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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Posted by Chris Stein at 1/17/2004 05:28:00 AM

i dont have time today for a long spiel...(thats from the yiddish pronounced "shpeel", in old show-biz parlance it meant 'bit' or sort of discussion, often with comic overtones, official def is "A lengthy or extravagant speech or argument usually intended to persuade"...there, educational material as well) just wanted to say that i've gotten so many really fantastic comments regarding the current affairs of humanity that i am quite moved and encouraged, i think i've suddenly got a lot of response from people who dont usually write which is also great... someone, "M"m i think reminded me that dennis hopper or somesuch luminary said that "I have a feeling the 90's are gonna make the 60's look like the 50's.." i forgot about how right on that is... i want to reference more of what people said... will have to wait till next week one thing i did think of was that if EVER there was gonna be a faked moon or mars landing now is the fucking time, i mean how tempting is that.. give five million to (spiel)berg to do the CGI and pocket the rest of the 30 trillion.... chris

Posted by Chris Stein at 1/15/2004 05:34:00 AM

im glad to see some of you were inspired, stirred up by my complaints about current conditions etc... (for starters of course i'm 100% behind getting the human race into space, i'm just pissed by the administrations blatant attempt to capture votes by making a big deal 'announcement' on the eve of the next election) so i got a letter from Brian that i quote from here, he says that he "cannot read another sad commentary by you! Use your position to enlighten, not show us that you too, have lost all hope. What's the fucking point? ... We want you to be happy. We want you to be safe in the knowledge that no matter how negative the world around you can get, the world of supporters that YOU have, *that are ALSO part of this world*, are here for you..."
[link to complete text] this is in a way what i am most worried about in making statements about politics, current affairs etc... one of the reasons i for one have left this kind of stuff out of the music/lyrics over the years... so firstly i am the most optimistic motherfucker in the universe, brian has badly misconstrued my perspective... for me personally im verry happy etc etc BUT we have reached a crunch time in our civilization and the world of tv and music and related is in as much jeopardy as the rest of our so called freedoms... simply, people in their forties and fifties like myself who have been watching the world have a basic observational advantage over people in their twenties and thirties (in the past when i've said something like this i've gotten comments about how the sixties were only about wearing tie dyed t shirts and that i'm stuck being a hippie etc etc) i'm not at all attempting to take a superior or know it all position here its just soo frustrating seeing the way things are changing in America... having seen all of these different realities come and go in my lifetime is just amazing... you guys have got to believe me, one of the ways the system is getting over on you is by making you indifferent, so that your reaction is to want to 'escape' from 'depressing' subjects... one of the things that we are constantly discussing in interviews all over the world is how the world of popular music has lost its ability to ferment, cause social change, how the world youth culture which used to have an anti-establishment position and used to be a force for change has been co-opted into just another layer of consumerism... just thirty years ago most of the big corporations that bloated the airwaves with advertising were plain shit scared to have their products represented by contemporary music and celebrities... products were never advertised as 'extreme' or connected to slogans or ideas that emerged from the underground... there were two worlds in america: the safe world of family and walt disney and the dangerous world of teenage wildness and rock and roll... so what happened? well the establishment got the message with the success of things like mtv and like in the days of the roman empire the 'enemies of the state' were absorbed into the great over culture... when i was growing up rolling stone magazine was a radical far out informative piece of work that actually did for a while represent the counter culture... so look where thats wound up with the full page salem cigarette ads and awful boy bands being promoted as the 'future of rock'... now think what things are gonna be like in another twenty years if things continue the way they are going now... in his letter brian complains that he doesnt feel as carefree and wild as he used to when he listens to blondie, that he has "to rely on past experiences to conjure up that excitement." he suggests that his reading that i "dont care" might in part be responsible for his lack of enthusiasm... well of course i care about music and performing etc but what i wrote last time means exactly what it says that in the face of what is happening in the world, entertainment and escaping doesnt feel right and i think that his inability to get back to how he used to feel when listening to music has a great deal to do with what music means to us now... we turn on the tv and hear music advertising mcdonald death burgers that is as good or better than some of the stuff on the horrible limited radio... rock and roll is no longer special, dangerous or mysterious, its a background drone for our lives as consumers... its safe... of course youre not gonna feel the same excitement... actually i've thought quite a bit about writing in this vein, about going to 'the next level' as it were and discussing this stuff in a 'fan' environment, but i just wouldnt feel true to myself by ignoring how i feel and just playing the part of rock and roll dude who only lives for 'the music'... i'm sorry but that is just false and corny and i guess there are people in bands who live only in the bubble environment of their musical selves but 'it aint me babe' as the fella says... what im saying then is that blondie will continue and we will continue doing and living for and with music but i'm urging you out there to get involved with the world now and dont try to avoid the 'depressing' stuff out there cause its sure as shit isnt going away... i'll continue to write about stuff that happens on the road and tell stories, but everything in the world is connected big time and i just have to deal with it... for a quick way to get involved a bit more check out 'adbusters' magazine and site... dont be isolated try and connect with each other in contexts beyond being fans, everyone can do something now to keep us all free love, to be continued chris

Posted by Chris Stein at 1/13/2004 05:49:00 AM

hello all etc... i cant tell you how totally absurd things are getting, some of you are paying attention... so the bush(it) administration finds it necessary to get into space (well inner space, that is the neighborhood) no doubt due to not being able to find Osama here on earth and he might be hiding out on mars... somehow i suspect that they've already got him and will drag him out a week before the election, bush dressed in his military drag claiming to have personally caught him... (saw a bumper sticker: "if you can read this you're not the president") but seriously i cant avoid the feeling that we are up shits creek... just a copy of the sunday times is enough to make me want to live in a cave until things blow over...in it we see how video games and internet blogs are becoming the defining elements off our culture... i was reading "junkie" (required reading) for the nth time and i realised that things in 1945 were closer to times B.C. than to 2004... the advancements in technology are wonderful but the advancements in the manipulation of the masses, propaganda, and the pursuit of materialism have made perhaps even greater strides... we've been listening to a Noam Chomsky cd "emerging framework of world power" while driving around in the car, i'd recommend it to all, just listen to what he has to say, then you can decide how much of it to believe... i assume for example that most informed individuals are aware that some of Saddams worst crimes; chemical attacks against the Kurdish people in northern Iraq were carried out with support from the US, that Saddam was considered an ally of America (against Iran) when he first came to power... so now i see a news item 'bush meets with victims of saddams chemical weapons in the oval office'... one is reminded of Orwells "1984" where history is constantly re-written to suit the current politcal climate... this crazyness seems endlessly spiralling out of control at this point...is it really important to spend fifty trillion dollars to get to local space while there are still people dying of starvation... and people are so stirred up by the notion that the US is considered an evil empire in many parts of the world and yet the equation seems sooo simple; you have people who have grown up in poverty in countries where their own natural resources are absorbed by the west... some kid starving while oil from his backyard is making some American kid rich... in South America land that should be used to produce food for the local population is used to raise cut flowers for US dinner tables while the people tending them make less than a US toilet scrubber... so people grow up with this stuff as a part of life, they of course see how much we have and they don't have and we have the balls to be surprised and annoyed when they get pissed off at us... etc etc etc this stuff is always on my mind, in the face of what's going on right now doing music feels very trivial... i think bush will probably be "elected" again and the US will get another step closer to totalitarianism... and i dont really have a clue what to do beyond writing about it here... the "system" seems so firmly entrenched on every level that the room for change is becoming smaller and smaller over and out chris

Posted by Chris Stein at 1/03/2004 05:51:00 AM

shows in the fatherland... just a few... boy, disneyland is rough... i mean they paid us and all were nice but man! i guess some of the others were somewhat into it but aside from being amused by the tower of terror i found myself being really depressed while walking around i kept flashing on burning man, how this was, is the antithesis... its just so superficial and cruddy around the edges... some huge sadness lingers in the heart of america, everyone knows its all a lie, that all the hoopla is about nothing... its all just preservatives preserving more preservatives, like mcdonalds theres nothing in the inside its all packaging, those kids toys where the box is more exciting than whats inside... i just dont know whats gonna happen, where was that line from 'everthing plunging down hill the only question whether the brakes are on or off'... in the hotel, where the littlest bottle of gatorade costs three bucks i was watching tv; on one channel theres robin thing with the lifestyles of the absurdly bloated "and heres so and so spending 8 grand an hour to go fishing and donald trumps yacht that costs five hundred grand to fill the gas tank" and on the channel right next to this is some local station with the reggae top ten with videos of these dirt poor people all looking like their having a much better time than ben afflick next door with his solid gold toothpicks whatever, and all the reggae videos were shot with like the cheapest camcorders and the ads on the station were all really funky for local places that sold island food and stores that sold tacky "new york style" clothes like the stuff they sell on fourteenth street, and just what a contrast and who really is better off all the gorgeous black people who are on the bottom or the surgically enhanced ghosts that inhabit the top... so theres that... and as usual for those of you who may decide im really negative... well to me its not how i feel really and i see how willy nelson has released an anti war song so lets see anyone try and call him un-american... i really enjoyed last night at st. petersburg and got to talk to various people after the show...right now im in the hotel room in i guess its hollywood fla. and the window/terrace opens onto the ocean and its quite fantastic, curtains blowing and sea sound i'll write some more later on, thanks those who've shown up, more US shows should start up in feb-march around the time of the record release in the states happy new year and love to all chris