Blondie Chaplin

Blondie Chaplin
Event on 2012-01-14 19:30:00
This event is 21 and over
Blondie Chaplin
WITH ANTON FIG + FRIENDS!

Blondie Chaplin was born in Durban, Natal, South Africa, to a musical family. His father was a banjo player considered the best in South
Africa, but when young Blondie received a guitar as a gift from a neighbor his passion was realized. His course was set.

His buddies Clemmy and Rudy taught him a few chords and Blondie was on his way. "After that I played after school and pretty much all the
time, and then there was this moment that I realized that I had a voice!". It was that gift that carried him out of South Africa, or to put it
another way: He sang his butt out of apartheid. Ginger Baker, the legendary drummer for Cream and Blind Faith and a current resident of
South Africa agrees, "You had to be damn good to get out of South Africa on music when he did".

Blondie's first band was called The Kats, then he moved on to The Kittens, where due to the purity and range of his voice, he caught the
attention of Durbans hottest band, The Flames. The Flames were the Fataar Brothers and they all agreed that Blondie was what the band
was missing.

Blondie joined The Flames and they recorded two number one hits, but due to apartheid it was almost impossible to play for all audiences.
They gigged at the Al Fresco Club in Durban, six nights a week, six sets a night, all the while saving money to leave for England. The group
realized that they had to leave their homeland if they were going to continue to progress.

So at age sixteen Blondie and his band mates boarded a ship and sailed for London. "once in England we settled in North Harrow because it
was cheap to live there," Chaplin recalls. "We started doing little gigs. We played clubs like the Bag of Nails, Blazes and the Revolution. We
did not make much money we just plodded away."

They got a break when Carl Wilson of The Beach Boys caught one of their sets in a London club. Wilson was so impressed that he brought
the band to Los Angeles to record for the Beach Boys label Brother Records. They changed their name to The Flame and produced their self
titled debut (and the first ever quadraphonic) album.

at The Rock Shop
249 4th Ave
Brooklyn, United States