Blondie’s Parallel Lines mixed punk, disco and radio-friendly FM rock with nostalgic influences from 1960s pop and girl group hits. This 1978 album kept one foot planted firmly in the past while remaining quite forward-looking, an impulse that can be heard in its electronic dance music hit “Heart of Glass.” Bubblegum music maven Mike Chapman produced Parallel Lines, which was the first massive hit by a group from the CBGB punk underworld. By embracing the diversity of New York City’s varied music scenes, Blondie embodied many of the tensions that played out at the time between fans of disco, punk, pop and mainstream rock. Debbie Harry’s campy glamor and sassy snarl shook up the rock’n’roll boy’s club during a growing backlash against the women’s and gay liberation movements, which helped fuel the “disco sucks” battle cry in the late 1970s. Despite disco’s roots in a queer, black and Latino underground scene that began in downtown New York, punk is usually celebrated by critics and scholars as the quintessential subculture. This book challenges the conventional wisdom that dismissed disco as fluffy prefab schlock while also recuperating punk’s unhip pop influences, revealing how these two genres were more closely connected than most people assume. Even Blondie’s album title, Parallel Lines, evokes the parallel development of punk and disco—along with their eventual crossover into the mainstream.

本書は、名盤「パラレル・ラインズ」を軸に、パンクとディスコという二つの熱狂がニューヨークの混沌でいかに交錯したかを鮮烈に描き出します。著者は当時の偏狭な時代背景を射抜き、デボラ・ハリーというアイコンがロックの男性優位主義をいかに覆したかを、批評的な鋭さで浮き彫りにします。 ポップスの甘美さとパンクの衝動が「並行線」として重なり合う瞬間を捉える筆致は、音楽を社会の鏡として読み解く知的興奮に満ちています。歴史の奔流に抗い、主流へと躍り出た異端児たちの魂の記録は、読む者の音楽観と美意識を激しく揺さぶる一冊となるでしょう。