Atomic

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It should not make sense. NONE OF IT MAKES SENSE.

Three blind mice meet a marching band, they run into Sergio Leone in a New York disco, he takes them on a subterranean rollercoaster with a punk rock drummer at the helm on a quest to see this otherworldly blonde goddess murmuring expectantly about the on-rushing world’s end.

All this in an ambiguous spacetime flux, flipping madly between major and minor, switching up tempos, and exploring unseen and inhuman dimensions in between.

If this is nuclear holocaust — an atom-age rapture — then I want this sweet apocalyptic disco.

Part I: Three blind mice
What? Why start there? Because it plays a trick. A triumphal ascent, set to a martial, marching cadence to signify their — our — steady progress to our certain evisceration. Did you ever see such a thing in your life? The beat is mechanical, like a machine beyond mortal control, a crazy escalating upbeat, but in case we have not deduced what the nice found out, we are in a minor key? We can’t say we weren’t warned, warned, but things are beyond our reasonable power to change. At the crescendo — are we happy or sad? — a parade ground drumroll — what is coming, and is this it, or a premature end? An adolescent spurt? A jolt, un petit mort — sex is death & death is sex, a little cresting wave, a sure-shot snareshot — stop —

Part II: The Vamp: Spaghetti western guitars & an impatient punk drummer
We open on a wide empty dustbowl, a kerrang of spaghetti western guitars and the rollercoaster clunges down into the abyss. Now the drummer, Burke, sets the pace, pulling frantically at the beat, a brisk four-on-the-floor stomp, hauling the band along at 135 — you know he’d go 150 if they’d only get a leg on — just two measures in and he’s given up on the quarter notes and is impatiently drumming his fingers with sarcastic hi-hat triplets as if to say, NO RUSH GUYS JUST WHEN YOU ARE READY.

They cycle around the intro vamp. Second go-round, those hi-hat triplets are louder, the snare-stomp more strident — CLEM Burke, is like come on, man, we haven’t got all day don’t you know there’s a sweaty cataclysm going down?

But Stein and Infante and their cool-hand Ennio Morricone guitars will not be rushed. Their vibe is dreamy double-tracked twang and you know that this is James Calvin Willsey learned everything he knew, God rest him.

But underneath it all this tension. Fast against slow. Happy in the face of sad. Lively, but morbid. Descending dark depths but somehow aspiring to the heavens. Is there a mounting, rising angelic keyboard swell?

For all the sombre sombrero guitar, that marching four-beat has got a place to be and Burke is taking us there —

PART III: Enter the Golden goddess of the Disco.
Kaboom! There it is! Suddenly we’re exultant: it’s a breezy major, the disco bass leads, and the drummer, Burke, is back in the pocket like he’s saying I told you so. He’s just doing the cha-cha, cheerleading now, for here is the golden goddess.

“Uh-ha, make it all right,” she sings.

After all this cultivated dissonance this seems trite and, on paper, a bit disappointing, but the way she sings it, and how Destri garlands it with pealing church-bell keyboard lines, hosannas like it’s the Eighteen Twelve, you know she’s right — uh-ha, make it magnificent.

Everything is so major and positive, even the chord progression is rising chromatically up some stairway to heaven, and beautiful hair (again: on paper —) so we know we are building to something bigger, and kaboom! there it is! A throbbing arpeggiator explodes onto the soundscape and, mixed in with the blood and ecstasy are some gorgeous minor third harmonies. We are back in the minor. The ride reaches its apex and we are falling: the roller-coaster thunders down into the depths, for you can’t understand joy if you don’t know sorrow tonight — stop.

Atomic.

Destri’s keyboard is reaching up, augmenting, yearning for something beautiful as if he can see it just above the grate

off on the rollercoaster

Tempo and that drum beat

Bass solo

A flanging denuded perfect fifth, neither major nor minor, a sequenced beat, and Nigel Robinson

The bass

The arps

The Ennio Morricone guitar

This sounds like a band having an intense argument. Is it major or minor? Is it disco, punk or spaghetti western?

It underscores an important point: GREAT ART COMES FROM CONFLICT.

What do we know about Eat to the Beat?

• Blondie were under pressure to follow the massive crossover success of Parallel Lines. Pop producer Mike Chapman worked with the band for the first time and
• Now, crossovers bring conflict: Blondie started life as a punk band in CBGB, with the Ramones, Patti Smith, Talking Heads and Television. Parallel Lines was a much more pop-oriented record, with knockout singles like Sunday Girl, Picture This, One Way Or Another and Hanging on the Telephone barely having so much as a rock edge let alone a punk one. And, of course, the breakout single was Heart of Glass, which was out-and-out disco.
• You get the sense that Clem Burke wasn’t wildly happy about this