Switched on Pop - Introducing One Song

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

If you like how Switched On Pop breaks down songs, you’re going to love the show One Song hosted by Diallo Riddle and Luxxury. They play you the stems of iconic recordings to see how they were made. To give you a taste today we’re sharing with you an episode of One Song about Blondie’s “Call Me.” Listen to One Song on SiriusXM on Wednesdays or subscribe to the podcast which is out Thursdays wherever you get podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. the Eater app at Eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Hey, it's Charlie. If you like how we break

down songs on Switched on Pop, then I think you're also going to really enjoy the podcast, One Song, hosted by Diallo Riddle and Luxury. They play the stems of iconic recordings to see how they were made. To give you a taste today, I'm sharing with you an excellent episode of one song about Blondies Call Me. And if you dig it, listen to One Song on Sirius XM on Wednesdays or subscribe to the One Song podcast, which is out Thursdays wherever you get podcasts. All right, let's get to it. Here's Blondies Call Me and the podcast, One Song. 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 US in 1980. Is that true? It is true. This is 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. 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 by Blondy. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter Luxury, aka the guy who talks about interpolation on TikTok. But 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. We talked about maps. This feels a little bit like a companion piece because... Totally. New York... 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...

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... 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. 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...

It's on Bowery, literally. You know, what's funny now is, like, the Bowery, it's still, like, you know, it's still got a little bit of that New York grind, but not really. But back then, 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. talking heads, all of these bands are formed in this moment in the mid-70s. The Ramones, how could I leave them out? And then I used to 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 then 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 in 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. And it's a cheaper place. Way cheaper. 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. 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-A-A-A-As as and right now. Yeah. Oh, damn. You know, like, 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 we're building like 1906. Right. So maybe we all need to move to Detroit. But there's a cultural stew that Blondie 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 as Christine from Blondie himself, the co-founder with Debbie Harry. Oh, Christine. Yep. And an original songwriter, the two of them, for the core of the band to this day. Chris Stein talks about how CBGs at the time had two factions. And I don't know how warring they were versus. is 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 handsome part of that? You know, he didn't mention them by name. And when he said that quote, I was like, I wonder which camp the talking heads 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 seemed ambitious to me too. They're making a pop song. I mean, even with the lyrics that don't make sense, it does seem a little bit more like eyes on a larger audience. Yeah. 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. their songs were longer. They had meandering solos, et cetera. And the lyrics were not necessarily ambiguous. You wouldn't necessarily understand. The storytelling would be more sort of poetic

as opposed to like a narrative. 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 contemporaries. 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 coming from the same area. Yeah, I guess you could lump that in. I think they had sort of like Talking Hands, like Blondie 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 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 commercial. Yeah.

Yeah, which rules do you 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. And, of course, they do Heart of Glass, which is disco. They do Atomic.

They're trying a lot of different styles musically, but they're also deep into, like, the art world as well. So they're friends with Basquiat who shows up in the Rapture video. He's playing the DJ. It's not Fab Five Freddy. It's Baskiad in that video. That's crazy, too. Yeah, yeah. And Ramel Z was in that group.

Shout out to Brett King. I know that he listens to the pie. He was on that scene and even just some of the pictures that come out of that scene. If it doesn't show, I wish that I was part of that scene. So, lucky guy. That is the one place where you just get to say, was everybody effortlessly cool? So cool. So cool.

And there's like a Geiger, H.R. Geiger who did Alien. There's a Blondie video where his stuff is in the background. Or sorry, he directed the video. And in the background, you see a canvas, which is all Boschia. So they're like swimming in these incredible, like, famous artists all these years later. You can say that the inspirations for everybody from James Cameron to Jay-Z are all a part of this New York City. Blondie was picking apart all of it and not unimportantly wild style. So, like, hip-hop, we're going to get into the hip-hop stuff in a minute because Blondie in 1977 tells a story how they went up to the Bronx with Fab Five Friday for this police athletic league party.

And that's where they're exposed to hip-hop. It's called the Police Athletic League? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The cops try to get all the kids off the street and do something where they can watch them. Those pictures of the Bronx when it just looks like rubble. Yeah. Totally. It's like a bombed out.

Well, Wild Style, we love this movie. Let's talk a little bit about Wildstall because this is an important part of the story. One of my personal favorites. If you ever get a chance, you should definitely just find it, watch it. Blondie by way of Chris was involved in Wildstow. 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. 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. 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 Nazza's's Opus Illmatic. Check this out. 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, their 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. 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 Ferraro and 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 loops, like a human drum machine. Oh, that's insane. I didn't even know that. He's playing, like 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. So another thing about Blondie's eclectic taste is that they genuinely love, they adored, in fact, disco.

They even covered Donna Summer's, like, one of Diallo and my collective favorite songs of all time. They covered I Feel Love by Donna Summer. And that at CBGBs in the late 70s would definitely have turned a lot of heads. 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 hearing that, I totally forgotten that it starts out, just with a drum machine, but with a drum machine with the same exact, like, samba preset with the clave. Is that the limb? Dda. Dah. I don't know what George McCrae is using, but Blondie in the song I'm about to play you is using a Roland CR78.

And listen, it's the exact same, not just the fact that it is a drum machine, but it's the da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. The clave, three-two clave for all you Afro-Cuban percussion nerds out there. Don't get racist. No, it's called Afro-Rexam. Cuban percussion. No, I'm playing it. Three under the bus on that one. It's rock your baby sped up.

It's crazy. It's crazy. I never noticed that connection. So that's hard of glass, obviously. 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. And to be clear, that was never released. That is just a demo that us Blondie fans. early version, a demo. It's a very early version of the song. Which then evolved into the disco banger we all know in love to this day. Absolutely. Yeah. And one more thing I want to add, I did find a cover. So let's play it. I did find Blondie playing I feel love. So I'll play a little snippet. The first thing you said when you started playing is like, oh, they use guitars. 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. On guitar, you can do it by going by using your thumb. 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-da-dut on the same note. But to actually have it sound robotic and craftwork-like,

which it was motoric craftwork, craftwork, with technical precision. Nancy's one craftwork country. He comes back with Croft-Vod. Kraftwerk is the name of the band, okay? Say it properly. It's challenging, but it's starting to happen. And I'll talk more about that in a minute. We're going to talk about it, but can I just say, this is the first time either of us have ever heard it.

The cool, the funny thing about this is that it sounds like country music. Like when Giorgio 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 needs to be, it needs the precision. No say it. It matters.

To play a 16th note baseline or the guitar part version of the baseline, it's definitely not the same vibe as the Georgia version. Which is okay for a cover-up. But you know, I'm just 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. We 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 think he does live in L.A. I think he lives right up there, the hills right about, because I used to work at the standard and I used to see pictures of his house. I was just going to say, 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. 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, from Debbie Harry. He 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 like walk out the music. They're going to never come for this. But they love disco. They love marauder. They do. 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. It's probably up there with the Sylvester, you make me feel tempo, probably, right? I forgot how much I loved that song, and it is so disco, unabashedly. They're swinging for the fences of the disco crowd with that one. I like to think that that song was playing at the

premier party for Flash Gordon. Oh, I would love to have been at that party. If you and I had been If 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, Tidus High. This is a group that's not afraid to pin a pin or cover a great pop song. Within the context of the CBGB, you know,

art rock and punk rock crowd. Brave. These are brave people. 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 like 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. Fast 5 Freddie said everybody's fly. Yep. DJ Spin and I said in my mind. Flash is fast, Flash is cool.

That's Grandmaster Flash and Fab Five Freddie both get shoutouts there. Absolutely. You can tell they were absolutely of that scene. You know, this is my first exposure to Blondie as well.

I definitely loved, you know, I was a kid who listened to the radio. So, you know, I heard those BG songs. I heard Blondie. You know, like, I didn't have control of the radio yet. So I don't know which parent of mine I was riding with that they were listening to this stuff. But, you know, in my very, very earliest childhood memories, I remember liking, you know, Blondie.

I remember thinking that they sounded different and cool. And there are a group that I was. I came back to really, really appreciate even more in my 20s. Like, if you had asked me around the time, I was like 25, like, what is your favorite group, favorite rock group of all the time? I would have probably said Blondie. Wow, really? And yeah, because I liked all the different places they could go.

Right. Like, already my, by 25, I had sort of shifted away from being a all-hip-hop DJ to more of an open format DJ. Okay. And so I was spinning house and drum and bass and all these other things. And I was like, what rock? band has had influence in all these different jobs. I couldn't really think of one, except for Blondie seemed like they had almost like an open

format approach to music. That's a great way to put it, and I totally agree. It was like whatever they thought was cool or happening. Talking Hens was a little bit like that. I think that, oh, it's actually Tom Tom Club, which you know, you guys know that that's the rhythm section of Talking Hens. It's Chris and Tina. Right.

But it's sort of that same thing. It's like, Blondie was like, what's the music by other artists that we like? oh, we'll dabble in that art form. And then they went off and did that genre. And they have probably before them, both the Beatles and Bowie as influences, among others. But those two as like every album and every, sometimes every song within a single album,

trying a different form, a different style. Right? That idea, like, by contrast, no shade on the Rolling Stones or the Ramones, but there's, you know, a lot of bands or ACDC, right? They're like, we do one thing. Other end of the spectrum, it's like every ACDC album, well, it sounds the same, let's face it.

Which is not shade because if you like ACDC, you probably want to buy a bunch of around. It always felt like Run DMC was like, we found our look in 1983. Right. And it's only when they tried to go different around like 1990, and they loved Down with the King, great Run DMC song. But when you mentioned Run DMC, there's always sort of like a classic period and they're forever in that period.

But yes, Blondie was not afraid to dabble. And also when I was in my 20s, I should point out, they were still releasing songs. Like Blondie did a song called Good Boys, which I thought was a good song. And The Scissor Sister. who I believe you know. They did a remix that was really cool. So Blondie had a way of staying relevant and current, even, you know.

They're still touring to this day. They're still going strong. Yeah, they just did Coachella not too long ago. Yep. And I saw them a few years ago. They're still incredible live. Clem Burke on drums is still like a powerhouse at 70, whatever. Like, it's amazing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He still plays the, he's great. So we've taught a lot already about like how much we love Blondie, how diverse their songwriting and song crafting is. You know, it was like some of their album cuts, you know, that really won me over. So as much as I like the songs that we've all sort of heard over the years, one of my favorite was the song called Live It Up. That Walking Face Line? We love that.

Yeah, so that one is called Live It Up off of Auto American. But let's talk about Call Me, because Call Me is different from other Blondy 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 Maroder. Before we tell the story of the song, we're huge Maroder fans. We are. Tell me how you came to love Marauder. I'm happy to do that.

So we've mentioned this man a few times already on this episode. 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. Don't forget Love to Love You Baby, which I think that song is so epic, and I love the story of how it gets made. So apparently, you know, the song is already sort of a modest success in Europe. And then Giorgio Morota 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's gone now. 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 direction. 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 a CD changers yet or Spotify playlist. Exactly. There was no auto play. So Neil's asked for a version that's like 20 minutes long. And Giorgio gives it to him. But this is literally Donna Summer's first single.

Yeah, 1975. 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. 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? A lot of blows. But that is, you know, that is Giorgio. 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 Moroder. It wasn't because of the movie,

which, by the way, when I was a kid, I did see some of on TV. And you can't, haunted me for life. Oh, my God. Do not see 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 luxury. That song. Yeah, I mean, I just, I love. I just, I love. 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 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 contemporary. It doesn't sound old. Yeah. 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

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comer records. 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 at Music Land. That is the name of

his studio. And it's important to start there because the song takes life originally as an instrumental that Georgio 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. 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 called Axel F.

Can I just say real quick about Faltermaier 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 notes. 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.

Uncanny Valley. It doesn't look, it's uncanny Valley. It's not quite. It's so hyper-real 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 presumed. 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 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. Okay. 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, Georgia 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, you demos, he would play a chord on the left hand and a 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 Faltermarin, 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 Calmie, 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 can totally see that.

was meant to 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, Blondie Debbie Harry, Madonna. You know what I mean? It's like 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 Faltermeier come into the picture. 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... So the first time Maroon 5 came in and Adam LeVey 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 can be a tricky thing. It can. And in this case, when Maroder brings this track to the band, they all insisted that they would 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 sync.

Remember, these are like this original track is coming off of this sort of 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 guitars was fighting with a keyboard player. I called their manager and quit. It was just too complex. That's so interesting. 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 Destrian 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 and 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 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... 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 on this song. 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 Roshamon. 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 Forsey, 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 calls. me. Sounds like glam drum.

Sounds like glam rock to me. Yeah, you're hearing the triplet six-eight feel. And this whole song has that feel, which gives it a little bit of a bump, a bum, bum, bum. Because that's literally... But it's also that flourish of the... The bam, bum, da, don't... Like, that's not a modest...

No, that don't... That's what makes the song a Blondy Marauder collaboration, 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-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, a half-time 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. All right. Here's a little medley I put together. Here are some other songs with that same shuffle beat. Morning to see you guys, Rosanna, Rosanna. I thought I was the DJ. That's not fair. I had too much fun with that.

I started getting into that. I was like, no, there's also this one-man set. One-man band set up. We got Fleetwood Mac. We got the Blondie. We got the Fleetwood Mac. got fool in the rain by Led Zeppelin, which is the Purdy Shuffle, so it's half-time. Tears for Fears.

We had Tears for Fears. What else I put in there? Ohio Ground by Stevie Wonder. The Stevie meshed real nice. Yeah, right? I'm such a DJ person. Some of these are way slowed down. Some of these are little sped up.

I had to cheat it a little bit. But some of them were like right in the pocket. I had to cheat it a little bit. Yeah. And then we ended with a couple more purty shuffles in half time 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 hi-hats. Sounds super cool. So cool, right? And then here's another chunk I like,

because it's got a lot of fun fills in it. 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. I mean, already a good enough song in 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 sound? 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 did, but, 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 a 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,

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 them. So we know that this is definitely Harold Faltermeyer and definitely not Jimmy Destry, the Blondy 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 Walter-Falter Meyer 16th notes that are sequenced to perfection. 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, 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, you know I like that. You know we both like that. I mean, that sounds like... I could just listen to 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 da-da-da-da. There's the main rhythmic one that's sequenced. And then you've got an organ in the background. There's a second version of that sequenced synth line, which is not 16th notes, it's 8th notes.

And I'll play that for you now. In the mix, you can't really tell it's 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, right? 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. 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. And let's add back the drums just for sheer pleasure's sake. That's like perfect music. 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. I listened to the stems, but that organ is doubling the melody. So that's this part here. 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 and 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 just a moment. 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 Blondie. 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. And yeah, this is towards the end of the song.

Come me. Yeah. Don't do. It's one of my favorite parts of the song. And it adds a sense of urgency. Yeah. It adds attention there. It's 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 name, 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 guitarist, Frank and Fountain. 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 paned 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, Eurodisco in particular, that stands the test of time 40-plus years later.

Chris Stein on guitar isolated guitars for Calmie. I mean, 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, what, 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? I mean, it's kind of a disco song. It's disco rock. 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 an hour. 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. 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, do do do do do do it. It's you gearing up to hit the solo. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's like some heavy metal. 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.

But I will say this. when the song gets released, Blondie has only accredited the vocals, which is wild to me. But let's talk about the vocals. Let's talk about him. We 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 the 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 you said, please don't put a gun in my head.

But if you did, but if you did, and you play the first 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. know who you are, come up off your color chart.

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. 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? Color me. 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 Roll 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? Roll me. Emotions come. Cover. Ooh.

I don't know why cover. up loves 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 is about. I'm only assuming from the movie, because she watched the movie that it's got something to do with the plot line of 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, 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 for. 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. Kiamami. It means... I probably thought she said like camamil or something.

Like, call me in Italian literally. Oh, yeah, now we know. But Kiamami, chamomé. 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. French. Apel me, my cherrie. Appel me, mon cherrie.

Appel moa. There's the punk rock attitude, right? A little snoddy. Appel mo. Absolutely. Call me. We didn't really mention it, but Debbie, you know,

at one point she had been a Playboy bunny 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, hey, blondey, hey, blondey.

And that is why the band was called Blondie. You know, there are people who confuse her name for being Blondie. No, Blondie'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 rest of us.

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 wrestlers coming out to like these guitars and that yeah, with the guitars especially. And, you know, ultimately these lyrics. Those are some great vocals. 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. Okay. And I'll just play the second part of that isolated so you can hear that harmony. It's really beautiful on its own. Oh, I love it. That is, that is some minor sugary greatness. Roll me in designer sheets. I'll never. Never get enough. Such a beautiful blend, right? Yeah, that's really nice. I just noted some background noise, too. They are recording in New York, presumably at a studio,

but that sounds like she was in her, like, apartment with the window open. 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 apropo is the opening of ASEF Berg'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. Call me time. Call me. 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.

The sweet delight. line. Yeah, you're right. I never heard that. Wow. Her voice, she can get up there, man. 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, I was going to say there's something like catlike about it that I can't quite put my finger on. Feline. She's very feline. There's something felonic. Slinky. Is that a word? She's slinky like a fiel. I 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 with reaper. It sounds like a couple guys. You sure? 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 too much Krofov. It could be too much Krofvvike is making me thinking. I think everybody, gentlemen. 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 first. 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. Let's talk about some covers, samples, and interpolations. Let's do it. Let's talk samples and interpolations 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 S&L. 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.

Such a brilliant song. 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 Paragons. No, my Tide is high, but I'm holding on. I'm gonna be your number. Yeah, very cool. Just straight up cover. Straight up cover.

It harkens 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 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. Yeah, 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 Workit by Miss Yeliot. 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 of things I like about that. One is that it's re-harmonized. Like, 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 turpulation? 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 am 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 Names.

like as Super Freaky Girl. Yeah. Hey, y'all, I can lick it, I can ride it while you slip it and sliding. He told me the story of that song, and they originally were going to interpolate the Rick James stuff. Sure. 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 expensive authenticity. But I mean, 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. 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,

Giorgio Armani's bursting onto the scene as a popular... With this movie. It came from this movie. Yeah, totally. A lesser-known Italian designer. I'll say... And I could not get past the... 59 minute mark.

It's got Georgia Maroder. 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, you know, 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, Faltermire, you played Axel F earlier. 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. Oh, yeah, the trucks 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. U.E. Louis and the News, that was big. Fight the Power by Public Enemy and do the right thing. Like, there's so many movies where, I mean, obviously, Saturday Night Fever with, you know. Right, that opening sequence walking down the street.

Straten 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.

Yeah. 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 this 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 like you want people to hear it and love it, but you also want it to be true and authentic.

Yeah. And you, 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 there were their interests, disco, hip-hop, art, 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. 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, 1990. 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 guitar. 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. 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. 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 a distorted guitars. 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 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 board. 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 player because those 16th notes on his guitar on the hitmaker as he calls it that sounds like it could be coming out of Marauders music land 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. That's right. Luxury, help me in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist Luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, D'allel Rue.

And this is One Song. We'll see you next time. This episode is produced by Matthew Nelson and Chris Neri with engineering from Marcus Haum. Additional production support from Casey Simonson. The show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Wael, and Leslie Guam.