Something weird happened Monday night at the Ryman, where Blondie and X were mounting a pan-American summit meeting of first-generation punk and New Wave. We swear, just a minute ago, it was 1983 and The Spin was standing outside the Exit/In, waiting for the Emergency Broadcast System alarm to stop ringing in our throbbing ears. Inside, this X group from Los Angeles was still hammering away at jet-engine decibels, bashing the hell out of The Doors' "Soul Kitchen" and professing their love for honky-tonk music in between fits of the rawest, fastest, most deafening music we'd ever heard. We were young and we had cassette players and we had 120 Minutes to watch and we didn't have jobs and we had just enough money for Mack's Country Kitchen and rotgut coffee and import records at the West End Cat's and life was sweet.
So we heard the salvo of high-speed riffage that opens "Your Phone Is off the Hook, but You're Not" and settled in. Only wait. The music was loud and raw and familiar, but the people playing it looked ... different. Older. And the audience! Who were all these Cryptkeepers in their 50s? We even saw some of the same people — only they'd somehow turned into their parents! That's why we caught sight of our own crinkling hands, and the ridiculous fat suit someone had sewed us into. These were punks! This was a punk show! Weren't we supposed to die before we got old?
The answer is, we were but we didn't, and it turns out this double bill of LA fire and New York ice was there to make us grateful. First up was X, and 40 minutes later, it's safe to say the audience was wondering if there'd been a mix-up with the headliners. One thing hadn't changed in the intervening 30 years: the setlist, drawn entirely from the four albums the original lineup recorded with producer Ray Manzarek ending with 1983's More Fun in the New World. And the original lineup was not only present but pretty much how we remembered it. Back in 1983, guitarist Billy Zoom still played dizzying licks with that disconcerting Chance-the-gardener calm and beatific grin, only his looks (and attire) finally caught up with his suburban-dad demeanor. Drummer D.J. Bonebrake still popped up like a woodchuck from behind his kit, as if startled by the fury of his own tempos.
As for Exene Cervenka and John Doe, the punk-rock George and Tammy owned the Ryman stage from the moment they crossed it. "We've waited a long time to play here," Exene told the crowd, and it wasn't just obligatory Mother Church genuflection. Along with Elvis Costello and The Clash, X was one of the punk-era standard-bearers whose championing of country music made 1980s Nashville teens reconsider their relationship to their roots. Doe's even matured into a marvelous honky-tonk singer, and if we have any regret about the set, it's that this would've been a golden occasion to bust out the band's proto-Americana alter ego The Knitters for a few songs.
But that would have slowed the band on its blitzkrieg survey of its first four albums. "If you think this is loud, just wait," said a grinning Doe, who vowed that "if Ernest Tubb isn't spinning in his grave already," ol' E.T. would soon be in orbit after torrid numbers like "The World's a Mess; It's in My Kiss" off their 1980 debut Los Angeles. Clad in a statement-of-purpose combo of leather jacket and black Western shirt, lunging toward the apron with his bass while his leg pounded time, Doe and the band careened through classics such as Under the Big Black Sun's "Motel Room in My Bed" and More Fun's "The New World," a strikingly apt anthem for the government shutdown looming outside. Zoom's guitar work was particularly riveting, with traces of surf, Bakersfield country and ’50s rock surviving the firestorm.
It was Exene's presence at stage center, however, that banished any thought of this being a punk oldies act. She didn't pretend she was the same person who snarled and stalked the Exit/In stage 30 years ago; but when she lashed her highlights and gyrated like a surfer girl to rave-ups like the group's hell-for-leather cover of Jerry Lee Lewis' "Breathless" — a song that evidently hasn't turned up on many of the recent set lists — she showed that the group's music had maintained its capacity to produce passion, to raise pulses, to transport. If anything, it means more now that the band and its longtime fans so clearly see themselves reflected in the other. We'll leave it at this: When you don't hear "Johny Hit and Run Pauline" or "White Girl" or "The Once Over Twice" (among the greatest titles ever) and you don't leave complaining, you've seen one damn fine X show.
Before their set started, headliner Blondie was frankly more of a wild card. Blondie was the greatest singles act of the bands to emerge from punk and New Wave, but even in its MTV heyday, its air of jaded cool could look a lot like bored disinterest. Plus only three of the original members remain — not a crippling obstacle, given that most people thought the band name was referring to one person anyway, but not often a wallet bulging with artistic currency either. In the lobby, The Spin overheard fans worrying that the group would coast on nostalgia and a reserve of hits nearing the Hippie Radio retirement home.
But that would be drastically underestimating Deborah Harry, one of rock's most gifted ironists, who always regarded her glamourpuss image with ambivalence (if not contempt). That much was clear when she took the Ryman stage garbed in a bulky wizard's robe and conical hat — a get-up that made her look less like a style icon than a caterer sidetracked en route to ComicCon. As the band delivered its opening "Oh shit, I'm seeing Blondie!" hay-maker with the intro to "One Way or Another," Harry undercut her cool with amusingly dithery robe-fluttering stage moves, the sort a crazy cat lady might make while traffic slowed to watch.
It was a clever feint. Harry, undimmed at 68, remains a master of arched-eyebrow pastiche who can be a tropical coquette, a hip-swinging femme fatale, a seen-it-all chanteuse, or a rapper who does double duty as her own hype man as the occasion demands. (Our biggest gripe was the absence of gems such as "Rip Her to Shreds" and "Sunday Girl" ideally suited to this kind of musical cosplay.) And Blondie the band showed an admirable determination to prove it's an ongoing creative concern while satisfying those who came for audio souvenirs.
They did so with a one-for-them-one-for-us strategy that alternated greatest hits — "Hanging on the Telephone," "The Tide Is High," an epic set-closing "Heart of Glass" — with an ambitious amount of recent material, all strong enough to keep the crowd on its feet between signature songs. Flanked by longtime foil Chris Stein on guitar (looking scowly and withdrawn for much of the concert, alas), drummer Clem Burke and a triptych of large video screens, Harry managed to sound fresh and engaged on songs the band has performed thousands of times. If her voice has lost some of its range and its chilly remoteness, the tradeoff is that she seems fully present and invested in the material — even in the goofy "Rapture," which she redeemed through sheer force of personality. (A fist-pumping snippet of the Beastie Boys' "No Sleep till Brooklyn" helped.)
Apart from an odd little cameo during Blondie's set by an apron-clad Exene (who charmingly spent much of the night in the wings dancing and watching the headliner), the night was short on surprises, with one huge exception: Harry's intro of "an old friend from the CBGB's days," former Dead Boy and Nashville resident Cheetah Chrome, who suited up for a terrific encore of The Misfits' "Hollywood Babylon." Much of the energy came from auxiliary band members Leigh Foxx on bass, Matt Katz-Bohen on keys and especially Tommy Kessler on guitar, whose screaming solo on "Atomic" was the set's most impressive jam.
Throughout the night, The Spin was struck by how many patrons were women who had brought their daughters, no doubt to witness two galvanizing yet utterly distinct bandleaders who greatly expanded the possibilities for women who rock. "Being a middle-aged woman looks like the coolest thing ever!" marveled one fan in the lobby after the show. More than anything, though, we were stunned to keep running into acquaintances we hadn't seen in years. The friend who introduced us to Under the Big Black Sun in high school 30 years ago! The co-worker from the days when there were record-store chains! We had never thought we'd be here after three decades, still listening to these artists — and yet here we were, all victims of the same time warpage. We have kids and we have mortgages and we have vans and we have cardiologists. But we have Deborah Harry and Exene Cervenka to extend us hope. Life is sweet.
