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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Possibly the most underrated album in rock music history, December 29, 2004
Released in 1980, "Autoamerican" should be considered as great an album as, say, Dylan's 'Blonde on Blonde", the Rolling Stones' "Sticky Fingers", or Sprngsteen's "Born to Run". It's not, of course, at least not by any critics you will read in such places as Wenner's Rolling Stone. But as an album that would virtually define and predict the course of popular music during a decade at that decade's cusp, I think 'Autoamerican' is flatly without peer, as well as being a great sounding, well recorded, well produced, and well played collection of songs that belong together-all sharing a sound, an ambience, a common flavor, even as they cover an amount of ground-from rap, reggae, and Europop to a recital of Lerner and Lowe's "Follow Me" that holds its own with any I've heard-beyond rock bands, for the most part, even today, and much more so in 1980.
(And if you read my reviews you know I've heard "Follow Me" by the greatest of all popular singers. I wouldn't put Debbie in quite that class-although she can sing his daughter under the table, and did at the recent Peggy Lee tribute-she had more sense than her erstwhile rival Chrissie Hynde in not getting into that particular gator pit (a/k/a Duets II).)
There isn't a real stinker anywhere on this album. 'Suzy and Jeffery', a rare B side, is more a novelty, and I'm glad it didn't quite make the original album, but it's not a stinker. You also get the long mix of "Call Me", which is not on any Blondie album except compilations. I'm slightly disappointed we don't get the Christmas version of 'Rapture" , which as I recall featured Fab 5 Freddy and was a Flexidisc in a UK magazine.
'Autoamerican' also features great cover art, best enjoyed from the original vinyl due to size alone, as well as the original printed dust jacket. Sonically, I think this CD beats the early-eighties US Chrysalis vinyl, but not some of the imports, if you have a first rate turntable and cartridge. I've always wanted to build a replica of one of the mutant guitars on the back: they are no actual instrument ever built as far as I can determine but an artist's conglomeration of design features from assorted bizarre Euro guitars.
The only sad part of 'Autoamerican'-admittedly much less tragic than 'Double Fantasy' (Lennon's swan song) or of course "The Misfits" (the movie, finis for Gable and Monroe, not the punk band!)-is that it's the end as we know it for Blondie as a working front line pop band. There was one more album then,' The Hunter'-Frank Infante had to sue to be on it, he wasn't wanted, and Chris was developing what would turn out to be a life-threatening and debilitating disease. 'Hunter' doesn't exactly suck, but it's not up to the previous Blondie standard, and the band effectively disintegrated after that. Of course they reformed in '98 and recorded 'No Exit', which was a fine album, and last year 'The Curse' (not about what you'd think, despite the red cover, fortunately!), but despite Number One singles in most markets no one seriously considered Blondie or Debbie as major league players anymore. (More people in America right now probably know that Gwen Stefani is in a movie, than that Deborah Harry is or was-despite Gwen having debuted two days ago and Debbie 25 years ago, with over thirty films,and having played against everyone from James Woods to Shelley Winters, not to mention Alec Baldwin, Liam Neeson, Adrian Brody and Norman Reedus.)
No one from Blondie is dead yet, although a few of their careers are, and Chris, Debbie, and Clem Burke are still on the job and doing other things as well. But 'Autoamerican', and the four Blondie albums that preceded it, are likely their career high points, and while 'Parallel Lines" might be a better all-around pop-rock album and 'Eat to the Beat' their closest brush with American rock (read: AOR) success, 'Autoamerican' is not only a realy good album but an uncanny pathfinder for the rest of the music industry for the ten years that followed it-everything from rap to showtunes proved prescient-that has quietly lived under the radar for two and a half decades now.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Anytime, anyplace, anywhere, any day.", January 29, 2002
I completely forgot that the wondeful song "Call Me" was never included on any of Blondie's albums. Well, someone at the record company was very kind to include it here. Also included is "Suzy and Jeffrey" the B-side of The Tide is High single. A great song about blood tests, marriage, outstanding traffic tickets and Orson Welles. Very Blondie, indeed.
As for the original Autoamerican songs, they are all gems. The remastering has cleaned up the original muddy sound quite a bit. A true conceptual masterpiece, it begins with a very eerie instrumental entitled Europa. From there Debbie does disco-lite, a torch song, rap, punk, lounge and it all ends with a song from Lerner and Loew's Camelot. In many ways this was Blondie's swansong. The follow up, The Hunter, had it's moments, but it seemed a bit tired and a bit of a retread of Autoamerican. The big suprise was 1999's No Exit, which was every bit as fabulous as the earlier classics.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Transition from Disco to the Punk 80's, March 7, 2002
In my early teens, this was one of the first albums I ever owned (on vinyl!), purchased from my paper route earnings. I have since upgraded to the CD version, although I do not have the CD with the last 3 bonus tracks.
This album grows on you. As a child, I was disappointed with it, yet played it over and over. As an adult, it is one of about 5 CD's I would try to fetch if the house was burning.
Resisting an emerging trend at the time the album was originally cut, 1980, the album avoids the electronic sound. The guitars, bass and percussion are crystal clear, and Jimmy Destri makes the electric keyboard sing.
The album begins with the mostly instrumental Europa, with several lines of skat near the end, making for an excellent lead-in to the next track, the powerful, jazz/disco song Live It Up.
The melancholy Here's Looking At You is a mellow, jazzy tune about a woman reflecting upon her current romantic relationship.
The Tide Is High, which received oodles of radio play, requires no explanation; either you like it or you don't!
Angels On The Balcony is a song which begins very quirky; be careful if you're wearing headphones! This track showcases lead vocalist Deborah Harry's range, perhaps like no other song on this album. Plus, the band REALLY has it together on this track.
Go Through It, the shortest song on the album at 2:40, is a lively, "cruising song."
Do The Dark, which received limited airplay years ago, exemplifies Harry's talents well, but has too much of a synthetic sound at times.
Rapture, along with The Tide Is High, also received quite a lot of radio play. It is a cutesy, punky song.
Faces is perhaps the most disappointing track on the CD. Its high register can pierce right through you. This one would have sounded nice by Sarah Vaughn!
Following is T-Birds, another lively cruising tune like Go Through It.
Of the last 2 tracks, Walk Like Me sounds like it was a few years ahead of itself, but is a decent effort. The album, minus the bonus tracks, ends with the toned-down Follow Me, an excellent closing track.
As far as "hit or miss" is concerned, this album is definitely more hit than miss, and I highly recommend it to Blondie fans. It would also be a good first Blondie album to have.
Review the artwork on the back of the liner insert carefully. There appears to be thick, low black clouds or smoke on the New York skyline. Interestingly enough, the CD with extended tracks was released on 9/11...
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