New Year's Eve Rapture



Blondie - Top of the Standard
2012 New Year's Eve Party



When I was a kid, I used to spend my summer holidays in the north of Portugal. Our house was located in a small village inhabited mainly by old people. You can easily guess how dreary my summers were, until one year I found an unsuspected treasure in my parent's room: a record player and a box full of 45 tours records.

I bargained with my parents (I cried and screamed until they agreed) and took my new toy to my room.  I spent that all day dancing and singing yogurt Modern Talking. The following day, after breaking my parents' ears screaming "Oh macumba, macumba, elle danse tous les soirs"*, I came across a gem: a Blondie disk!

I simply fell in love with Heart of Glass and the charismatic slutty version of Barbie on the cover and played the same song all over again until the end of the summer. I remember looking at the cover and stealing make-up in my mother's room to try to look like Debbie Harry.

Until last week, I always dreamt of seeing the woman whose image and voice had turn that tedious summer into a rock'n roll holiday, that icon whose style remains to me so inspiring.

Well, I eventually realized my dream on the new year's eve. Blondie performed a short concert at the Top of the Standard and I was there. And I saw her. 

She sang Rapture.

And I sang in her microphone, for a second when she sang New York, New York. And I felt like the little girl that I was, a little thing full of dreams and faith in the future, in my future.

Alda Mori

*Macumba by Jean-Pierre Madère