Whatever mid 1970's post punk New York New wave was about back in the day  I didn't expect one of its leading lights Blondie's Deborah Harry to be playing at a swanky environmentally unfriendly corporate gig in bleak times and an even bleaker post industrial environment 30 years later but that's the gig I found myself at yesterday  and basically whatever Ms Harry had back then  she  still has it in spades as last night she treated the British Motorshow audience to a musical masterclass in being alive and having fun in the here and now.

As a band Blondie has always suffered from the over focus on Deborah Harry, a bias perpetuated last night by the cameras broadcasting live images on to the two giant stage side screens , but you have to hope that after 30 years the band members are cool with this as Deborah Harry is Blondie in most people's minds and One Way or Another Harry was gonna get you, get you, get you, and last night she got the Excel arena audience real good and we got her , big time.

The mixed crowd bopped and pogoed along to chart topping classics ' Heart of Glass' , 'Call Me' ' Picture This' and a slower treatment of 'Sunday Girl ' from Parallel Lines , numbers that reminded people that Debbie wasnt simply a pretty face but someone who very clearly understood  that what we want and get from love and life rarely match and was able to succinctly sum this up in perfectly formed pop songs that somehow maintained a glamourous dangerous  edge. There was a stomping version of Atomic' from Eat to the Beat  and as Blondie  settled into their set  ' Rapture '  and the ' Tide is High' is from AutoAmerican, numbers I didnt really like at the time - the rap sequence from rapture was embarassing back then -  but what the fuck, they  sounded great last night.

There was also an odd  racy cover of the Stones 'Get Off of My Cloud' thrown in as a crowd pleaser and although Deborah Harry is only a couple of years younger than Jagger, who really isnt considered to be ' cool' on this side of the Atlantic ,  there was nothing of the pensioner about Debbie's attitude, movement or  performance, the corporate gig is  Jagger's natural environment, he  graduated  from art school to the stage, Harry danced and waited on tables for a decade before she got her break and she let people know in a coded way last night that she knew the gig was spiritually remote from where she had first set out from. One of them is still giving punters the real deal and its not the tea bag with the big lips and whiney voice .

Would have loved to have heard Union City and Denis , unforgivable ommissions , but personal favourite was the haunting 'Fade Away and Radiate 'whose seemingly throwaway lines have always struck me as incredibly sad and deep.

New Wave Nostalgia for dark times  - last night there was  no better way to fade away and radiate.
 

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