Blondie - June 24

Once considered the gauche pretenders of the CBGBs scene in New York, Blondie, along with Talking Heads, eventually became one of the New Wave’s most commercially successful and enduring acts.

Combining Shangri-La's charm with punk attitude, ranging from '(Touched By Your) Presence (Dear)' to 'Rip Her to Shreds', their finest hour was Parallel Lines, a tour de force distinguished by style icon and pin-up Debbie Harry's bittersweet vocals, Jimmy Destri's counterpoint keyboards and Clem Burke’s busy-bee drumming, on a selection of killer songs.

'Heart Of Glass' was a global hit, hitching Spector pop to disco beats and streetwise suss. The hits kept coming: 'Hangin' On the Telephone, 'Dreamin', 'Union City Blue' and 'Call Me', and 'Rapture', from 1980's Auto-American, which was one of the first instances of a white rock band bringing wordy rappinghood successfully into the charts.

After 1982's The Hunter, the band split for well over a decade, but made an impressive comeback in 1999 with the smash hit 'Maria', and have since toured regularly to fresh acclaim. A new album Panic of Girls, is due for release this year.

DID YOU KNOW?
• Body-horror Dutch artist HR Giger designed the cover to Debbie Harry's first solo album Koo-Koo, depicting the singer's face skewered by steel rods.
• The band were so bemused to learn they almost shared a name with Adolf Hitler's pooch Blondi, they contributed a cover of 'Ordinary Bummer' to the 1997 Iggy Pop tribute album We Will Fall under the pseudonym 'Adolph’s Dog'.
• Blondie's first commercial success occurred in Australia in 1977, when the music television program Countdown mistakenly played the video for 'In the Flesh', the B-side of their single 'X-Offender'.
• Drummer Clem Burke maintained that 'Heart Of Glass' (the title derives from an early Herzog film) was inspired partly by Kraftwerk and partly by the Bee Gees' 'Stayin' Alive', whose backbeat the drummer attempted to replicate.
• Debbie Harry was originally considered to play Daryl Hannah's part in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, but her management declined the offer without telling her.