Over a number of years, I’ve heard the repeated assertion that Blondie’s 1982 tour for The Hunter was canceled at least in part due to poor album sales.  It came up again today, and I wrote this opinion:

The one thing I would say in response to the many times over the years where someone said something like the Hunter tour was canceled due in part to “poor sales” “and the fact they weren’t going to make any money due to tax problems. The money had run out.” is this:

As an archivist of the band for 30+ years, I have never personally seen anything in writing (either official or internal correspondence) that supports the claim that the tour cancellation was related to poor album sales in any way. I’ve heard that repeated many times, but so far, no one has shown any evidence to support the claim (logical fallacy called “Proof by Assertion“). If such evidence exists, I’d certainly like to see it. The tour dates in the US that preceded the canceled part were doing pretty well in venues the size of where they have played in the last 8 years. Blondie has toured internationally every year since 2001, and in many of those years, had no album out at all, so album sales are not required for touring. In 1982, poor sales of The Hunter, though true, was not the cause of the tour cancellation, but it was correlated. Correlation is not causality. Chris was a critical member of the band and was taken out by an illness that was more likely than not to be fatal in 1982 and did not continue without him. Any tax liability owed by individual band members would not affect the profitability of a tour because that debt was not part of their record company or management company’s liability and did not affect income at all. It would be entirely owed by the individual. There wasn’t a lump sum of money that could “run out”. Blondie’s business is a revenue stream of record sales, tour income, merchandising, and royalties, and the business never had any responsibility for anyone’s individual tax debt.

It’s raining outside.  Sometimes if I imagine that it is raining words, I can write.
Last night was the Full Moon and an eclipse (though my vision was never good enough to see a penumbral eclipse).
I was playing all sorts of stuff on my music player (you can see what I play at Last.fm).  I would die without it, but those of you who are reading this probably already know that… and out of that combination came the inspiration of choosing a date to make my site live.

The date that everyone who has encouraged me to write has been waiting for shall be November 3.  Keep reading; you’ll get to the reason eventually.

My kids just left.  We were watching the Lady Gaga 2013 itunes festival show from an HD video… I can’t stop watching it.  Apple keeps issuing takedown notices to Google after it gets 250K youtube views so I saved it to a file.  Fortunately, files don’t wear out like records.
Anyway, I was raving about how I thought the song “I Wanna Be With You” was so fabulous and my favorite.  My son Jeremy said he thought that “Applause” was my favorite.  I like that song, in fact the whole show except for the rap song is so amazing I’m like continuously goosebumpy.  Jeremy left before I could explain why my preferences lie where they do, so I’m going to write about it.

It’s because “I Wanna Be With You” is a song she wrote for her fans, and the way it was performed leaves me no doubt about the genuineness of it and of her words and her delivery.  It was written for me.  Not just me, of course, but that makes me feel personally involved, and it matters.  “Thanks for taking me back” is just precious.

That is the kind of artist that I relate to.  It’s something I find important and that song is very symbolic of that.  I really love the other songs too, and the variety of topics (“Applause” being symbolic of why she performs, obviously “Swine” is about sexual abuse particularly of young or vulnerable people which is another of my own intensely personal ‘things’).  I am not a LG scholar but I do enjoy reading some of it…

That’s how Blondie is.  I was too young to even conceive at the time that this would be so important… perhaps it was subconsciously perceived.  Why it was Blondie, why I chose Debbie Harry and Chris Stein (or maybe they chose me?) is an ongoing investigation in my own head but I’m sure it has something to do with this.  Maybe people who feel that way about the importance of their fans write better music or make performances that are more emotional and feel more real than those who don’t.  When I’m on this topic I also think a lot about Shirley Manson of Garbage and Christina Perri and Lisa and Johnny of Killola.  They are the ones who I know enough about to know that fact about them.

The last thing I will say about that video is a cut-and-paste from my Facebook post late last night:

I can’t help but comment that Lady Gaga’s beautiful song she did in her own hair “I Wanna Be With You” from the iTunes festival London performance
“I won’t be right without you/
and I might break without you/
I’d rather be poor and happy/
than rich and alone.
I’ll write hit songs about you/
No matter how we’ll get through/
I’ll keep on singing for a living/
but I want to be in love/
and I want to be with you.”

I was a skeptic at the beginning but this song touches me like the one I saw her do on Saturday Night Live and I could never have imagined or predicted my reaction to that performance.

Debbie Harry said to me, in person after they had just performed together that she likes Lady Gaga, and that really makes me happy. Because that line I quoted: “I won’t be right be without you and I might break without you”, that is how I feel about all of you, every one of you who I have ever met whether you like what I listen to or not, whether we have ever met in person, and no matter how much pain we have been through. There is a special place for the artists who genuinely adore their fans. They live forever and we cherish them. You all know who you are! I wish I could write for a song for all of you, but I can’t, but I do relate to the “I would anything for you”. My blog will be visible on November 3. You’ll have to listen to why it’s that day and oh, the verbiage when it’s on my own site and not about directed advertising, you’ll see.

*Nite* xxxx eclipse moon

I already know some of you are going to comment something like “Gaga is no Lady”.  I will pre-empt it here with my cut+paste response:

No, she’s an artist. Well, to be accurate, Stefani Germanotta is the artist and Lady Gaga is her artwork. It’s an ongoing performance piece. It’s okay if people don’t like it or her as there is a lot of art in the world that I don’t like or don’t get.

Fast forward to launch day to read why it had to be November 3.

I wondered for 30 years what that song is about.  I was writing on my friend Hayley’s facebook page and listening to music when it hit me.  Here are my words, in original order, since I was writing when it happened:

I set my hand to writing you, and I’m scared to death I’m going to freak you out or that your fan mail will get lost on its way.

Dragonfly is parked outside.  Do you get in?

Hover high level off.  The time space tactics saved us then.
Grande Trex fans throughout the universe are well informed on the risks pilots take in entering this race.
We have retained as an added feature of daring, thrills, and excitement for this race, a feature, which I’m sure you’re going to like: musical override lasting three and a half hours…
…
The postulate for mischance runs high but not as high as the tension and competitive spirit right here, and all over the galaxy!

XXXX amazing
(blk) is having a moment of Blondie supernatural inspiration!  !!! no words
The line in Angels on the Balcony: “The door swings open and it’s cold outside” which is one of my favorites of *anything* **ever**…
It’s a coincidence (spoken like the twilight zone “It’s a Cookbook!”)

I finally understand it, after 30 years!!! :: Everyone who matters to you, the door opens; they all come into your life when it’s cold!!  October, November, December!!!
BLK supernovas!
5:09am 11/3/10

the season may vary but not everyone like me has such an uneven distribution, where are all these Cancers from?!

I want to do an online chat with Destri about his writing, it’ll never happen but I like Dreaming

I don’t believe that time actually exists (and many physicists who work with quantum mechanics not only believe it too, but have proven it in experiments where doing something now changes something that had already happened in the past!).  Sometimes it seems like certain things that have happened to me very far apart in time are so closely related, or so unlikely, it seems like everything happened simultaneously.  One day I’m going to have to write about that in detail but let me give you the short version…

Obviously everything does interact to some extent with a clock or a calendar, but I believe in connections and I believe that they exist without regard to time and distance, through time (and space) and that those connections are what allows us, to an extent, more of an extent than most people realize, to make our own reality. Consider this: there are six billion people on the planet. There was one person among tens of millions of Blondie fans who became friends with the band and ended up making, owning, their official web site — and it is me.

I sent [Blondie guitarist and co-founder] Chris Stein a letter (through Chrysalis Records) that I typed on an old antique typewriter (older than my grandmother) in 1984, 85 maybe…

When I ended up friends with Chris, I would visit him and stay over at his apartment in NYC and sleep in his downstairs recording studio. Around 1992, maybe 93, on one of my first visits staying over, I was looking around, fascinated, all this stuff — everywhere — on the walls, on the floor, on every horizontal surface, in cabinets and drawers and just everywhere. And I was reading stuff on the walls and just shocked: there it was, my letter. Hanging on the fucking wall, next to a letter from the late artist Vali Myers who he named his child after.  So talk about a full circle moment, all of the things that had to happen not only for the letter to even be there, but imagine the fact that *I* ended up there to SEE IT.

I had to share this thought from Barbara Sicuranza’s Facebook page:

Barbara Sicuranza:
“Passing a waterfall today Vali asks, “Is that man-made”?
“No baby, that is nature”, I said.
Akira asks “how come you never hear of anything that is woman-made?”

Laurel Katz-Bohen commented, “Tell her everything is woman made!”

Amazing.

I originally wrote this in an email on April 30:

I have been working ALL DAY on Blondie’s new Links page (deploying Monday) and I wanted to link in the rock and roll hall of fame, and they have added really great content since my last visit, and they had — fuck me — a transcript of Shirley Manson’s beautiful induction speech. I have never seen anything so lovely and sincere. I can’t even *read* it let alone watch it. It just shreds me up into little pieces in the first three sentences.

http://rockhall.com/inductees/blondie/transcript/shirley-manson-inducts-blondie/

The beauty of this is not constrained to humans. This is why I believe in aliens. plus the fact that Debbie revealed it to me in a dream, and Chris had already taught me that those you meet in dreams, they are real.

There is no one on the planet I would have rather had induct Blondie than Shirley Manson.  Perfection.  Another dream come true.

This is actually an exact copy of an email I sent to Debbie Harry.   I can never find it when I want to, so here it is.