“When you listen to an album like ‘Autoamerican,’ that is like everything but the kitchen sink. It was that eclecticism that Shipley rediscovered while revisiting Blondie’s six studio albums recorded for Chrysalis - “Blondie,” “Plastic Letters,” “Parallel Lines,” “Eat to the Beat,” “Autoamerican” and “The Hunter.”
The band named the collection “Against the Odds” because of its unlikely climb to the summit of cool - an unusual group with a rare female singer and a mix of styles that was too pop for many in the punk scene. “There were a couple of moments where they didn’t want things in, but then we convinced them that we made them sound really good.” That had never happened before,” said Shipley. “I think they were really gracious with allowing their histories to be examined, getting all seven members of the band into one book. The box set marks the first time the band - Harry, Stein, drummer Clem Burke, bassist Leigh Foxx, guitarist Tommy Kessler and keyboardist Matt Katz-Bohen - authorized a collection and participated in the process. “The most revealing things to me are always when you’re hearing that DNA of a song coming together.” “The real joyous moments of making this thing was discovering things that nobody had ever heard,” said Shipley. The final set, coming via The Numero Group and UMe, represents six years of work. In addition to the Woodstock cache, Shipley and Rosenthal combed through the vast Universal archives, looking in New York, Los Angeles and London for lost Blondie assets. That’s not the way it is with analog tapes.” “If you flooded a hard drive, it’s toast. “Ken and I work with analog tapes a lot, and it’s a very resilient format,” said Rosenthal. Then they got to work mastering and mixing. And then there were the unauthorized fans - rats and mice who had made the material their homes.īut Shipley and co-producer Steve Rosenthal didn’t panic: They knew analog audio tapes are actually hardy things and so donned masks, vacuumed and baked the cache. They’d endured years of blazing heat and freezing cold. They were waterlogged from a flood and were infested with mold. The tapes and tubs were stored in guitarist Chris Stein’s converted barn but locating them was only part of the journey.
There’s also a five-track 1975 album demo that includes “Platinum Blonde,” a sort of band mission statement. 1s: “Heart of Glass,” “Call Me,” “The Tide Is High” and “Rapture,” which is regarded as the first No. The collection is the red-hot center of a band that during the late 1970s and early ‘80s had eight Top 40 hits, including four No. There’s also a one-of-a-kind home recording of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” - originally recorded at a slow speed to save money - and the never-released-until-now song, “Mr.
There are snazzy covers of The Doors’ “Moonlight Drive” and Ike and Tina Turner’s “Sexy Ida,” as well as “Out in the Streets” by The Shangri-Las. Listeners can hear early versions of what would become the hit “Heart of Glass” - it was initially just called “The Disco Song” - and “I Love You Honey, Give Me a Beer,” an original demo for the song that became the country-inflected “Go Through It.” There’s also an illustrated discography and a 144-page commentary by all seven original band members. What has emerged is the comprehensive, 17-pound box set “Blondie: Against the Odds, 1974-1982,” with 124 tracks and 36 previously unissued recordings, demos, outtakes and remixed versions of Blondie’s initial six studio albums.
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