocals. Ultimately, these lyrics, you know, like we said the very beginning, they're about sex work.

Like, technically, the fact that this is such a huge pop hit. is almost just hilarious to me. I want to play something that points out just how big a hit this was. Remember, this song is about technically a male sex worker. Here's one of the places that Blondie performed the song. Well, here we are at the finale, and I bet you know what that means.

Debbie Harry! That's right, Debbie Harry! The visual of animal playing that drum kit. At the beginning, it's hilarious. All right, let's talk covers, and let's talk samples. Yeah, let's talk samples and tribulations covers. The whole world of musical reuse,

there's another episode where maybe their biggest sort of sample, I think, in the world is probably the one... By Missy Elliott. Exactly. We have an entire episode about that. Go definitely check that episode out with our good friend, Punkie, from SNL. And let's move into one of the songs

that not everyone knows is a cover, but The Tide is High by Blondie from 1980, which sounds a little bit like this. Not everyone knows. that this is a cover, but it is, in fact, a cover of the 1967 track, The Tide Is High by the Paragon's. Rock Steady. The tide is high, but I'm holding. I'm going to be your number one.

Yeah, very cool. Just straight up cover. Straight up cover. It targets back to the time when, like, a movie would be popular in Japan. Yeah. And they never thought, oh, why don't we just release it here? No, we have to remake it. Right.

Because, you know, that's the only way people will accept it. And just like in my own personal experience, a lot of people may not have ever known the original, not have heard of the original. I think a lot of people don't know that's a cover. Which serves the purpose of turning them on to the original when they discover it years later and falling in love with it. Like everyone listening to the show just did. It's the Paragon's 1967. Go check it out.

That's really cool. In addition to that, we were just talking about Work It by Miss Yelliot. There's another very famous female rapper that is sample Blondie. Yes, there is. And this one's for all you barbs out there. A couple things I like about that. One is that it's reharmon. There's just different chords behind it, which transforms it, besides obviously the vibe of the instrumentation.

Is it a sample or is it a interpolation? Well, that was the other thing. Like, I'm definitely hearing that it's an interpolation. There would be no reason to sample it. However, here's the thing. In the modern day, you can have something like a vocal re-sung and save half the cost of the effort to reuse it. If it were a sample, if it were just the acapella like I have in my stems, if it were that sampled, you'd essentially pay twice as much to use it. Here's the thing. I actually, I'm friends with Vaughn Oliver, who I spoke to recently, and he cleared this to be discussed. But he's the guy who co-produced and co-wrote some other stuff for Nikki, such as Super Freaky Girl. He told me the story of that song, and they originally were going to interpolate the Rick James stuff. But Nikki apparently insisted on keeping the original. She wanted Rick James on the track. So which is really interesting because there's an authenticity to keep the original, but it's an expense of authenticity. At this point, she's got the money to be like, you know what? My musical vision first. Yeah, if you and I were doing this track, we'd probably be like,

I'm singing this. I'm not even hiring anybody. We're interpolating the heck out of this and replaying it. But with Nikki, my guess is it's an interpolation is probably replayed, but it might not be because she didn't do it with Rick James, so maybe she didn't do it with Blondie. Another icon, right? Interesting thing about it.

Absolutely, another icon. Okay, so like we said earlier, Call Me was written for the movie American Gigolo. I used to love that movie. I know you watched her recently. Yeah. Does it hold up? Let me just put it this way. I watched the first half recently.

Oh, no, you didn't even finish it. I got... Diallo, I got the gist. Oh, man, come on. It's one to look at, it's such a joy to see Los Angeles in 1980, the visuals. It's so sexually shot.

Every frame is a picture. We've got the Giorgio Armani suits. By the way, I only learned in researching this episode that this is, that Giorgio Armani's bursting onto the scene as a popular... With this movie. It came from this movie. Yeah.

a lesser known Italian designer. I'll say... And I could not get past the 59 minute mark. So it's got Georgia Marauder. It's got Armani. It's got all the Georgios. All the Georgios. What's funny to me is that when I first saw this movie,

probably for the first time, it was like mid-2000, maybe like 2007 or somewhere in there. And that opening had a huge effect on me. Like, you know, I saw him driving up the coast and I was just like, I want to do that. Oh, you were living in New York at the time? No, I was living in L.A.

I hadn't moved to New York yet. And I saw him driving up PCH and I was like, you know what? I'm going to find a convertible and like do that one time in my life. And I ended up... That's why you bought your convertible? That's how I ended up with that convertible. But you know, it's... By the way, we're supposed to be talking about Call Me.

I have to say, one of my favorite things as a screenwriter is thinking about the first song that you will hear over the first image of anything I write. So usually in my scripts, I'll put in like, you know, music plays and I'll put the name of a thing. Because it's so important. Like, I think about a hard day's night by the Beatles. I think about train spotting with lust for life. Like that running in the beginning. I always say if you can start a movie with running, it's such a solid way to start a film.

I mean, actually, now I think about it, Walter Meyer, you played Axel F earlier. Yep, yep. Beverly Hills Cop, the heat is on. Like that first shot of Detroit, and it's like, the heat is on. I'm like, I am into this movie. No, no, no, no.

Oh, yeah, the trucks. It did it so well. Yeah, like, you see industrial stuff, and it's like, you know, How are they going to tie Beverly Hills into this? It's exciting, yeah. The 80s were really good for that. I think about Back to the Future, The Power of Love, now on Broadway.

Huey Lewis and the News, that was big. Fight the Power by Public Enemy and do the right thing. There's so many movies where, I mean, obviously, Saturday Night Fever with, you know. Right, that opening sequence walking down the strutting down the street. To the disco beat. In the Bronx, probably, right? Yeah. We talked about Midnight Express, the Chase.

I'm even thinking about Shaft. I mean, Shaft, people say, is the transition song from sort of like the music of the 60s into the 70s of soul and disco. Right, I hear that. I like that. So I just think that there's nothing more important than that opening shot and that music. You just tie it so much to your experience with that movie. So Call Me is 44 years old at the time of this recording. What is its legacy luxury?

What does it say about art punk versus commercial punk and just art versus commerce in general? Well, I think that that's still a question that musicians today, myself included, are constantly having to face. You make decisions at a micro and macro level. Like, is the song I'm working on? Should we try and do something that's on the radio now? Should we aim for now? That's never a good idea, by the way. Or should I just sort of go into my more obscure lyrics section of my journal?

you're always trying to balance things out and you want people to hear it and love it but you also want it to be true and authentic and individual to you as the artist Blondie was working with that and did such an incredible job of balancing all of the things that were them as people that were their interests

disco, hip hop, culture, uptown, downtown, the Bronx, Manhattan, like it all works in the mix in their music and then specifically with this song and all their hits of that era. What strikes me is how like listenable they still are. Like they, there's, I suppose you could say

a datedness to it because you can tell especially with the Marauder thing, that was definitely the thing of 1979, 1980, but it doesn't feel dated to me in a way where it's like, you know, like a big reverby snare and a metal song in the mid-80s and a hair metal song, that

sounds dated. Like you wouldn't do that now unless you really wanted to evoke Motley crew or poison, you know, one of those bands. So this stuff really holds up sonically to me as a band and the artistic decisions required to survive as a musician remain to this day. Yeah, I like that. And I like the idea of artistic decisions because you mentioned, you know, being true and

being authentic. I think, look, American Gigolo is a mainstream movie about an underground thing, you know, something that is, you know, underground and just by its nature niche. And I think similarly this song is a commercial approach to something. that was still at that point underground, which is disco and punk. So I think both of these pieces of art which are forever

sort of joined are by their very nature, sort of the merging of art and commerce, sort of taking something that's niche and underground and figuring out how do we expose it to a larger audience. And by the way, they sort of dodged a bullet in the sense of like disco demolition happening right in this

time. And this song, had it maybe not been for the guitars or Blondie's reputation, you know, a lot of bands like, Nile Rogers frequently talks about how, like, Sheik and his career with that band starts to decline in terms of their opportunities. I would argue that you've opened up a Pandora's box

because there was a level of racism with the disco demolition. And I do think that, yes, they had guitars. I would argue that Sheik had guitars. Sheik was just using them for R&B, maybe a little bit more than rock. I think at the end of the day that, on the one hand, Blondie is moving forward.

As we said, whatever is sort of popular they're figuring out their take on it, Yeah. But I also think at the end of the day, they're seen as a white group, so it's easy for them to make the transition. It was a lot easier for a lot of those fans that were destroying records at Comiskey Park to sort of reject the groups, the ethnic groups. I want to just, yes, and, because I think just to build on that, I think you're absolutely right. Yeah. And I also think that part of the choice to use distorted guitars is a coding as a choice that moves you out of the category to me of disco and funk.

Yes, there are distorted guitars sometimes. But Nile Rogers in particular, because you mention him, is famously he's got a really clean sound. And that tiny distinction, I mean, you're talking about adding distortion to guitar or not, and the parts, it actually does make a difference, as does the face of the person on the cover. Yeah, because there's some other groups that didn't use distorted guitars that also made the transition. There are. From that disco era into rock. And again, it's, and also, like, disco did not actually die. Of course, yeah.

You know, you can argue that Michael Jackson albums that took over the world just a year or two later. are essentially the same kind of disco music. It's still got Quincy Jones at the key at the boards. Just brought him to the mainstream. That's almost a topic for another time. And one more thing, by the way, because you mentioned Nile Rogers, an interesting thing.

I've heard him talk about how he was influenced by Maroder. Those 16th notes we talked about before during this episode many times. Nile Rogers was trying to emulate the sound he heard Maroder doing with those 16th notes. And part of his sound is that he is an almost impossibly talented human right wrist finding those 16th notes in a way that in Germany they needed devices to perfect. And Nile Rogers is an incredible songwriter in many things, but also he is an incredible

guitar because those 16th notes on his guitar, on the hitmaker, as he calls it, that sounds like it could be coming out of Marauders Musicland Studios in Munich, which is what he was aiming for. Absolutely. And if he made it this far, I think it means you like the podcast. So please don't forget to give us the five stars on the platform you listen, leave a review, and please, this is maybe the most important thing, share it with your friends, with your family, with someone you think that would like the show, because it really helps keep it going. If you have an idea for one more song, you can find us on Twitter, you can DM us on Instagram. We're going to collect those, and we're going to play some of those along with some of the other songs that we want to give

a special highlight to. Luxury, help me in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and music psychologist luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddle. And this is one song. We'll see you next time.