Retro Video Unit (1/6/12)

(I missed a week of this feature due to the holidays; I'll probably do one next Friday to make up for it.)

Even as a teenager, it was quite obvious to me why Blondie included "Heart Of Glass" on their 1978 album Parallel Lines: to get radio airplay at the height of disco mania. As original written, the song was very different, a slow, country-tinged lope; had it been released that way, it's entirely possible Blondie would have flopped and never been heard from again.

But after I got the album, I was really quite happy to find that the rest of the album was quite different from the hit single. Having been exposed to performers like Elvis Costello and Talking Heads on Saturday Night Live, I was ready to move beyond my personal disco phase, and Blondie was pointing the way.

Even how they dressed (on the album cover and some of their TV appearances) would come to influence me, because in another year or so I would be a senior in high school, and for some never-explained reason, seniors (who attended classes on a separate campus) were allowed to wear sneakers with our jackets and ties.

Here's the first track on Parallel Lines, "Hanging On The Telephone."