Blondie
Ambling on the stage in all white with a pentagram harness that went through her legs, it was obvious that Debbie Harry’s rebellious personality hasn’t waned.
Nor did the talent of original guitarist Chris Stein, Harry’s life partner, dressed all in black, and smiling at Harry as she danced while singing “Mile High,” a track off her new album Ghosts of Download that sounded like 90s trance pop. A lot of her new album has this stylistic tendency, including “What I Heard,” which she performed while mock-angrily pointing to the crowd and singing “You told me you were done with her and I believed every word and now I wonder what I heard.”
When “Maria” finished, Harry gushed about the bands at the Ottawa festival, like Gogol Bordello and Procol Harum.
“Yo, yo, yo. Thank you, thank you,” she said, before waving to the crowdgoers in the back.
“It’s been really great,” she said. “You must be music lovers.”
Harry’s comment on whether the crowd was filled with music lovers must have been a projection, especially when looking at the versatility of Blondie’s music. This versatility was emphasized when she followed her crowd interaction with the ostensibly reggae-inspired “Euphoria,” another song from the new album.
When we heard the introductory beats to the quintessential Blondie hit “Rapture,” Harry simply stood beside Chris Stein and casually nodding her head and lightly tapping her foot—the signature Debbie Harry move.
And when she began rapping “Fab Five Freddie told me everybody’s fly/DJ’s spinning I said my, my/Flash is fast, Flash is cool/François sais pas, Flash no deux,” I had goosebumps. Not only because she still has exceptional rapping acumen, but because these verses offer us a history—a glimpse into an early 1980s New York where a young woman witnessed underground rap and chronicled it, effectively memorializing part of the beginning of hip hop as we now know it. After all, Flash is not a made-up name—she’s talking about Grandmaster Flash.
It’s a good thing Debbie Harry never took Patti Smith seriously when Smith told her to get lost when Harry first began playing around New York in her frequently out of tune, off-key band. The void caused by this discopunk mastermind would have been tangible.
Young the Giant
Young the Giant, a fivepiece outfit from Irvine, California were on the River Stage, performing to a crowd of mostly 20-somethings who hobbled around in visible inebriation, spilling beer and shouting while songs played.
Frontman Sameer Gadhia has a beautiful voice with outstanding range, but the band’s neo-folk-rock tendencies are so overused that it was difficult to not become bored.
Despite my lack of enthusiasm, the band opened with “Anagram” to a large crowd that took up half the field that makes up the space in front of the River Stage. And they sang along—in between ear-piercing screams of “I love this song!”—to the lyrics that didn’t offer anything meaningful, metaphorical, or replete with allusions.
I never thought I would say this, but I had more fun at Blake Shelton.
