'Youth Nabbed As Sniper'

While the Licorice Pizza interns were hard at work on Christmas posts last week, I was busy searching for other things that I thought might entertain you. In my quest, I happened to pick up a couple of pretty cool albums: The first I’ll post from today; one of the others I may get into in a few days.

Plastic Letters, Blondie’s 1978 sophomore release, has never been one of my favorites from the band. Although it does have a couple of decent songs – i.e. “Denis” and “(I'm Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear” – I’m mostly inclined to agree with the scribe who said it sounded like leftovers from their debut disk.

But here’s why I was happy to get my hands on the 2001 re-released version: It contains “Once I Had A Love,” which is the original version of “Heart of Glass.” Blondie recorded this much slower version in 1975, and would sometimes play it live, but never released it. It wasn’t until Parallel Lines in 1978, when Mike Chapman would pump up the bass and increase the beats to 120 per minute, that the song was officially released.

This original version is more in keeping with the pop-oriented Blondie songs, while it also looks forward to the funky reggae that would come with “The Tide is High” in 1980.

Once I Had A Love.mp3