To fully appreciate Blondie you have to look beyond the band's punk roots. Sure it was there for the punk scene's big bang in the Big Apple, but Blondie was never a punk band. Blondie was, and is, full-blown transistor radio snap, crackle, and pop. And hard as it may be to do, you have to look beyond Debbie Harry and take in the whole group.

While punk was busy re-defining rock music in all its overwrought, over-thought largess in 1973, Blondie was born. The band played bubblegum pop with a trashy aesthetic thanks to Harry's sexy, snotty bottle-blonde personae. Numerous hits like "Heart Of Glass," "Call Me," The Tide Is High," and "Rapture" made the charts until the band's break-up in 1982. Fortunately the band got back together in 1998, and was inducted into The Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame in 2006.

So in keeping with my own advice, I talked with Blondie drummer Clem Burke. We didn't talk about punk, and we only talked about Debbie a little (I couldn't help it). Here's an edited transcript of what we said.

CITY: Does it feel like it's been 30 years?

Clem Burke: Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. It's just so funny that a lot of the things that were going on back then still seem relevant now. Like wherever you go, you'll see a CBGBs T-shirt, or The Ramones, who were kind of like The Beatles of our generation. It's almost like a movie. Some of these things never go away, so it seems in the present as well as in the past. It's kind of strange.

Blondie is extremely influential. What influenced Blondie?

I think people of our generation grew up on Top 40 radio. In the 60's and early 70's everyone says the same thing, how it was such a cross section of music, everything from Marvin Gaye to Buck Owens to the Rolling Stones all on the same radio station. And of course, there were less choices then, and it just seemed the hits were good. Rock 'n' roll was still forming and reaching back to the essence of it, which was the music of the 50's.

Describe the musical climate in New York City when Blondie as born.

Hilly Crystal the owner of CBGBs... he was a very special person. He kind of let the club be a workshop for itinerate musicians. It wasn't really about who you could draw, or playing the hits of the day. It was about expressing yourself. I always make the analogy to an actors' workshop or comedians' workshop where people get the chance to suck in front of audiences. He gave us that opportunity. It was definitely a spawning ground for creativity. I attribute a lot to him. But you know the climate in New York City at the time; the city was broke, it was very inexpensive to live there, my apartment was very cheap, the downtown part of New York, the Bowery, was much less inhabited. It wasn't corporate, it was a much smaller place. The world was a much smaller place.

But that world had big impresarios like Crystal and Andy Warhol.

Andy Warhol was pretty profound about "15 minutes of fame," because now with the internet and reality TV, it's become absolutely true. If you were at an event or a party or a gig and Andy was there, you could feel as if something was happening. I'm sure there are people like that around today. CBGBs was a very small scene, it was incestuous, everybody fed off of one another. It was a real creative atmosphere. It had nothing to do with the real world.

What set Blondie apart?

Debbie, obviously. Our ambitions were to be on the radio and be commercial on our own terms. We always appreciated bubblegum music, r&b. A lot of the music at CBGBs at the time was not particularly influenced by r&b, and with Chris [Stein] and Debbie in the band - Chris was a big r&b fan - we had some roots in that type of music. I think we were - for lack of a better word - a little more pop than a lot of the bands. And with Debbie we had a fantastic front person. It never surprised me, Debbie being the focal point of the group. A lot of that gets overblown, her presence in the band being a point of negativity for the rest of the band.

Blondie was group.

We were definitely group...still are. Everyone contributed.

What's different for Blondie today, and what has stayed the same?

What had stayed the same is we're still trying to challenge ourselves in a lot of ways. The songwriters in the band are always trying to not do the norm, never go the easy route. What's changed is we realize we've been accepted. We were inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, we've been recognized for a contribution to popular music, and we're proud of that. But at the same time we still feel like sometimes we have something to prove.

Do fans expect only classic Blondie, or are you pulling out new stuff as well?

On this tour now, we're working on a new record and we might debut one or two things, and maybe some deeper Blondie songs - we have a pretty vast catalogue - and still do the hits and find a happy medium. And we cover other CBGB bands like The Ramones or Television.

You were actually in the Ramones, right?

Yeah, for a short time. I was asked to join three times. The problem was we never rehearsed. It was kind of trial by fire.

When can we hear the new Blondie record?

March 2010. The process is going a little slower than I'd like. But you know, we're doing it for ourselves. We want to continue making new music. When we first got back together in the late 90's the first thing we decided was that we wanted to make a new record. And we still want to make new music.

Blondie w/Pat Benatar and The Donnas

Tuesday, August 11

CMAC, 4355 Lakeshore Dr, Canandaigua

7 p.m. | $25-$65 | 232-1900