Mix the Velvet Underground with rap and you get something a little like Richard Hell & The Voidoids, Founder of two of New York's seminal punk bands (Television and The Heartbreakers)
From the opening choppy guitar intro that leads into an awkward tempo change there is something special about this song.
The guitar solos are discordant, off-key and utterly perfect. Just the thing to save a seventeen year old me from the terminal dullness of prog rock. Hell, i'd even bought Tales From Topographic Oceans!
Better known among my school friends for his seminal "Love Comes in Spurts" this is Hell's classic track. Born Richard Meyers, Hell was, according to some sources the original punk, with spiked hair and safety pins holding torn jeans together. Malcolm McLaran has said that his look was the basis for the clothing he sold in his shop Sex.
Meyers was a childhood friend of guitarist Tom Miller (Tom Verlaine), having run away from school together in 11th grade. They were arrested and charged with arson and vandalism shortly afterwards. Moving to New York in 1973 they formed The Neon Boys who recorded Love Comes in Spurts as a demo in 1973. A year later they added an additional guitar player and became Television.
Blank Generation was one of the highlights of their live shows at CBGBs, the home of New York Punk. In 1975 Hell left Television after falling out with Verlaine over control of material. At the same time Johnny Thunders and Gerry Nolan left the New York Dolls, together they formed the Heartbreakers, who would go on to make one of the best of the early Punk albums LAMF - but without Hell.
He left again to form the Voidoids and to record Blank Generation for Stiff Records. The Voidoids recorded one half decent album and a dreadful one, which Hell has rerecorded and was due to release last year.
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