Amazon.co.uk Review
Sinewy, trashed and poetic, Richard Hell was the apotheosis of New York punk, as the double-CD
Time shows; it's a suitably ragged catalogue of his work beyond
Television and 1977's marvellous Voidoids LP,
Blank Generation. Disc One begins in 1975, with four tracks from Hell's short stint in the Heartbreakers alongside Johnny Thunders. There's a first attempt at the seminal "Love Comes in Spurts" and a grizzled, heartfelt version of Dee Dee Ramone's junkie prayer, "Chinese Rocks". But Thunders' guitar playing sounds trad and clumsy next to the wiry garage art of Robert Quine, who drives some pretty spunky Voidoids tracks. It's these that prove the
Voidoids, of the CBGB generation, sound most like the Strokes. Four from 1984, with Meters drummer Ziggy Modeliste and a skronky sax player on board, act as a curious epilogue to this brief, incendiary career. Hell dispassionately abandoned rock & roll for writing, and left his legend to grow largely untainted by bad records. A 1977 London gig provides the bulk of Disc Two. The sound quality is shocking, but it's clear the Voidoids had, fleetingly, a wild mercurial genius most bands only dream of, even when ritually massacring "I Wanna Be Your Dog". A year later in New York, Elvis Costello turns up to bellow "You Gotta Lose". Like most things here, it's a phenomenal mess. But a mess that's lost none of its potency to inspire and provoke. --
John Mulvey