Cheating a bit with this one as the Blondie gig mentioned in the title was uploaded as a separate post last night. This EP in its original form is long deleted, however, it has quite a presence on line in MP3 format. Nevertheless, it having been officially released fifty years ago, I am quite prepared to take this down if so requested.
So, I am having a Blondie moment, I do so not infrequently and make no apologies for it. Earlier in the summer of this year I posted something on Blondie's 'Parallel Lines' as one of my Top 30 albums of punk thread, an album which features one song which is immediately identifiable with the band, 'Hanging On The Telephone'. On first hearing (and on every subsequent hearing actually) you would take some convincing that the song is anything other than a Blondie original... it isn't and yet Blondie made the song their own.
Responsibility for the writing of the song is that of Jack Lee, guitarist of the short lived (1974 to 1978) San Francisco power pop trio, The Nerves. Lee was accompanied in the band by Peter Case (bass) and Pail Collins (drums). In their brief existence they toured the US and Canada and supported the Ramones on occasion as well as making regular appearances in some of California's noted venues such as Mabuhay Gardens.
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Post break up, Case and Collins wrote and performed together in a band called The Breakaways, who had an even shorter half life that The Nerves. They then went their separate ways, fronting The Plimpsoles (Case) and The Beat (Collins). It was the existence of this US group going under the name of The Beat that resulted in an agreement that when Collins played in Europe he would go by 'Paul Collins' Beat, whilst the Birmingham based ska outfit would adopt the name 'The English Beat' when playing in the US.
According to Wikipedia, there was a short-lived (well it would be on previous form wouldn't it!) reunion of Case and Collins which was meant to celebrate collectively the music of the bands that they had been a part of. Jack Lee did not participate and it seems that the reunion tour stalled very quickly with claims of 'musical differences' and incidences of bullying cited as the reason.
More interestingly, Jack Lee also wrote 'Come Back and Stay' for Paul Young which gave him a Number 4 chart placing in the UK. And back to the Blondie connection, in addition to 'Hanging On The Telephone', 'Parallel Lines' featured a second Lee penned track, 'Will Anything Happen'. Happy days for a songwriter I guess, to have not one but two of your songs included on one of the biggest selling albums of the decade.
MP3: https://we.tl/t-R6PpNpbdRQPXxCDR
01. Hanging On The Telephone02. When You Find Out
03. Give Me Some Time
04. Working Too Hard
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