Blondie: Chris Stein
News about Chris Stein, guitarist and songwriter for the rock band Blondie.
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regarding the programs
Posted by Chris Stein at 12/18/2005 09:10:00 PM
regarding the programs and lack of at the gigs i will talk to the powers that be and see what can be done maybe they can sell some on the site
now mark from nottingham writes:
...tell your management that I feel it unfair that there were a lot of people backstage who had clearly not been to the gig and were dealers trying to get signatures for re-sale. I did indicate to one of the security but sadly to no avail and Debbie wouldnt have known this
now heres the deal, of course we all know about this especially debbie and that is why she sometimes wont sign an autograph if the person looks like a professional... actually mark here is the first fan to write in about this but its something we have been dealing with forever... the problem is theres really nothing to be done about it except to limit the amount of autographs we sign... of course its obvious when somebody shows up with like one copy of all the vinyl records as opposed to somebody who just wants us to sign like ten little white cards... not to worry though as its not that common a phenomena and we are able generally to tell who is really a fan its not that hard
the tour is almost done now in ireland for the final three shows, the last uk gig in london was really enjoyable... but generally it was a good tour and we feel very close to everyone over here... im glad people liked the show
theres this one thing... ha... i finally have figured out why british drivers are so fucking deadly aggressive, for years now i always wondered why when i step off a curb in london and there's a car coming it seems to speed up gleefully and when i step in front of a car and it actually has to slow down the driver goes absolutly mad and gnashes his teeth etc etc
its cause of the pedestrians!!! you british pedestrians are too fucking polite... in new york city when i'm driving around its just a given that people are going to wander in front of the car, in fact the roles are reversed whereby certain tough and gangster type pedestrians in nyc will automatically slow down when they see a car coming, giving the driver the same deadly looks one gets from the british driver... i have also had a very weird fact confirmed by several people; see in the US we are taught from the time we are little kids that "the pedestrian always has the right of way" this is just basic stuff and in the last few weeks when i asked people if this was the case over here, do they have a similar phrase, they were like HA HA HO HO YOU ARE CRAZY!... so here we have this most civilized of countries except for this one strange inversion of street law... im telling you guys over here its up to you...crossing the damn street just shouldnt be so fucking dangerous... next time you're crossing the street in front of a bunch of seething impatient drivers slow the fuck down instead of scurrying accross the street like a bunch of good little doomed bunnies... id like to see some of these london drivers try this stuff in the south bronx, ha, theyd be dragged out of their cars and stomped flat...
last time i was amused by 'big brother' but 'space cadets' leaves me mystified... its so dull its amazing, are people actually watching? except for the andy warhol aspect, that is watching somebody sleeping as entertainment it is really uninspiring
i will be glad to get home i really miss the family but at the same time i will miss all of you over here... you guys as fans all do us proud
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still in sheffield
Posted by Chris Stein at 12/13/2005 09:11:00 PM
still in sheffield, leave soon for the final stretch...
i have gotten a few questions and comments about the frankie/nigel situation... so i guess now that the hall of fame is imminent again;
no one in the band ever had any hard feelings towards those guys until they decided to try and sue us which was such a huge pain and trauma you cant imagine... (sigh!) the band was started by debbie and myself back in 73-75 or so depending on how you mark the time line... there were numerous other shifting band members before we gained any notoriety... the line up was made stable and the name first used after we got clem and a little later jimmy, blondie was well established when those guys joined, frankie was replaced by eddie martinez for the last year or so... so years later when we decided to start up again we briefly tried to work with nigel but by that time we had been working with leigh foxx for a long time and were closer to him... i dont think i need to justify who i want to work with but there is a rigidity in people about the identity of "the band", what peoples perception of it is, what they think it should be etc (there must have been volumes written about the beatles and yoko etc, we still argue about what version of the stones was the best one) so thats kind of it... what happened then was that in spite of those guys getting paid their share for the work they did (despite what you might see they get and always have gotten a percentage of the royalties for the albums they worked on) they decided that they wanted to get a percentage of everything the band made even if they werent involved and we all felt that that wasnt fair... now all of this has nothing to do with musicianship etc but i swear that speaking for myself if debbie and the others didnt want to work with me any more i would feel bad about it certainly but i would let it go, you can believe it or not... i know this is gonna come up more but thats my side of it those guys could have remained on friendly terms with us but the way i see it they chose not to... im not gonna get into who contributed what to the band and the band identity thats up to the public perception... i really didnt want to write this shit it just stirs up a lot of bad feelings...
on a lighter now being stuck in hotel rooms one is forced to watch the occasional miserable tv show, generally i avoid tv shows but i left my murakami book on the bus and as a result succumbed to the lure of the crummy tub(e)... so i watched 'lost' which is kind of survivor with flashbacks and shittier writing... so these guys are slogging through the jungle after not being able to break into some mysterious bomb shelter, some subplot about kidney theft, so the one guy has a dream of a plane crashing and he knows they have to find it so they slog through the jungle and sure enough they find the plane and they are all excited and the guy goes inside and damn! whats there?, shit shit nothing but heroin... they are very upset... either i'm crazy or this is the straight line of the year; the dudes are on a deserted tropical island with a bunch of babes and a lifetime supply of smack and they are pissed off... as kevin said 'all they need is some boom boxes'...
then theres king kong which always struck me as an overwhelming tragedy, the saddest fucking story; is it about conservation?, about the human tendency to exploit and ruin everything man comes into contact within the natural world, is it about loneliness and isolation? what a strange message to put out at christmas... im sure i'll probably like it when i get around to it but i always felt so miserably sorry for poor kong that i couldnt really get into the movie that much... (also i'm amazed that so many of the people over here when discussing the new version in print and on tv say they are unfamiliar with the original old version which i'd always thought was required viewing)
shouldnt have killed tookie
(elvis not dead, living in a corn field)
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tour winds down
Posted by Chris Stein at 12/12/2005 01:57:00 PM
tour winds down but still some big gigs left... in the tour bubble wherein time is a sort of external event that doesnt affect waking sleeping etc... still very little daylight around...
so we watch the news etc. if arnold has any brains he will let tookie off, we are waiting to see what happens... its funny cause as much as i like eminem i dont feel directly connected to his more youth oriented angst now i am quite moved by his latest offering in which he expresses his frustrations about leaving his kid... i miss the family a lot and dont know when i'm going to be able to undertake another long expedition like this again, we'e just gonna have to see what happens...
one thing is about the british accent or dialect, theres something all the more horrible about tv advertisments when delivered in what we americans consider erudite anglo diction... in other words i always think of the british accent as fairly highbrow and when i hear words like 'underarm detergent' etc spoken so carefully its even more sickening than the brash u.s. equivalent of 'barking dog' dialog that we are familiar with back home
the shows have been going well again thanks to Hugh and his pals for being such a great support act
i have been really getting off on playing the Roxy song and people have been responding well to it although i dont think anybody gets that the opening instrumental is our version of '..warm jets' by Eno
at least no one has mentioned knowing what it is so far...
here is Leigh Foxx live at albert hall
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newcastle tonight
Posted by Chris Stein at 12/07/2005 02:06:00 PM
newcastle tonight... edinburgh was quite great, those guys really know how to get crazy... aberdeen was the third power outage in blondie history but like all the others it was very weird and i wonder how many actually noticed it, at the exact moment d said goodnight at the end of hog the house (the sound system) went out for just a second but in doing so all of the presets at the sound board went back to their default modes which made the sound totally change but since it was at the end in the frenzy finale part i dont think it was very apparent
i am still getting requests for autographs, all i can say is that every night at the shows we do sign all the stuff thats been sent to the venue... as far as that goes it would be a great help if people would put their name on the back of things they want signed so that it can be matched to envelopes as sometimes it gets chaotic
shows are quite fun now, it takes a while to get proper momentum going... thus far the cold and flu has been at a minimum though various people in the crew are succumbing...
yeah i never mention the crew, the guys and few girls who work for us are really fantastic and are a huge part of what goes on every night, this particular bunch is very slick and we cant thank them enough for repeatedly saving us during the shows and otherwise
again thanx for all your support and comments, its hard to write a lot i thought it'd be easier but i'll get more stuff up eventually
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