DEBORAH HARRY AS FLOWER CHILD Wind in the Willows LP 1968 BLONDIE Capitol vinyl
$
21
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Description
In 1968 it wasn't all liberation...if you were a woman in the music business, you might have to work as a waitress, as a Playboy bunny, and if you do get into a band as a performer, you might be relegated to the role of pretty face with the tamborine.
Debbie Harry did all that stuff, although she was allowed to contribute background vocals here as well, and to play the tamboura (cool) and finger cymbals (gasp, wow).
It would take her five more years of scraping before she joined an outfit more conducive to her writing and singing abilities--I mean of course the great Stillettoes! Yep, she would be 31 years old before Blondie released its first album.
So this album here is what they call dues. But...what an artfact it is. It's really not bad, in a Mamas-and-Papas way, and there's at least one startling moment, as in "Uptown Girl," where the Topanga Canyon sound is surrounding you and Mama Cass seems about to rise in the sky like the sun herself, and suddenly Debbie Harry is allowed a line or two of solo singing, and suddenly you're in Brooklyn. And happy to be there.
In fact she gets a major role in "the Djini Judy" where she's asked to find the most innocent register in her voice, and what we hear is a pre-echo of "Fade Away and Radiate." But mostly the lead vocalist, one Wayne Kirby, is running the show and doesn't seem to realize what a major talent he has right there in the room.
Take it on its own terms though! It's a very nice album that might have sold better if it had come out in 1967 (and would have been remarkable in 1966), but although the producer of the record is literally Artie Kornfeld, who would produce the Woodstock festival the next year, and you might expect him to know a thing or two, this album definitely came to the flower power "trend" a year too late, and there was no space left on that bandwagon...it was the year the listeners re-tuned their ears to roots sounds, and Clapton quit Cream because he felt like The Band was better. Listen hard in 1968 and you'll hear only one pair of finger cymbals, and that pair is on the elegant fingers of Debbie Harry on this record.
Good+ condition, which in record grading parlance means there are visible and audible scratching, which is somewhat obtrusive. The sleeve is in better shape, as you can see. I don't know the significance of "FREE" which is punched into the corner (see photo) but it may indicate a promo copy.
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