2006-06-05 - 5:42 p.m.
On Saturday night, Nya and I went with my friend Rachel to see Blondie and the �New Cars� (Todd Rundgren fronting a band with a few of the original Cars and playing Cars hits) at Ravinia, a nearby outdoor venue. Great seats at concerts and ballgames is a perk of disability, so our pavilion seats were in the first row of the second section and had a great view. Originally, two more friends were going to go with me. But they backed out and I posted their tickets for sale on craigslist.
I heard from someone almost instantly. Melinda was from Dallas and had seen the show a few weeks before. She liked it so much and was such a big Todd Rundgren fan that she wanted to come a thousand miles to see it again in Chicago. Wow. I gotta respect that level of commitment. I�m so happy a person so dedicated got the tickets, instead of someone for whom it would have been just another concert. She and her friend Debby came up early to sightsee for the weekend. Alas, Nya and I didn�t meet up with them until the actual show, but they said they had a great time here.
(By the way, you may wonder. as I did, why Ric Ocasek is not involved in a Cars reunion. I don�t actually know, although I�ve heard he just dislikes touring. But Nya has a theory that his absence has to do with his marriage to Paulina Porizkova. See, he surely knows that as a physically pretty unattractive man, he has a real good thing going being married to a supermodel. Why would he want to leave her bed to go on tour? Probably when asked if he wanted to front a reunited Cars, he was like �Nah, I�m good here. Let Todd Rundgren do it; raising Liv Tyler is as close as he�ll ever come to hotness��)
But Nya and I were mainly there for Blondie. We�d been singing �X Offender� (which they sadly didn�t play) and other songs for weeks beforehand. I�m afraid we aren�t really familiar with the stuff from their recent albums (well, except radio-hit �Maria� I guess). But their early work was always a motif in our youth and is still awesome today. It�s remarkable how well the material has held up over time. Debbie Harry herself noted before playing �Hanging On the Telephone� that people don�t really use phone booths anymore, but that song still rocks.
Blondie music and me actually go way back. Both my parents were fans of the band for some reason and I heard the band at a very early age. I got the album Best of Blondie (yes, on vinyl LP) for I think my 11th birthday. At that point, I was just starting to figure out that girls weren�t icky. In fact, maybe there was something pretty cool going on about them. I couldn�t quite figure it out, but maybe I should be paying some attention. In any event, that Debbie Harry woman on the cover of my new album� Well, she looked pretty interesting.
Then I listened. I remember the song �Atomic�. Specifically, the line �your hair looks beautiful, oh tonight��. Wow, that was quite right. My reaction is hard to articulate. Truths expressed in music can never be truly explained in words. But here was a gorgeous voice, tough but sweet, singing (so I thought; I actually have no idea of the intended meaning � if any � to the lyrics) about beauty in a moment. Tonight. Yeah.
When I got older and started dating Nya in high school, I decided she reminded me of Debbie Harry. In fact, I recently got an email from another high school friend who noted it seemed almost cyclical that we were seeing Blondie, because everyone thought Nya looked like Debbie Harry back in the day. (Actually, as I�ve noted, the Debbie Harry resemblance was mostly attitude. Nya really looks more like Bjork. Mainly though, she looks like Nya.)
When they played �Atomic� Saturday night, okay maybe I�m a wuss, but I completely broke down. Because here�s the thing: sitting right next to me was the love of my life whose hair looks beautiful not just tonight, but tomorrow and the next day and the next. Forever and always. I still don�t think I�ve quite figured girls out. But �Blondie� is no longer some totally unattainable, cooler-than-you persona played by Debbie Harry. She�s very real; I can reach out and touch her right next to me. And Nya�s not even bottle-blonde anymore.
I hope I can still rock as hard as Debbie Harry at 61. But one thing I�m sure of is that Nya�s hair will still look beautiful and we�ll still make it magnificent.
� 2006 Geoff Gladstone
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