Rapture, Be Pure

Blondie is back, Bond is back, and life is sweet for the still-living. There's a new mix that blends Blondie's 1981 "Rapture" with the Doors' 1971 mantra, "Riders on the Storm." Even in death, Jim Morrison keeps on swinging. A surrealistic duet with Debbie Harry, how cool! Can't wait to get a copy (title: Rapture Riders), available as an import from EMI.

I've always adored the extended play record version of "Rapture," which I still own. Of course, the album Autoamerican is available in CD and downloadable form, and includes the dance version.

This is a cool track, not only because of Debbie Harry's siren singing and the band's excellent backing, complete with bells, but also because it was one of the very first attempts at rap by a white singer. The B movie allusions are pure Blondie, but the rap is Debbie Harry giving tribute to the then-fledgling rap style. If memory serves, it was released less than a year before Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five came out with their awesome "The Message," the one that goes "Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge / I'm trying hard not to lose my head. . ." Rap was slow and deliberate, not fast and mean. GMF&TFF were cool in concert, opening for the likes of the Clash and U2. Blondie's "Rapture" starts out hypnotizing the dance floor, and Debbie knows its effect in advance as she sings, "Wall to wall / People hypnotized / And they're stepping lightly / Hang each night in Rapture." An alien creature proceeds to eat a listener's head, and the gas-sipping Subaru gets a mention, along with punk rock, TV and electric guitars. Trippy camp!

Darker but equally trippy with a hint of camp, Michael Tolkin's The Rapture (1991) also pushes the envelope for its time and place. He explores nothing less than religious faith, existential choice, and modern society, bereft of soul, amping the tale with an actual end-of-the-world Rapture. I'm glad to see that it's now out on DVD. The star is Mimi Rogers and it is most certainly not for the faint of heart. There are swinging sex scenes and some wrenching choices made by Sharon, the primary character played perfectly by Rogers, who knew her stuff -- after all, she survived a marriage with Tom Cruise. In The Rapture, she is married for a time to Randy, nicely acted by David Duchovny. At one point, Randy says: "God is like a drug. But instead of too much heroin, you're taking too much God." Not typical movie fare for the USA at the time, but luckily HBO has long since brought us up to speed. Tolkin, who wrote the screen play for Robert Altman's The Player (1992), also created another brilliant, mordant take on the bleakness of modern life with The New Age (1994), starring the ever-great Judy Davis and Peter Weller. Patrick Bauchau has an eerie role in both Tolkin-directed films.

"Rapture, be pure," Debbie Harry says, and that's good advice for drug users, too. Detroit has just been hit by another significant death wave -- at least twelve people have reportedly died around the Metro area in the last two days from a superbad mix of the painkiller fentanyl plus heroin or cocaine. One can only hope they died in rapture. Meanwhile, the Pistons won and we await results of the latest search for Jimmy Hoffa's remains.

"Is this the rapture?
Why don't you tell me
Is this the rapture?" -- Prince

Adieu! 007 to the Rescue . . . . .