Richard Hell & The Voidoids - Blank Generation
So it's just occurred to me that I have never listened to this album in it's entirety.
I have always been a bit dubious of people claiming that the New York scene 'invented' punk and albums like this one just confirm that for me.
Aside from the two big songs on here, of which I enjoy both (Love Comes In Spurts & the title track) this is basically an album of dire pub rock with rehashed Stones riffs. Either that or the bastard offspring of the New York Dolls & Jonathan Richmond.
Now I happen to enjoy dire pub rock with rehashed Stones riffs don't get me wrong, we'll call it a guilty pleasure. But there was tons of this stuff around in the mid 70s. I don't see why Richard Hell or this album seems to have been put up on a pedestal. Why not Dr Feelgood or Joe Strummer with the 101ers?
In fact you could probably go to any club around London in 1975 and hear something like this.
Listening to this just made me want to listen to the two good songs and then hear it done properly by putting on a New York Dolls album.
I can almost imagine hearing Johnny Lydon laughing his bollocks off that anyone would even imagine he would steal from something this banal.
To sum up I don't think I've missed out a single thing not having heard this album as none of the other songs even approached how good the two songs I had heard were.
Would have made a cracking 7 inch single though.