Blondie

As documented by Legs McNeil in Please Kill Me, the definitive chronicle of the early punk era, Deborah Harry and Joey Ramone were good people—two of the few CBGB’s scenesters at the time who refrained from pretending not to care about success, while stabbing each other in the back to achieve it. Even at the top, Harry threw it all away to nurse her bandmate/lover Chris Stein, who was suffering from the rare and horrible genetic illness pemphigus. While Stein recovered, the mostly retired Harry ballooned up to Kate Smith size, the object of tabloid ridicule. She gets the last laugh, though, in last month’s comeback record The Curse of Blondie, in which she looks and sounds as crackling as ever, with her band following suit. (612) 332-1775; www.first-avenue.com