Blondie - Blondie [180g Black Vinyl LP]

Recorded at Plaza Sound Studios above Radio City Music Hall in the summer of 1976, Blondie came out that December on Private Stock Records, produced by Richard Gottehrer, a veteran of the Brill Building scene whose instinct for melody left a clear mark on the sessions. Poor sales led the band to part ways with Private Stock and sign with Chrysalis Records, who reissued the album in September 1977. Now back on vinyl as a limited 180-gram repressing mastered at Sterling Sound, Blondie captures a band already operating with sharper pop instincts than most of their CBGB contemporaries.

Jimmy Destri's Farfisa organ runs through the record like a connective thread, pairing with Gary Valentine's guitar and bass work and Clem Burke's locked-in drumming beneath Debbie Harry's cool, knowing vocal delivery. "X Offender," renamed from its original title "Sex Offender" after radio pushback, opens with a surf-tinged chord structure and Harry's sardonic phrasing intact. "In the Flesh" reaches further back, built on a slow '50s-ballad feel with doo-wop background vocals from Ellie Greenwich, Micki Harris, and Hilda Harris. "Rip Her to Shreads" is the album's most pointed moment, a choppy, guitar-driven track co-written by Harry and Chris Stein that moves with a hard pop efficiency the rest of the record only occasionally matches.

Mastered at Sterling Sound, Blondie is presented here as a standard single LP with the original eleven-track sequence intact. The recording itself was made on a modest budget at Plaza Sound, a large midtown room previously used as a radio studio for the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The jacket replicates the original album presentation. Rolling Stone placed Blondie at number 401 on its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, recognition that arrived well after the record's initial commercial struggles.

• Format: 180g Black Vinyl LP
• Standout Tracks: "X Offender," "In the Flesh," "Rip Her to Shreads"
• Pressing Details: Limited 180g repressing; mastered at Sterling Sound; original label spelling "Rip Her to Shreads" retained
• Genre/Style: genre Rock
• UPC: 600753550328

A debut that outpaced its era, Blondie on 180-gram vinyl is a clean, well-mastered pressing of one of New York's most distinctive first statements.

* The Spotify track list may not exactly represent the tracks and audio of this LP edition.

Track List:

Side A:

1. X Offender
2. Little Girl Lies
3. In The Flesh
4. Look Good In Blue
5. In The Sun
6. A Shark In Jets Clothing
   

Side B:

1. Man Overboard
2. Rip Her To Shreads
3. Rifle Range
4. Kung Fu Girls
5. The Attack Of The Giant Ants