BLONDIE

1977 Australian Tour
Canberra Theatre,
Canberra, ACT
Australia
12th December 1977

From Waz From Oz Uncirculated Master

1. Intro (Jimmy Destri Plays A Snippet of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen)
2. X Offender
3. Detroit 442
4. Shark In Jets Clothing
5. In The Sun
6. Little Girl Lies
7. Denis Denie
8. “I’m Always Touched By Your Presence) Dear”
9. Fan Mail
10. Look Good In Blue
11. Man Overboard
12. Rifle Range
13. In The Flesh
14. Cautious Lip
15. I’m On E
16. Contact In Red Square (Fades In)
17. Love At The Pier
18. I Didn’t Have The Nerve To Say No
19. Bermuda Triangle Blues (Flight45)
20. Kidnapper
21. Rip Her To Threads
22. Youth Nabbed As Sniper
23. I Love Playing With Fire
24. Ku Fung Girls

Taped By Mr X with help from Waz And Ruby
2020 transfer by audiowhore from the master tape.

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The Band
Debbie Harry – Vocals & Sexual Allure
Chris Stein – Guitar & B/Vocals
Clem Burke – Drums
Jimmy Destri – Keyboards & B/Vocals
Frank Infante – Guitar & B/Vocals
Nigel Harrison – Bass Guitar & B/Vocals

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Blondie - 1977 Australian Tour
26th November Perth, WA - Concert Hall
29th November Adelaide, SA - Apollo Stadium
1st December Melbourne, VIC - Palais Theatre
2nd December Albury, NSW - Regent Theatre
3rd December Wagga, NSW - Hoyts Theatre
5th December Newcastle, NSW - Civic Theatre
6th December Lismore, NSW - Town Hall
8th December Brisbane, QLD - Her Majesty's Theatre (This is apparently the only Blondie show ever cancelled. Apparently, Debbie had food poisoning from eating cherries. Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge, say no more.)
10th December Wollongong, NSW - Town Hall
11th December Sydney, NSW - State Theatre
12th December Canberra, ACT - Canberra Theatre
15th December Morwell, Vic - Morwell Technical College *
17th December Geelong, Vic - Plaza Theatre
18th December Brisbane, QLD - Her Majesty's Theatre (Rescheduled from 8th December due to Ms Harry’s illness)
19th December Berridale, TAS – Granada Tavern *
21st - 27th December Great Keppel Island – 3 Gigs played

* The Morwell & Berridale dates are not 100% confirmed.

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Because we both enjoyed the Blondie’s Sydney show, Ruby & I decided to see the next show, the day after which was down in Canberra, the nation’s capital at the Canberra Theatre.
Travelled there by bus, back then it was nearly a 5-hour trip from Sydney.
I had a friend down there (Mr X), so we had somewhere to stay.
On arrival we went to the venue & brought our tickets, no problem there as it wasn’t sold out.
Mr X had a cassette recorder & so we three headed off to the Canberra Theatre where all of us took turns in holding, hiding & guarding said cassette player.
Built in 1965 as Australia’s first performing arts centre & is split into two theatres, the biggest & main hall held 1,200 & the second about 300 seats.
In the review Interview printed below it says the gig attracted 800 people & the venue was 2 thirds full, but I disagree with that, I remember it being half full.

The band walks onstage, Jimmy Destri the keyboard player tunes up then plays a snippet of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (it’s only 12 days to Xmas).
After this Debbie walks on stage, does a few yelps, sings the title of supporting band the Ferrets hit song Don’t Fall In Love then she says give me a cigarette & a hot cup of coffee, then the show begins.

In the song, In The Sun during the "Where is that wave" chorus at the end Debbie slips in “Is that the new wave?”
It’s also after In The Sun that Chris Stein notices that there’s gap in the crowd at the front of the stage, he tells us we can all jump in this big hole here & dance around.
People applaud this and he says “Don’t just applaud, see there’s a gaping gap”.
Straight after that an American accent off mic can be heard saying “A gaping what?”
Chris Stein then says, “It looks like Lauren Hutton’s teeth".
Another band member then says something something poor cunt, followed by Debbie comment that sounds like “End of the line”.
I’ve played this section endless times but can’t make only out any more than what I’ve written above.
I wonder what a member or members had against Lauren Hutton.

People did start to dance & later in the concert Debbie asks for applause for these dancers.

When Debbie introduces “I’m Always Touched By Your Presence) Dear” a distant voice can be heard to say “Go to Brisbane then, the Cherries are good”.
Debbie laughs & says “I’ll never live it down, but I don’t care, they’ll get theirs!”
This is a reference to the cancelled Brisbane show earlier in the tour.
The excuse given for the cancellation was that Debbie had food poisoning from eating too many cherries, but the whisper was that Ms Harry had taken too much of something not considered to be a stone fruit!

After Love At The Pier Debbie asks “There’s no ocean near here right, because were inland”.
Right Deb, it’s a 2 hour drive from Canberra to the NSW coast!

After announcing the 1st Encore, I Like Playing With Fire (a Joan Jett song that Blondie never recorded) the only band member to be introduced is Clement Burke by Chris Stein followed by Debbie saying “Sometimes he has to be tied to his chair”.
Being closer to the stage than the night before at the State Theatre I could see how hard the drummer worked.
Fantastic drummer. I was also impressed by Jimmy Destri’s keyboard playing, he certainly fills out the band’s sound.
Jimmy was in a good mood that night as he often did little keyboard doodles between songs while grinning.
In fact, the band all seemed to be in good spirits with some members talking to people in the front row during the show.

And we went home happy knowing we had a complete recording & could listen to the new songs till the second album was released in February 1978.

In 2003 Blondie released an album called The Curse Of Blondie.
I feel I’m cursed by Blondie because every time I’ve seen them since 1977 I’ve never managed to get a recording.
In January 1999 at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre I had the best seat to record from, the sound was excellent & I ended up with 2 hours of silence having pushed the DAT play button instead of record & never noticed.
I was in hospital for the 2003 Sydney dates.
In 2005 I had great seats in a box at the Sydney Opera House but the designated usher for the box when not opening & shutting the box door sat in the only empty seat next to me so I couldn’t tape.
But at the end of the day I’m glad that I saw & taped the 1977 version of Blondie.
Shame that they didn’t make it back to Aussie before they split in 1982.

Thanks to Mr X for the cassette recorder & audiowhore.

Enjoy,
Waz

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Canberra Times
Thursday 15 December 1977, page 15
PUNK ROCK: PURE, LOUD AND NASTY Caught in the New Wave booming
By PAUL SMITH

Look at the poor frightened little girl, very beautiful though, who is crouched be-hind the boxes in that dark place, hiding from all those lusting eyes.
Everywhere is vio-lence. The tall, short-haired ugly guy in the corner, the sleeves of his black shirt rolled tight up to his armpits.
Next to him, Mr Curly Hair, who's 'been around'. An-other punk in front of her; some drunk in black Levis and gym boots to the right and the crazy acting tough blocking the exit be-hind her.
But the kid is tough, too. Street-tough. She spins around, glaring at those eyes imagining her beautiful body. She leaps out, con-fronting them ...
This happens on the streets of New York, maybe? Chicago on a bad, hot night? London with the drizzle just beginning to fall?
Well, the answer is sort of yes, and sort of no.
If you really want to get back to reality then this happened in Canberra, on a beautiful warm night, minus violence, on the stage of the Canberra Theatre three days ago.
That was when 800 people saw the first overseas "New Wave" band to hit town — Blondie.
If you have heard the single 'In The Flesh' by the New York group Blondie, or have seen the film clip of the song and you thought they were loveable like Abba, or even a 1960s revival group, you were wrong.
Blondie is pure, nasty, vicious, loud (oh so loud) punk rock.
The music just goes on and on and on. It is so brutally deafening it hurts, just sometimes. Otherwise, it is great stuff.
The song 'In the Flesh' that is played constantly on radio is not typical Blondie. That is the one they made to play on the radio and make money.
The band's real songs, the ones it plays for two hours non-stop, are fast, heavy-metal stuff, just like the ones played by the Sex Pistols, the Ramones,
the Runaways and all those other punk groups that you probably cannot stand, Mum hates, and Dad wants to put into the Army 'to teach 'em a lesson'.
But bad luck, Dad, they're not going into the Army, and punk rock is no fad that is going to disappear overnight.
Punk rock, or New Wave, or power pop, or power rock, or what ever you call it is just the next can on the rock production line —
the can after the one labelled 'disco music, artificially coloured and flavoured, preservative added'.
But, with the can labelled punk, they didn't put in the artificial gunk and they forgot the pre-servative.
It tastes a little bitter, a bit rotten and soggy and dirty.
But that's the way things really are, in LIFE, says punk rock.
Back to the little girl at the beginning. That's the way it is on the streets, the way the people feel boxed up in their grimy apart-ments, driving in their cars
on the clogged roads, vacuum-packed on the buses and trains, says the music.
'Sure, our music is the product of the streets of New York, it reflects New York', says the only non-New Yorker in Blondie, bassist Nigel Harrison, from London.
He hates the label of 'punk' — it's an old prison term with a very bad meaning, he says — and he does not like to try and intellec-tualise, or put forward theories about his music.
Guitarist Chris Stein is also against defining the music.
When he sees a reporter with a notebook backstage after a concert he does robot impersonations saying, 'What is punk rock? What is punk rock? Brurruph, burruph, does not compute'.
Singer Debbie Harry puts it an-other way.
'We just sort of play the music and sort of have fun'.
She is the tough little girl onstage.
Her act is part the way she is anyway, part theatrics and part reflection of the music.
Offstage, the mean-looking boys on stage completely drop their act, Harrison, an intelligent 25-year old, tried to do something punkish to impress people.
The best he could do was to pretend to hit someone.
They are not like the true Punk nasties, such as Britain's Sex Pistols, who really fight, and swear and vomit and do other unpleasant things.
Of their music Debbie Harry says, 'The Sex Pistols are fan-tastic, but personally they're stu-pid. You can talk to them alright, but they can't talk back'.
But the words of the Sex Pistol's songs (if you can hear them) could just as easily be written by Blondie, or most other New Wave bands.
Lines like: 'There's no future, no future for you, no future for me. Britain's Sex Pistols . .. true working-class, street music: intense, loud and nasty.
I'm an anarchist, I want to destroy, anarchy for the UK. God save the Queen, she ain't no human being'.
A crazy society? That's what New Wave says, at 120 decibels power.
It is true working-class, street music.
The musicians who play it don't come from the sunny, 'laid back', West Coast of America which produces the easy-listening Eagles sound.
They come from the more intense places like New York and London, and the music is in-tense.
It does not go down well in a place like Canberra.
The theatre for the Blondie concert was only two-thirds full, and many came just to hear the support act, the Ferrets.
It seems it is much harder for the children of public servants in a spacious garden city to relate to all that distorted noise, ripped clothing, trashy lyrics, and songs without a catchy melody.


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