Blondie – Eat To The Beat

i am comparing this japanese press to the us press , big difference the japanese one do sounds flat and poor lower volume as well
us press is way to go

Turn it up. The sound of this, is what it’s all about.

Clear and decent sound with little to no surface noise. As is the case with many Japanese versions however, bass seems to be a bit on the lower side which is a shame as it could’ve been perfect had it been slightly higher.

Excelente primer prensado nacional de este Discazo!! Vale la pena 100% y si se puede conseguir a buen precio, como pude yo, es una gran compra. Sonido brillante.

Very good pressing with really nice detail, but could have been even better if they hadn't decided to include an extra track on each side, (Heart Of Glass on side A and Sunday Girl on Side B) and use the space to add more "oomph"

After having my ear turned by 1978's "Heart Of Glass," an atypical disco song with an eerie Moroder feel, in 1979 I fell hard for Blondie. By that time, I had jumped the Top 40 ship for FM Rock, and WDIZ-FM played a new album every night at midnight. When “Eat To The Beat” dropped, they played it in full and didn’t waste more than week or so before buying that album. I played it constantly. When Chrysalis released all of Blondie’s canon on the shiny silver discs in one fell swoop [1987], I immediately bought this one since it was a favorite album that I could not wait to have on CD. By 1985, I’d swapped all of my Blondie LPs for CD trade value; confident that they would be releasing the compact discs soon – and I was right.

The hyperactive power pop of “Dreaming” was the first single from this one and I was appalled as it barely scraped into the US Top 30 at a number 27 that did nothing to honor the song’s exuberant, almost giddy rush. The hyperkinetic drumming of Clem “Lord of the Fills” Burke pummeled this one along furiously while the vocals of Debbie Harry on lead and Ellie Greenwich on backing soared like birds overhead. I delighted whenever Debbie name-checked the preceding album’s “Fade Away And Radiate” in the lyric. This track, like several from the album, would be the last time that Blondie drew on the girl group traditions that had been a formative influence on their kitsch’n’synch aesthetic. I think that once the band moved fully away from that, they kind of lost their artistic moorings. Finally, I also love the energy that Chris Stein’s e-bow guitar adds to this one. It all hangs together tightly and fills me with hope and energy every time I listen to this single. Which, over the course of many decades, has been a prodigious amount!

The notion that Blondie were going to get very eclectic was unleashed with the next track. “The Hardest Part” was a funk rock number about knocking off an armored truck. I recall Blondie hosting The Midnight Special on TV at the time this album was released. The band did a curious blend of live performance, obvious lipsync, and even a video was played from their ground breaking video album over the course of the evening. I also Robert Palmer on the show and a bit of Frippertronics from Robert Fripp himself; he being chummy with Blondie to the point of playing that solo on the aforementioned “Fade Away And Radiate” the previous year. I recall seeing the band perform this song [lipsync] on the show and there was a good reason why; the tune became the second single in North America, but nowhere else. The tune was never heard by me on the airwaves and barely made the Hot 100 at 84.

It’s hard to imagine now, but while the US got served “The Hardest Part” as a single, the rest of the world, basically, got the finest song on the entire album on a silver platter. I won’t mince words; I consider “Union City Blue” a masterpiece. First of all, there are the drums. The drums of god, and not for the first time on this album. The twangy, Duane Eddy guitar chords in the intro pull me deep into the, no other word here – magnificent drum buildup by Clem Burke. I get goosebumps every time I listen to this and it’s been difficult in the last decade or so not to play the intro and after 30 seconds or so, hit the “back” button several times before putting the song on a loop for at least an hour. And I’ve been listening to this one for 37 years now.

Nigel Harrison wrote the music and showed that the group was much more than Stein/Harry with the first of five songs where Chris Stein ceded the writer’s pen to bandmates. Then the album has the chutzpah to follow this up with a number that’s almost as emotionally powerful while sounding completely different. “Shayla” was a full bore Chris Stein song [lyrics included] and he pulled out all of the stops with this tender ballad that approached country music with the weepy guitar solo he proffered here. Of course, both numbers would all fall apart without the heart-rendering vocals of Deborah Harry. Her yearning, wordless expression singing on the “chorus” of “Shayla” packs quite the wallop.

The next song proved it was time for a jolt from left field. The lurching, jittery title track by [again] Harry and Harrison couldn’t be further from the widescreen splendor of “Union City Blue.” Instead, this frantic thrash-pop bolts from the starting gate at full speed. The music does little but jerk to and fro for 2:35 with the exception of the middle eight where the band indulge in some high energy harmonica from guest Randy Hennes. Ms. Harry’s character fairly burst from the high energy track like a shower of roman candles. I don’t think I’ve ever heard singing like this anywhere else.

The steady pulse of drums and percussion that propels “Accidents Never Happen” begin with a flurry of rim hits, and then cymbal hits at breakneck speed and precision from Clem Burke before his full kit cycles in, only for the cymbals and hi-hats to cycle back to prominence. “Die Young Stay Pretty” was a brief dip into the waters of cod-reggae with plenty of fills and rolls from Burke who dances all around the song on his kit, no doubt reveling in the radical change of pace as Blondie began to really show us just how eclectic they could be on this album. Of course, future albums would make the stylistic shifts here look like a cakewalk, but we didn’t know that back then! The sardonic lyrics showed the Blondie penchant for irony had not withered completely under the platinum sales that were now their stock-in-trade.

While “Union City Blue” alluded to Shadow Morton’s roots in the band’s world view, that song was certainly more of its time than a straight pastiche. Not so much for the fully retro “Slow Motion” with its bouncy James Jamerson bass lines and tambourine hits. Liza Minnelli’s half-sister, Lorna Luft, doubled here with Debbie on the strictly period backing vocals that simply sparkled. If it was good enough for Blue Angel [the following year], surely the NYC band that started it all could work that girl group action like the pros they were?

The last single in the program was the rock-disco hybrid “Atomic,” which topped the UK charts but only managed to muster a scant scrape into the US Top 40 at a lowly #39! The pressure packed Clem Burke drumming was served here by some of the most prominent bass on the album and incongruous on the surface of it, twangy guitar chords. Since keyboardist Destri wrote the music here, he finally got to cut loose with the synths on this track the most on this album. His Moroderesque envelope on the synth hook [possibly pulse gating and not a sequencer] was a clear harbinger of the band’s next move, “Call Me” written and produced with the disco master. The breakdown in the middle eight gave bassist Harrison a chance to steal the spotlight for a couple of bars. The stacked harmonies of Debbie singing "your hair is beautiful;" as if it were the most important thing in the world in the song's climax coulndn't be bettered.

The album took a breather on the gentle ballad “Sound-A-Sleep” which certainly functioned as a lullaby on this normally energetic to a fault album. All the better for the ultimate in contrasts when the bombastic and furious “Victor” followed. The song was like nothing else in the Blondie canon. The Frank Infante written number was structured like a hysterical dialogue between Anastasia and her paramour, Victor, who had left her for practical reasons, delivered in a letter to her as the song’s third verse, pledging to return when the conditions [war? revolution?] permitted.

The track simply exploded out of the already kinetic framework of the album. This time Burke had some real competition for the spotlight with Infante’s curiously Fripp-like tightly coiled guitar riffs circling throughout the song. While the breakneck drums and guitars battle it out, the vocalists aren’t playing shrinking violet. Debbie Harry was bleeding into the red for her entire performance here! She must have been hoarse after committing this one to tape but even the stentorian Soviet Men’s Chorus vocals that Infante, Destri and producer Mike Chapman [The Jah Trio] provide here were a thing of wonder even in themselves.

Finally the album ended with another frantic burst of energy in “I’m Not Living In The Real World.” Ms. Harry once again dipped into her bag of tricks for some more unfettered energy on the screaming chorus to the thrashing punk number keyboardist Destri penned with Harry. The album had a much stronger rock vibe than any other albums in their classic canon, where pop usually won out over rock. Mike Chapman produced for the second time, but crucially, he had David Tickle as an engineer in the sessions. I quickly noticed the name since the album sounded so impossibly lush yet crisp; a sonic feast where usually one of those dishes is missing. Within a half a year, we would notice David Tickle again when he produced the “True Colours” album by Split Enz; another feast of glimmering pop sonics that managed to break that band in North America.

So, sure, this was a peak album by one of the most significant US New Wave bands, but it managed to be groundbreaking in one other fashion, beyond its energetic songs, fantastic singing and the incredible drumming of Clem Burke. “Eat To The Beat” was also the first full video album ever released to home video. I recall that Warner Home Video released four video tapes to the tiny [at the time] home market and these were Gary Numan’s “Touring Principle” live concert, Dire Straits “Making Movies,” a Fleetwood Mac live video and “Eat To The Beat.” This had to have been the first time that music videos had been made for every song on an album. I wanted it on βeta in the 80s, but by the decade’s end, I had gotten the Japanese laserdisc of the title.

After this album dominated by late 1979 like few others, it seemed like there was no end in sight for the conquering heroes of New Wave. Little did I know that the band would never hit the heights that this album seemed to effortlessly achieve. Artistically, any way. None of the three singles released in America proved to be successful followups to “Heart Of Glass” or even “One Way Or Another.” The album ed the Platinum Club within nine months – entirely appropriate to a classic album that somehow managed to give the single charts a miss. Though Mike Chapman would produce their next two albums, it could have almost been another band entirely by that time. The group’s POV would get stretched to the breaking point on the insanely eclectic “Autoamerican” the next year, but the group would certainly not suffer commercially for it! If this album had: power pop, widescreen ballads, funk rock, disco, New Wave, reggae, girl group pastiche, and punk rock, then the next one would cast an even wider net.

Her voice just reigns supreme with this one! Not the best album but with one of my favorites Atomic on it I'm glad I got a decent copy. Great sounding pressing to my ears.

It sounds clear enough but a little dynamically compressed. Great pressing in that it has no pops or clicks. It doesn't sound any better than my CD copy and certainly not as vivid sounding as my Original UK pressing which has unfortunately too many clicks now, but if you just need a replacement and don't want the CD or it's fine. Recommended.

Have to crank this one a bit because the mastering is so quiet, but it sounds fine when you do. No Atomic poster with my copy.

Great press, sounds brilliant. No surface noise, really dynamic and spacious, and the vocals are clear throughout.