regarding the programs and lack of at the gigs i will talk to the powers that be and see what can be done maybe they can sell some on the site now mark from nottingham writes: …tell your management that I feel it unfair that there were a lot of people backstage who had clearly not been to the gig and were dealers trying to get signatures for re-sale. I did indicate to one of the security but sadly to no avail and Debbie wouldnt have known this now heres the deal, of course we all know about this especially debbie and that is why she sometimes wont sign an autograph if the person looks like a professional… actually mark here is the first fan to write in about this but its something we have been dealing with forever… the problem is theres really nothing to be done about it except to limit the amount of autographs we sign… of course its obvious when somebody shows up with like one copy of all the vinyl records as opposed to somebody who just wants us to sign like ten little white cards… not to worry though as its not that common a phenomena and we are able generally to tell who is really a fan its not that hard the tour is almost done now in ireland for the final three shows, the last uk gig in london was really enjoyable… but generally it was a good tour and we feel very close to everyone over here… im glad people liked the show theres this one thing… ha… i finally have figured out why british drivers are so fucking deadly aggressive, for years now i always wondered why when i step off a curb in london and there’s a car coming it seems to speed up gleefully and when i step in front of a car and it actually has to slow down the driver goes absolutly mad and gnashes his teeth etc etc its cause of the pedestrians!!! you british pedestrians are too fucking polite… in new york city when i’m driving around its just a given that people are going to wander in front of the car, in fact the roles are reversed whereby certain tough and gangster type pedestrians in nyc will automatically slow down when they see a car coming, giving the driver the same deadly looks one gets from the british driver… i have also had a very weird fact confirmed by several people; see in the US we are taught from the time we are little kids that “the pedestrian always has the right of way” this is just basic stuff and in the last few weeks when i asked people if this was the case over here, do they have a similar phrase, they were like HA HA HO HO YOU ARE CRAZY!… so here we have this most civilized of countries except for this one strange inversion of street law… im telling you guys over here its up to you…crossing the damn street just shouldnt be so fucking dangerous… next time you’re crossing the street in front of a bunch of seething impatient drivers slow the fuck down instead of scurrying accross the street like a bunch of good little doomed bunnies… id like to see some of these london drivers try this stuff in the south bronx, ha, theyd be dragged out of their cars and stomped flat… last time i was amused by ‘big brother’ but ‘space cadets’ leaves me mystified… its so dull its amazing, are people actually watching? except for the andy warhol aspect, that is watching somebody sleeping as entertainment it is really uninspiring i will be glad to get home i really miss the family but at the same time i will miss all of you over here… you guys as fans all do us proud

still in sheffield, leave soon for the final stretch… i have gotten a few questions and comments about the frankie/nigel situation… so i guess now that the hall of fame is imminent again; no one in the band ever had any hard feelings towards those guys until they decided to try and sue us which was such a huge pain and trauma you cant imagine… (sigh!) the band was started by debbie and myself back in 73-75 or so depending on how you mark the time line… there were numerous other shifting band members before we gained any notoriety… the line up was made stable and the name first used after we got clem and a little later jimmy, blondie was well established when those guys joined, frankie was replaced by eddie martinez for the last year or so… so years later when we decided to start up again we briefly tried to work with nigel but by that time we had been working with leigh foxx for a long time and were closer to him… i dont think i need to justify who i want to work with but there is a rigidity in people about the identity of “the band”, what peoples perception of it is, what they think it should be etc (there must have been volumes written about the beatles and yoko etc, we still argue about what version of the stones was the best one) so thats kind of it… what happened then was that in spite of those guys getting paid their share for the work they did (despite what you might see they get and always have gotten a percentage of the royalties for the albums they worked on) they decided that they wanted to get a percentage of everything the band made even if they werent involved and we all felt that that wasnt fair… now all of this has nothing to do with musicianship etc but i swear that speaking for myself if debbie and the others didnt want to work with me any more i would feel bad about it certainly but i would let it go, you can believe it or not… i know this is gonna come up more but thats my side of it those guys could have remained on friendly terms with us but the way i see it they chose not to… im not gonna get into who contributed what to the band and the band identity thats up to the public perception… i really didnt want to write this shit it just stirs up a lot of bad feelings… on a lighter now being stuck in hotel rooms one is forced to watch the occasional miserable tv show, generally i avoid tv shows but i left my murakami book on the bus and as a result succumbed to the lure of the crummy tub(e)… so i watched ‘lost’ which is kind of survivor with flashbacks and shittier writing… so these guys are slogging through the jungle after not being able to break into some mysterious bomb shelter, some subplot about kidney theft, so the one guy has a dream of a plane crashing and he knows they have to find it so they slog through the jungle and sure enough they find the plane and they are all excited and the guy goes inside and damn! whats there?, shit shit nothing but heroin… they are very upset… either i’m crazy or this is the straight line of the year; the dudes are on a deserted tropical island with a bunch of babes and a lifetime supply of smack and they are pissed off… as kevin said ‘all they need is some boom boxes’… then theres king kong which always struck me as an overwhelming tragedy, the saddest fucking story; is it about conservation?, about the human tendency to exploit and ruin everything man comes into contact within the natural world, is it about loneliness and isolation? what a strange message to put out at christmas… im sure i’ll probably like it when i get around to it but i always felt so miserably sorry for poor kong that i couldnt really get into the movie that much… (also i’m amazed that so many of the people over here when discussing the new version in print and on tv say they are unfamiliar with the original old version which i’d always thought was required viewing) shouldnt have killed tookie (elvis not dead, living in a corn field)

tour winds down but still some big gigs left… in the tour bubble wherein time is a sort of external event that doesnt affect waking sleeping etc… still very little daylight around… so we watch the news etc. if arnold has any brains he will let tookie off, we are waiting to see what happens… its funny cause as much as i like eminem i dont feel directly connected to his more youth oriented angst now i am quite moved by his latest offering in which he expresses his frustrations about leaving his kid… i miss the family a lot and dont know when i’m going to be able to undertake another long expedition like this again, we’e just gonna have to see what happens… one thing is about the british accent or dialect, theres something all the more horrible about tv advertisments when delivered in what we americans consider erudite anglo diction… in other words i always think of the british accent as fairly highbrow and when i hear words like ‘underarm detergent’ etc spoken so carefully its even more sickening than the brash u.s. equivalent of ‘barking dog’ dialog that we are familiar with back home the shows have been going well again thanks to Hugh and his pals for being such a great support act i have been really getting off on playing the Roxy song and people have been responding well to it although i dont think anybody gets that the opening instrumental is our version of ‘..warm jets’ by Eno at least no one has mentioned knowing what it is so far… here is Leigh Foxx live at albert hall

newcastle tonight… edinburgh was quite great, those guys really know how to get crazy… aberdeen was the third power outage in blondie history but like all the others it was very weird and i wonder how many actually noticed it, at the exact moment d said goodnight at the end of hog the house (the sound system) went out for just a second but in doing so all of the presets at the sound board went back to their default modes which made the sound totally change but since it was at the end in the frenzy finale part i dont think it was very apparent i am still getting requests for autographs, all i can say is that every night at the shows we do sign all the stuff thats been sent to the venue… as far as that goes it would be a great help if people would put their name on the back of things they want signed so that it can be matched to envelopes as sometimes it gets chaotic shows are quite fun now, it takes a while to get proper momentum going… thus far the cold and flu has been at a minimum though various people in the crew are succumbing… yeah i never mention the crew, the guys and few girls who work for us are really fantastic and are a huge part of what goes on every night, this particular bunch is very slick and we cant thank them enough for repeatedly saving us during the shows and otherwise again thanx for all your support and comments, its hard to write a lot i thought it’d be easier but i’ll get more stuff up eventually

tour continues in UK… thanks to everyone for the hall of fame congratulations and all of you at the shows here in England… thanx for all the comments about the shows… Hugh Cornwell ex of the Stranglers has been opening up for us here and he is a really great guy, has been going down really well with his three piece we are planning shows in the states around the hall of fame thing we finally got to play in Albert Hall in London which is the big prestige gig, is actually a very cool place to play… it has a primitive atmosphere like it should have a dirt floor, like some great medical amphitheatre… we only saw one review for that which said that i looked like Bernie Eccelstone (who is the beat up old millionaire race car dude who has similar hair and wears sunglasses) and that kevin was dressed like “everything that was wrong with the eighties” beyond that they liked the show, great! through this all we are being filmed for a documentary by the BBC… this should be ok as we have more control over it than over past endeavors… the other night in Southend was great for me as this was the first time Akira got to come to the show… so in the first song i looked up at the balcony and there was Akira and Barbara… Akira in her headphones was going fairly crazy cheering and waving her fists in the air… she knows what we do with the band but this was the first time she saw the show per se… later on they came to the side of the stage and Akira just wandered out and started talking to me in the middle of a song… that was the night before Albert Hall, the night after she went out before the show and danced around in front of the crowd a little bit… anyway now she’s a bigger fan than ever the fans are great at the gigs, thanx to all the devoted who are attending many concerts… i got one cranky e-mail from somone who was upset cause debbie walked past a bunch of fans who were waiting for autographs without signing… i think the kids who are coming to all the shows have some idea of how tiring it is to do what we are doing… doing three days in a row is fairly exhausting and we have a bunch of three day runs even though we try and avoid them i’ll write more later when we have more down time barry was out here with us too for a while, i hadnt seen the updated site look before we got here, well done louis and barry! once again please send requests for ‘official’ type stuff to the management

so Barbara got a message which contains a rumor thats floating around about the next ‘best of’ cover shot having frank and nigel cut out of the picture… i dont know where this stuff comes from, and am always amazed at the amount of weird negativity that is produced in the world of fan gossip… so let me assure you that this is in fact only a rumor… true fans will get that during the plastic letters period frank was involved only near the end (he did play on some tracks on plastic letters but wasnt ‘officially’ in the band till parallel lines) and we hadnt yet met nigel… nigel (i think) is thanked on plastic letters cause by the time we were doing the thank yous for the cover we did know we were gonna use him …but when the picture was taken those guys just werent there… its nice to get the pics out as they are taken at the old TROPICANA hotel which was the main center of rock wildness in L.A. at least as far as hotels go and now its long since torn down… we have been sitting on them (the pics) for years, debbie is wearing a pillow case wrapped with red gaffer tape… at the time Terry Ellis of Chrysalis was all worked up lest we be labeled “punk” and the session with the pillow case dress was nixed… beyond that the pictures were shot in a two and a quarter format, that’s square film, in other words thats the whole picture, theres no more to it thats not visible thnx everyone for suggesting songs for the upcoming shows… rehearsals soon, some of the stuff people wanted to hear is bound to be covered i gotta go, more soon

so first my mind is blown! Michael B from boston wrote informing that Nick Tosches did the Creem magazine story interview with DH… as soon as Akira wakes up we will go dig through the old files and get it out… really this fucking guy is my new hero!, now maybe i can get hold of him, he keeps saying he’s dropping dead in all his books hopefully he’ll hang on long enough John Jacovina our very close friend called from N.O. where hes with some other NYC firefighters helping out… he said it is just like being in ‘some other world, like mad max’ but he’s doing ok in spite of three hours sleep per night, said he’s making a lot of friends… thnx Johnathan for the letter, most everyone is on the same page with whats going on, of course the white house turned down funding for fixing the levees two years ago now its gonna cost a shitload more to correct… do we all know that three days into the storm condaleeza rice was in NYC shopping for shoes? that she went to see spamalot and when the lights came up after the show the audience hissed and booed at her? so Amy, again someone well meaning sent me a brief critique and long article which includes this staement :”What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state.” Amy, this is propaganda, what the fuck is the ‘welfare state’? in my opinion it doesnt exist, so now its ok to collect billions of dollars to send to people in need provided they have had their homes and lives destroyed, but distributing funds to under paid poverty stricken people without the context of disaster is somehow an evil liberal plot… again Chomsky says ‘no black man can be guilty of a crime in America.’ its just still so sad to me how the lines here are drawn separating people by ideology, that people are so fucking cranky about labels, about viewpoints etc etc… America could fix itself in a couple of months without any disasters as motivations if people would just do the right thing and help each other… pretty fucking naive huh?

on a non topical note i am pleased to see more great asian films getting released here notably 2046 and especially “sympathy for mr. vengeance” which i thought was fantastic in a way almost superior to “old boy” both directed by Chan Wook Park… baby Vali keeps asking for someone named ‘Al Gold’, i guess its her agent or something but what? i have some free time… need to take a nap, the baby thing is really tiring, how do single women do it? men are bogus, women should run the show… thanks for all the messages from poland, i dont think the polish gig is up on the net any more… we are going to start figuring out the show for nov. open to suggestions

a bit more, this is like bringing back all the emotion that went on during the election that i tried to let go of and hope for the best… today a couple of bits; i saw some fucking asshole on CNN, i’m not gonna bother to say what his name was, this fuck had the audacity to blame “the looters” for the delay in rescue and support operations, and the punchline is he was a black man… i hope he enjoys being a lacky stooge… but people are of course seeing it this way without encouragment… nikki writes: “That’s just like a democrat always pointing fingers away from their own corrupt ‘selves. The thing is, New Orleans management has been corrupt since the earliest days. Lawlessness thrives in that chaotic city.” democrat?!!?? moi? you must be fucking kidding, when it comes to politics i am a strict bipartisan deathmetal voodoo adherent with leaning towards gnostic paganism, witchcraft etc etc… somehow i think nikki probably lives in like Anaheim? hmmm? give me those lawless chaotic cities anyday, i always had a great time in N.O… then i saw rumsfeld at the big press conference… just amazing, some guy asked if he thought the relief efforts had indeed been late and his answer was just a textbook non-answer, i couldnt find it verbatim (i looked and looked but no one seems to have found it worthy of printing the text) it was to say the least, evasive, cluttered with catch phrases and just plain gobble de gook… then he just stopped in mid sentence to let general whatsis take over with a longer more convoluted version… and you know what? none of the suckers in the press core had the balls to say “oh, hmm thats really clear!”… they’re all so fucking scared they wont be let back in next time, bunch of cowering bugs… no, bugs are braver… meanwhile Akiras godfather John Jacovina who is a NYC firefighter volunteered and went down to help out, he left sunday at three a.m. on a military aircraft, we are all hoping he is ok and salute his courage…

watching the news we were pleased to see that this blondie fan got to say her short bit on CNN despite her being unnamed…she was in N.O. waiting to get into the stadium, just talked about the lines being long… when bush was elected to the second term i saw a lot of media people who were down on him saying that every pres who did a second term had some major fuck up happen… if the hurricane had hit the hamptons there would have been ten battleships off shore pulling rich white people off as soon as it was possible… none of those black people down there voted for him maybe thats why they were left to swim for it… finally seeing the lady carrying the pile of ‘huggies’ out of a swamped store while the gung ho fucking newscaster yells “LOOTER!!” is maddening good ‘ol fox new tells you how to help…