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.

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.

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...

If "Parallel Lines" is Blondie's greatest collection of songs - snappy, clever and direct, in ideal compliance with their standing as the perfect pop group - their 1980 "Autoamerican" is their greatest album, one that is dignified and complete, perfect in its total unity and harmony. Ironically it is at a time when Blondie were most alienated as a group that they sound most like a band, a contradiction evoked in the record's beautiful cover art.

On "Autoamerican" Blondie, in spirit at least, step outside New York and breathe in the vast scope and beauty of America. The record's opening sequence Europa, a somewhat intellectual concept of the automobile voiced robotically by Harry, is the statement of intent, giving way to the perfect disco bass of Live it Up, containing one of Blondie's great lines: "you know its so pass?/to sleep without you every day". Go Through It cruises along an open highway with tender love and gutsy charm. Do the Dark, tinged with North African allusion, is a shadowy and mysterious invitation to "do the Sidewalk Hustle/do the Invisible Dance" and is one of Blondie's most intoxicating songs.

Admittedly The Tide is High becomes increasingly easy to skip over as the album's finest moments become even more alluring; The old time dance-hall number Here's Looking at You - lazy, smoky and poignant, voiced through a glass of bourbon while pining for Monroe. The immortal Rapture, cooler now than it ever was, and a significant piece of pop culture in itself, pin-pointing the exact moment when the New York elite chose hip-hop over power pop. Evoking Basquait and Warhol as effortlessly as it does huge yellow taxi cabs and brownstone buildings; space mutants and b-movies; Coca Cola and Studio 54.

In fact there is not a song on Autoamerican that does not shimmer in the searing heat of a Manhattan summer, not least Jimmy Destri's sublime Angels on the Balcony. Lucid, warm and effervescent, it is imbued with magic and a bittersweet nostalgia and is perhaps the most beautiful song Blondie ever recorded, where Harry's touching vocal is both as cool and as sweet as vanilla ice-cream.

Walk Like Me is Destri's call to arms, invoking the individual in a grid locked, press frenzied America where everyone's merely a number - "change the way you comb your hair and watch what you walk under" states Harry over Clem Burke's stabbing drum punches, before straining angrily "why don't you walk like me?". The record closes with Harry's lovely rendition of the Lerner & Lowe classic Follow Me, as if one needs proof that Blondie, despite their modern sensibility, belong in all times, any time. Genius.

I was 15 years old when I bought this at the local record store. I remember seeing the video for "Rapture" before MTV even existed, and watching people dance to "T-Birds" on American Bandstand. In many ways, this was a first love in terms of rock music, and I appreciate it now even more than I used to. A very fun album to listen to--it doesn't try to raise your consciousness or make a statement. Instead, the emphasis here seems to be on creating fantastic aural environments, and it does so spectacularly. Every song is like a room decorated in a different style, from the 40's inspired "Here's Looking at You" to the Carribbean rythyms of "Tide is High" to the Latin horns on "Go Through It." And just like the T-Bird Debbie loves so much, it's a classic.