At least for the sake of this review, it would help if Blondie's cover of Sophia George's reggae classic "Girlie Girlie" had been the highlight of Monday night's concert at the Highline Ballroom.
It wasn't.
But the ebullient, tricky rhymed song played around the midway point, was telling in other ways. Debbie Harry was smiling and spritely, pointing at us, and flirting with, no, not significant other Chris Stein, but second guitarist Tommy Kessler. Kessler, who joined the band in 2010., had been a perfect foil for Harry all night long. But on this song, trading lines on the tongue twisting lyric, the buzz was intoxicating.
Meanwhile drummer Clem Burke, in a CBGB's Tee shirt (he would switch to a Ramones during the encore) was clearly enjoying the complex rhyhm which he sticks to like glue, so the rest of the band can do the same.
It is a fine, tight version of the song, not the best moment, but a really fun moment in a night where Blondie could do no wrong.
Actually, the night began even better, perhaps the best fifteen minutes I've seen this year. Blondie took the stage and reeled off "Union City Blues" and "Dreaming" (nice bottle neck solo) followed by an earth shattering version of "Atomic". Harry's voice soared over the top, belieing entirely her Ice Queen persona and the band hit the disco groove and the oiled up James Bond-y John Barry keyboards strutted around.
Stein has gray, straight hair and a fringe that keeps getting in his way and Clem looks older but also more muscular, the rest of the band are hired hands and Debbie Harry…
I, and most of the rest of the men around my age, have always had a thing for Debbie: she is both cute and untouchable at the same time. There is a distance in her eyes and the face like an angel, and the body made for rock, come together under a hauteur that puts you on your guard. I've met her a couple of times and she is even more imposing in person. None of that has changed… almost. She is still, at 66 years old, a stunningly beautiful woman, but she is warmer now. Her body not the ace rock and roll chick but not matronly either. She is, as always, a sex symbol. But now she is a sex symbol who will at least acknowledge you're alive. Lester Bangs once, memorably, noted that if most of male fans could get her alone they would beat her up not have sex with her. She makes us inadequate. She still does, but I think her fanbase are happy to worship from afar now.
And she still dances like a bored stripper. Though at another point she twists in the middle of the stage and, she moves constantly if not entirely comfortably. And the band retains its New York cool even while it new waves hard, comfortably in reggae (though no "The Tide Is High"), disco, rock -you name it.
So comfortable, or maybe so smartly, that a six song stretch of new material in the middle of the set, songs, mind, that have not even been released yet, doesn't sink the set without a trace. Indeed, a new slow number, is just gorgeous and a great moment.
A penultimate "Rapture/Fight for Your Right" medley starts off soaring and ends up a gas and it was followed by the best "One Way Or Another" I've ever heard. That song ends in an awesome speed rap.
Around about now I'm think about the encore and the list of songs they haven't played is ridiculous. Nothing at all off the first two albums, to start with. They never play "Denis" or "Picture This". Like never, never. As mentioned, no "The Tide Is High" either.
The first song of the encore is a terrific "You Can't Put Your Arms Round A Memory" and is simultaneously
a) a remembrance of 9-11
b) a remembrance of Johnny Thunders
but also
c) a remembrance of New York in the 1970s, of all the things that have gone and will never come back.
That's followed by the only mistake of the night. Another new song. It wasn't the time for it. There was plenty of other songs they could have chosen.
And then nearly 90 minutes after the night had begun, a splended "Heart Of Glass" -true to the Moroder heart of glass, ends the night.
Blondie have always been a hard band to warm up to because they are the least sentimental of people. Their biggest songs, "Call Me", "Rapture" and "Atomic", are disco big but not rock big, they don't manipulate your emotions.
That's good but it is also bad… it puts the ultimate distance between band and fan.
Perhaps age has made them hotter, friendlier (not Chris, Debbie, Chris is exactly the same) and, not songwriting, but live, a better band.
Well done.