Heart of glass: the Blondie photos exhibition didn't move me

Any guesses over who was on the front cover of the NME, Sounds and Record Mirror for the week of 4 February 1978? Yep, that's right, Blondie. Quite the publicity blitz. Debbie Harry, in all her glam-new wave glory, plastered over the front page of each of these three music papers on exactly the same day. How do I know this? Because they're part of the Blondie In Camera 1978 exhibition at the Barbican Music Library in London. Yeah man, picture that. Hmm, what to make of it all? Where's the interest, the point? I'm not sure there is one. The exhibition is (mostly) surface effects: hairstyle, make-up, camera-flash fame, glamour. For the most part it could be a set of Vogue photo-shoot images. Anyway, the exhibition is made up of about 40 prints from Martyn Goddard, who evidently did various assignment photo sessions (for the Telegraph Sunday Magazine) with the band during 1978: at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York, backstage at a concert supporting Alice Cooper (!) in Philadelphia, at the Record Plant studio in New York when they were recording Parallel Lines, on stage at the Palladium in New York on 4 May '78, and also some shots from a photos-and-publicity event in London in August 1978. Photos like these ...

Actually, I say "photos like these" but these are my cropped, blurred and horribly distorted snaps of the framed prints in the exhibition. For my taste, the framed shots are mostly too "stylish". Adding a bit of messed-up scuzz is maybe no bad thing. The other element to Blondie In Camera 1978 is three museum-style, glass-topped display cabinets worth of badges, records (no tapes), back-stage passes, music papers (those NMEs etc) and other bits and bobs which are apparently all on loan from big-name PR guy, Alan Edwards. I suppose they give the exhibition a bit of "texture", but not much more than that I don't think. Overall, it's pretty much the same formula (the same display cabinets?) as the Black Sound London exhibition in the same venue a few months ago; yep, another exhibition I carped about. For sure, it's good that the Barbican Music Library does these exhibitions - they're free, fairly low-key (in a good way), and - I suppose - they fit reasonably well within the environs of a major arts venue like the Barbican complex. But ... the music library is already a pretty crowded space and to me the exhibitions feel a bit rushed and tokenistic. Meanwhile, and as I've said before, do exhibitions about music - specific genres, bands, scenes - ever really work? I'm doubtful (for past er, doubts, see here, here, here, here and even here). But yeah, if seeing a few rooftop or street shots of Italianate mod-geek Chris Stein or of Debbie Harry doing her trademark cute-roar are your thing, then the exhibition is probably worth a quick look. It's style over content through. The closest Blondie In Camera 1978 comes to analysis is a bit of blurb which says that the year 1978 "marked the transition" of Blondie from "cult band to the mainstream". Cult band? Er, if you say so. Back in '78, I recall a teenage friend of a friend inviting me and a few of the other 14-year-olds in our group over to his house specifically to listen to Parallel Lines, which he'd just bought. It was a slightly weird "event", an afternoon listening party before such things existed. Why did it happen? What was the attraction of hearing "the new Blondie LP"? I reckon we're back to image and the media again. Debbie Harry was the beautiful face of new wave and the blokes in the band were a scruffy Beatles-like group of baseball boot-wearing semi-mods, NYC toughs. It was US "street glamour", and for impressionable UK teens like us it was well nigh irresistible. Decades later, the 1978 cusp-of-superfame images no longer make much of an impression. With most of the photos, I'm now more interested in the New York City backdrop or incidental details in the interiors. The music has faded too. In my view, Blondie just haven't made the long journey from 1978 to 2025. Except - OK, let it be said - except for Heart Of Glass. Their not-at-all-new wave Eurodisco monster is still an absolute spine-tingler. Once I had a love, and it was a gas ...