Thirty years ago this month, in December 1976, Blondie released “Blondie.”

There’s something greedy about New York City.

The metropolis has a track record of never being satisfied. Taxicab drivers can’t get where they’re headed fast enough; there can never be too many restaurants, art galleries or clubs; the Yankees’ payroll will never be too high; and when the city couldn’t grow another inch outward it grew up… and up… and up.

Yes, New York is aptly nicknamed “The city that never sleeps.” But if it did, you could bet it would give Rip van Winkle a run for his ZZZ’s. While it hasn’t slept yet – not after the draft riots in 1863, not during the blackout of 1977, and not after 9/11 – when it does, it will be the greatest nap ever taken.

New York City is the equivalent to that friend, every group has one, that is a “one upper” – the type of person who tops every story. You’ve been to Europe twice? He’s lived there for a year. You got pneumonia? He has malaria. These peoples’ personality, or maybe self worth, is predicated on being bigger, badder and better than everyone else.

NYC is like this.

It has survived everything history tossed its way, and woken back up with a slightly bigger chip on its shoulder.

So it’s no surprise that when the legendary punk venue CBGB closed Oct. 15, 2006, it went down kicking and screaming. But when the closure was final, millions of New Yorkers got up Oct. 16 and went to work with the same resilience they’ve shown for generations. It’s not as if they took a page from an Ostrich and stuck their head in the sand. But rather, they persevered with a less-than-subtle arrogance that they could just do it all over again –in a few years there would be another venue, with new bands building an entire new history.

Which really is a shame, as the club epitomized everything great about the city. NYC has individuals from around the globe – each one-of-a-kind in voice, dress, look, history and future. No two people there are alike. It’s shockingly charming that everyone flexes his or her individuality, and wants to be just as unique as everybody else. The city molds its 19 million distinct personalities into an army of one reputation. Meet any of these people, and the only thing they’ll have in common is their undeniable New Yorkness.

This is exactly what CBGB did.

It took a roster of mismatched bands that sounded nothing alike, and built it into a reputation so defined, that describing a artist as a “CBGB band” now carries a type of genre specification.

It’s the only pocket of musical history like this. Seattle in the early 1990s had a similar sound and look. So did Britain in the early 1960s, Memphis in the early 1950s and Sweden during the first half of this decade. All these movements relied as heavily on similarities to other bands in the respective scenes, as they did on their difference to acts outside of it.

In fact, saying NY has any specific “scene” is a mute point. There just are too many limitations – geographically, numerically and sonically – to say there’s a NY sound. In any other place, when a dozen bands crop up simultaneously it sends the music media into frenzy. Omaha, Neb. is a musical hotbed because of a few bands. So is Montreal, Canada. Sure, there is great music from acts in these cities. But not in numbers like New York City – yet nobody cares. They care about the bands individually, but not about the “New York scene.” It’s too big.

How many bands would be apart of the New York City scene? 10? 30? 500? It’s the only city in the world that no matter how many bands pop up, how many new sounds get recorded, how many genres get breeched… the outside perception never changes. It’s just New York being New York.

California is like this in a way. There can be hundreds of Cali bands, and nobody bats an eyelash or lifts a pen to chronicle the up-and-coming wave from the region. However – in a bout of geographical obviousness – California is a state… not a city.

The other thing it takes to define a movement is a distinct time period. But NYC became cool in the 1960s with the Velvet Underground, and has stayed cool since.

Yes, CBGB’s diversity defined the city as much as it was defined by it.

The Ramones were different from Television, who were different from The Talking Heads, who were different from The Deadboys, who were different from Patti Smith, who was different than Blondie, and so on.

Even within these bands’ individual catalogues, many times albums sounded drastically altered from anything the act had released up to that point or would release after. And while The Talking Heads is the biggest chameleon of the performers who frequented the club in the late 1970s, Blondie isn’t far behind.

Before Debbie Harry was a Playboy Playmate. Years before she told us that “one way or another” she was “gonna getchya, getchya, getchya,” and handled her glass heart on the bands accurately praised “Parallel Lines,” she was punk.

That’s not saying the band’s self-titled debut was sonically on par with the Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks. But it does have the same selfishness as the bands that defined that genre. The NYC ensemble always sounded like they’d act the same playing in their loft as they would on the CBGB stage (which was probably smaller than the band’s loft). It wouldn’t be hard to imagine Harry as dolled-up and seductively slinking around her living room at 8 a.m., as she might be while in front of a crowd of thousands.

This was best defined on 1976’s “Blondie” – a record that was anything but easily released.

First distributed by Private Stock Records with only a few weeks remaining in the year, it failed to crack any U.S. chart. Even after the opening track and lead single, “Sex Offender,” was renamed “XOffender” because radio stations refused to play the tune with the original moniker, the band was dropped from the small inprint. Had it not been re-released the following year by Chrysalis Records, it would have disappeared in the discount bins of today’s vinyl resale shops.

Maybe it was musical foresight, or just better taste, the group’s new label pushed the heavier and sexy “Rip Her To Shreds” just in time for the movement that would become synonymous with CBGB. And though the remainder of the record fused 60’s girl-group doo-wop, with disco inclinations and rock’n’roll esthetic, it was the timing of that lead single that helped solidify Blondie as NYC mainstays.

It didn’t hurt that Harry parlayed her natural beauty into a pin-up persona that coincided with punk’s sexual revolution. While the genre pioneer – former New York Dolls and Sex Pistols manager – Malcolm McLaren ran the appropriately named clothing store “SEX,” it was Harry who became the era’s biggest fantasy symbol. That’s saying a lot, given the movement’s love for self-mutilation and disdain for natural beauty, while also being one of the most overtly promiscuous times in rock’n’roll.

“Blondie” was – is – a record of near misses.

It was almost not given a second release in the United States. But it was. It almost didn’t reach a global audience. But it did, when an Australian television program accidentally played the video for “In The Flesh,” and the song became a hit Down Under. The record was almost overshadowed retrospectively by 1978’s “Parallel Lines.” But a 2001 re-issue gave “Blondie” the re-mastering it deserved and included five bonus tracks.

And while it’s debatable which of the group’s first four records is their best, it is their most important.

Without this first step, there would have been not been a second. There would have been a third. There would have not been an eighth. It’s the reason “Blondie” is who they are – a 2006 entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But more importantly, they are survivors.

How New York City is that?

Daily Herald BEEP, Dec. 27, 2006