Nigel Harisson, may contain Blondie

[Phil Starr]

28 minutes ago, BassAdder60 said:

Fun song to play and having two female vocalists in my band helps

I just cross my legs and go for it

[tauzero]

I remember us getting stuck in Maria once. Came out of a chorus, did a verse, then the bridge, then instead of going into the chorus again, Mrs Zero went back to the verse, then the bridge, then a verse again. Realising that we were in a death loop, I started singing the chorus after the bridge came round again and so we managed to finish it, otherwise we'd still be there. It is a bit of an odd arrangement though, the bridge can either precede or follow the verse.

[dave_bass5]

When we first started learning  Hanging on the telephone it was at a time when we had no drummer, so was using a drum only backing track. We, more or rather the bass player, kept getting the gap wrong between the first and second verses.

He insisted he had been practicing it all week and no way was he wrong. Started to have a go at the backing track being wrong. 
Even after i pointed out the drum track was actually the drum stem off the record, and it was Clem playing it he wouldn’t have it, although he did start to back track a bit. 🙄

[NigeJ]

The mother of my two daughters was a massive Blondie fan and had a crush on Nigel. Then she met another bass player called Nigel.....

[Rich]

Nice one, I depped with a mate's Blondie trib many moons ago and it was great fun. The basslines are awesome, and fabulous things to play. The only thing I didn't like was wearing my spiky wig. A bit too sweaty betty for my liking.  

[lozkerr]

On 10/02/2026 at 10:09, Phil Starr said:

I send out a spotify list with a version I think is OK, if people object I'll go with the majority feeling but if someone objects once we get to the rehearsal room it's too late, the rest of us have spent time learning the 'original' from the spotify list. You've let the band down, let yourself down, let your parents down  basically it's up to the person who has done an alternate version who will have to adapt. Once we've got the basic song working we will always look at starts and endings and often make decisions about taking bits out or more often adding extra choruses and we may then come up with an own, arrangement.

That's what we do, and did with Atomic. We all learned the full-length version but after we'd been through it a few times, we all agreed it was too long and meandering to play live. We couldn't nail an arrangement we all liked - the closest we came was to heavily prune the lead into and out of the bass solo, and finish on a shortened verse with the final 'Atomic' sung a capella. But we had gigs coming up and half-a-dozen other songs to learn for them, so we just let it go. I've suggested reviving it a couple of times, but no-one seems that keen.

 

As an aside, Atomic's not the only Blondie song guilty of going on too long - when we did Heart of Glass, we decided to go with the Miley Cyrus arrangement as that felt much tighter.  It goes down well.

[ezbass]

I thought there was a video of my old mob doing Atomic. Turns out it was Hanging on the Telephone; harumph! I’ll share it anyway, not the greatest recording, but OK.