Atomic - Blondie - Eat to the Beat - 1979

So the other night I was out with my buddy Anand and we ended up in some wine bar on the outskirts of Soho/Tribecca. In our quest to find new bars, we had intended to close out our evening at City Winery on Varrick, only to discover that there was some sort of show going on that you had to have tickets for to even come into the bar. Having decided to close out the evening with wine, we ended up going into this hole in the wall place.

It was quiet and tasteful seeming, with oak book shelves and a jazz tro playing in the corner. The forty something, librarian-ish hostess spotted us and took an almost immediate dislike to us. It's probable that she assumed that we were wasted (correctly) and that we might cause a scene. Little did she know that we were trained professional drunks with ninja-like skills at keeping it together. She was condescending from the get go, trying to usher us into a back corner.

Once we were seated, we ordered a couple of glasses of wine and a meat and cheese plate and got on the business of planning our next adventure. A youngish waitress brought out our glasses of wine, and promptly proceeded to dump both glasses on me. Now I wasn't dressed terribly well, and it was Rose, so it wasn't really a big deal...but still...

Anand and I both looked at each other to confirm that niether one of our drunk assess had been responsible for the accident. The condescending hostess zoomed over to wipe down the table and move us to another one, her condescention now tempered by the knowledge that her staff had fucked up...but still present. Our wine, was of course on the house. The waitress who had spilled on me refused to look at either us, or her boss for the rest of the night...spending the following half an hour furiously scrubbing the espresso machine.

As we wrapped up, the hostess came around to give us our check and asked what had made us come into her place. Anand told her that we liked to wander from neighborhood to neighborhood and check out different bars.

You could see the lightbulb go off in her head...she thought we were restaurant reviewers...and she realized that her waitress had probably shot the review in the foot. It was totally amazing the speed with which that condescention turned to obsequeisness. Our remaining five minutes in the bar were filled with ass kissing on a level I've rarely experienced. We quietly left, tipping well, and letting her stew in the fear that she'd shot her business in the foot.

I'm just barely old enough to remember the time when Heart of Glass was a hit. To me, Blondie were always that band. It was only as I got older that I discovered that there was a much more interesting band behind the hits. Atomic, with it's Spaghetti Western Guitar, disco drums and typically haunting vocals show a band with much more going for it than you'd think.