Official Blondie Web Site: Chris Stein

Blondie: Chris Stein
News about Chris Stein, guitarist and songwriter for the rock band Blondie.

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sat june 29
Posted by Chris Stein at 6/29/2002 07:46:00 AM

rehersals are almost done, soo i wake up in the morning usually very early sometimes like today at around 5 o'clock am... this is really fucking weird as most of my life was spent waking at like 1pm like a normal person after walking the dog and attending to various other ritualistic behavior i got to the computr in the crowded front room here, we're on the ground floor and the front door is always open to the street beyond the loading dock, just keep the gate closed to prevent animal exodus or intrusion, though the latter is unlikely as the dog looks threatening though he is a great wimp... today as a result of not having checked up in a while i weeded through some 70 messages from you all... this took a while... thankx again for all the words of support this whole deal with the site has become a genuine source of inspiration for me and i printed out a few letters for debbie to check out like the one from the kid who said we helped him when he was struggling with his gay orientation as a teenager, this stuff is always really moving and real and doing what we do its very easy to feel 'unreal' about ones self as to the record im amused and amazed by the occasional note of outrage by someone who wants to know 'what the fuck youve been doing working on it for so long etc.' ... i do recall thinking the same stuff when i was younger, i distinctly remember wondering why mick taylor (the stones guitarist after Brian Jones) would take a year or more to make his solo record ... its really pretty simple i mean damn, does anyone actually think that im sitting around in some recording studio for months on end like 'oh lets take three days to play this note' the time actually spent on the recording gets interrupted for whatever reason and the lack of rhythm as a result is frustrating as hell... ive heard stories of people actually being in a studio situation for long periods but in our case we've never spent more than maybe three months total working on an album i dont know why i feel compelled to report this as i am fairly sure just about everyone gets the idea (as a matter of fact on checking i see that its just the one dude who i must admit did get my attention by bitching and whining but we aim to please and i'd never stoop so low as to tell this guy to fuck off and blow me as that would be ungentlemanly) this is probably the last time ill write from new york before the touring starts, i hope to keep it up from the road with my shitty slow lap top... yesterday i walked down the west side hiway with debbie as she went to get her car... all around the city is just overloaded with the signs of prosperity and growth, everywhere little fancy galleries and cafes all hi tech and modern where there used to be just empty space and areas that people never went to... and i had a flash that its taken all the time since world war two for the global economy to fine tune itself to where its at now that there wont be another depression in the west that everyone is set up... but this is a fucking horrible thing because the world is now more than ever one single place and the prosperity of the west is directly connected to the misery of the rest of the third world and the death and starvation of countless people, the destruction of vast areas of environment and the mass killing of animals...i know that this may come off as just a bunch of rhetoric but i am regularly confronted with the idea that immersing my self in the material world of american pop culture just isnt enough... so all of you when you come to see us just remember that it just is no joke how lucky we are and maybe that our relationship with the world is a lot more fragile than we think, that maybe we have no right to live these easy lives at the expense of others, and that youre not going to see these ideas on the 6 o'clock news and as a matter of fact the establishment is always going to take the line that you deserve what you have at any cost... so again this stuff though perhaps disturbing is what i have on my mind and laying it on you guys is about all i can do right now as far as "doing something" goes thanks for bearing with me, i hope to get to speak to some of you this summer, dont be shy about saying you have read the site stuff... im really sorry to come off so grim but hey im right down the block from "ground zero" and thats as real as one can get... we all will miss Dee Dee too, theres this great poem he wrote about Joey being a dragon that should be somewhere on their official site ill check and if its not there put it here eventually love to you all chris

reply to replies
Posted by Chris Stein at 6/21/2002 07:51:00 AM

once again im really brought up by everyone's response to another delay in another one of our projects... i cant thank you all enough for being so understanding and generous in your reactions, everyone with almost no exception said they didn't mind waiting etc... i don't mean to get overly sentimental but i really have a 'thing' about disappointing the fans who in a way are the purest part of the whole system... (i know for ex that debbie feels bad when she's hustled past groups of autograph seekers, stuff like that is unavoidable unfortunately) i didn't really expect to get such immediate feedback.... im sorry to the dude who is worried that us "pissing around" with the record for too long is in his opinion going to be detrimental but i think aside from him everyone else i heard from has got a good idea of what goes on one of the messages i got, from Els in belgium is worth noting; here's an excerpt I'm starting to understand the music-buzz a bit now, I always thought it was simple to record an album and release it, but now I'm getting the fact that it's not all up to the artists but more up to the people behind the scene that are pulling the strings. A "friend"of mine "Katrina Leskanich", she's the former singer of the band Katrina and the Waves, has been busy with her first solo album, and that's been delayed over and over again as well. that sums up the basics... the conflicts for me arise from trying to understand my motivations for doing this in the first place, trying to work in the system, produce mass art that at the same time is personal etc etc once again you all have made my day... debbie had been really disappointed by the delay and i know she'll be cheered by you'alls comments more rehearsing today thanx agggggainnn chris

news4 post
Posted by Chris Stein at 6/20/2002 07:54:00 AM

first the bad news ( i guess) doesnt look like the album is gonna get out till next year... its just been too slow with various breakdowns and large gaps of off time in the sessions... the good news is that i for one will try and make the album bigger, we are gonna keep on working on material so theres a chance it could have a lot of stuff on it... (simply, like everything else there are formulas that dictate release schedules, 'windows' where albums are put out en masse by the major labels...) aside from that plans are also afoot to get to the UK this year im sorry for the delay we thought that we could make the fall release dates but its not gonna be... we've got about 14 songs done as well as artwork etc (all of it needs to be mixed though and this way at least we can add new material and really perfect it...) for me the mixing is the main problem right now, i wouldnt put it out the way it is, i know debbie and jimmy agree even though we're disappointed at the delay.... im trying to keep this on an even keel, not rant about finances etc etc... its amazing how all things tie up... sometime ill write about what actually happened to the band but doing that now would probably piss off too many people and i'd rather just keep going producing music as usual i cant thank you enough for your comments and weird messages... for example mary ann makes a good point about radio being allowed to monopolize when all kinds of restraints are put on various other so called 'services'... as usual in our dumbass society the importance of culture and art even of a 'popular' variety is not in the fore... rehearsals are getting better, the shows should be different than in the past as we've worked out a lot of sound and volume issues anyhow im just rambling may main point was about the record being delayed and im trying to add some filler... i hope no ones too pissed off, honestly im not really sure a hold up is so bad, its not like the material is just sitting there we're still working... two new songs last week etc... i guess thats it im pretty preoccupied with about a hundred other things any way... ill report back before we go out... i think the first date is around the first week of july chris

sat june 8
Posted by Chris Stein at 6/08/2002 07:55:00 AM

mail volume seems up in anticipation of the 'tour' i hope it comes up to everyone's expectations... i don't have a clue... rehearsals start monday... comments on sociology etc... what ive come to lately is that we in america are finally experiencing a backlash to the liberalism of the sixties... seems like yesterday odd it was forty years ago... i think the sixties was the last 'jump' in human consciousness, morality, ideals etc etc... since then things have been going forward, but in a curve as it were... im not really clear on why this has happened, nature does seem to swing back and forth, that combined with the repressive tendencies of any government (you cant have control without somebody to be controlled) and the trends in anti-intellectualism that have been in play probably since the thirties (come to think of it anti intellectualism probably coincides with the rise, and fear, of communism in the west, people coming to associate intellectuals with dangerous red types, these stereotypes being encouraged by the 'establishment')... for example i remember being heavily influenced by the film "performance" which starred Mick Jagger who was one of my teenage heroes, in the movie MJ plays a well read very reclusive rock star, in one scene he reads a passage from Borjes, the blind Argentinean writer, as a result of that i went out and read more of his stuff which was a little tricky for me to understand at the time but still fantastic... its not like there wasnt any headbanging when i was a teenager its just i wonder if there wasnt a wider spectrum of 'stuff' to pick up on... maybe im just getting old and subject to the "when i was your age" syndrome... any way thanx for your comments i did get one from a girl who said looking up the words she didn't know that were in our songs helped her vocabulary over and out chris