Table of Contents

Introduction: “Went Walking One Day on the Lower East Side … ”

Chapter One: Downtown New York in the 1960s and 1970s
Blondie’s New York Genes
Punk’s Bubblegum Roots
The Avant-Garde Goes Pop!
Children of The Velvet Underground
Max’s Kansas City

Chapter Two: Blondie’s Arty Antecedents
Off-Off-Broadway Sets the Stage for Punk
Eric Emerson Makes the Scene
Two Stars Align in the Glitter Age
Punk’s Trash Aesthetic

Chapter Three: Parallel Scenes
The Downtown Disco Underground Emerges
Blondie Stumbles Into Existence
CBGB and the Bowery Neighborhood
The Downtown Rock Scene Coalesces

Chapter Four: From the Bowery to Blondiemania
Debbie and Chris Rebuild
Blondie Takes Off
“Going Professional”
Art and Commerce

Chapter Five: “Disco Sucks,” “Chicks Can’t Rock,” Blah Blah Blah
“Heart of Glass” Breaks Blondie In America
From CBGB to Studio 54
“Death To Disco!"
Punk vs. Disco?
Gender Trouble

Conclusion, or, Fade Away (and Radiate)
Postscript: Blondie Points To the Future, Then Ceases To Exist

Promotional Information

This critical account of Blondie’s rise also doubles as an alternative history of 1970s American popular music and the downtown New York scene.

About the Author

Kembrew McLeod is a Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa, USA. He has published and produced several books and documentaries about music and popular culture.

Reviews

It’s a rare treat when an author busts out a tightly researched agenda that totally flips your perspective on a record, a band, a scene, a genre, and an entire artistic era. Kembrew McLeod provides such a treat with this gloriously revisionist history, positing that Blondie and the core of the New York punk scene’s early bands and aesthetics were a product of a wildly vital gay underground theater scene that flourished from the late 1960s to the early 1970s.
*MTV News*

A neat snapshot of a time of revolution, reinvention and experimentation ... [This book is] every bit as appetising as the album itself, and an astute, erudite examination of one of the greatest albums of all time.
*Record Collector*

An interesting thesis well made in this enjoyable addition to the 33 1/3 series.
*International Times*

There’s a little book I’ve been devouring on the subway this past week or two: Blondie’s Parallel Lines by Kembrew McLeod. It has had me tracing and re-tracing connections all over the place, re-examining my own assumptions about my own evolving musical tastes and cultural assumptions from the time of my first transistor radio ... Refreshing.
*One Flew East*

Nothing beats a great argument that makes you think of the album in question in a whole new light, then – of course – sends you right back to the music to love it all over again ... Parallel Lines – the book – is worth reading if you’re a devotee of Blondie or the 33 1/3 series (and of course for fans of both already) but if, somehow, you’ve never experienced this record in your lifetime and haven’t yet read any of the other entries into this set of snapshots of classic albums, McLeod’s book might instantly, easily, make you a fan of both.
*Off The Tracks*

The publisher Bloomsbury cannot be praised highly enough for the 33 1/3 series ... This volume houses countless surprising details ... [and] McLeod writes so informatively and with such inspiration that one cannot dismiss Parallel Lines or any of the other similar music covered in the book.
*CulturMag (Bloomsbury translation)*

[Blondie's] Parallel Lines ... gives a good critical insight into how record labels have worked up until the present day ... the whole thing reads very well.
*OX Fanzine (Bloomsbury translation)*