Watch Television (with Richard Hell) on television in 1974!

Admittedly the image quality ain't great and neither is the fidelity but this footage of Television with Richard Hell is very rare.  

R.I.P. NYC filmmaker Amos Poe, 1949-2025

Sadly, innovative NYC filmmaker Amos Poe – best known for The Blank Generation – has passed away. He'll be greatly missed. 

New 'Failure Not Success' album from Wild Billy Childish due Feb 24

Billy Childish reprises some old faves by Richard Hell and Jimi Hendrix on his new Failure Not Success album on Damaged Goods.

Here's the scoop...
Failure Not Success is the new studio album by Wild Billy Childish & CTMF featuring our man at his songwriting best! The 12-track album includes covers of tunes by Richard Hell ("Love Comes In Spurts") and Jimi Hendrix ("Fire") along with a newly recorded version of the classic "Bob Dylan’s Got a Lot to Answer For." It's coming out February 24th via Damaged Goods. If your local record shop won't stock it, you can mail order a copy right here.  

Check out the full track list below followed by a two-part radio interview with Marc Riley and two songs from the new album, the title track "Failure Not Success," and a cover of "Love Comes In Spurts." 

Failure Not Success – Wild Billy Childish & CTMF

1. Love Comes in Spurts

2. Failure Not Success

3. Beneath the Flowers Serpents

4. Walk of the Sasquatch

5. Hanging by a Tenuous Thread

6. Fire

7. The Old Long Bar

8. Come into My Life

9. Skinwalker

10. Becoming Unbecoming Me

11. Moon of the Popping Trees

12. Bob Dylan’s Got a Lot to Answer For

R.I.P. Tom Verlaine of Television, 1949-2023

Sadly, Television songwriter/guitarist Tom Verlaine passed away Saturday at the age of 73. He'll be greatly missed. 

LINKS

NaimaPublication.com Richard Hell remembers Tom Verlaine

New York Times Influential guitarist/songwriter Tom Verlaine dies at 73

New Yorker He Was Tom Verlaine by Patti Smith

WFMU-FM Tom Verlaine guests on the Gaylord Fields' show 1/8/2006

Doom & Gloom From The Tomb Tom Verlaine at NYC's Avery Fisher Hall Nov 21, 1997

Happy Birthday Richard Hell

Celebrating the birthday of singer/songwriter and author Richard Hell with a vintage Voidoids performance.  

That time Van Duren went to New York City cut an album in 1977

Here's Memphis singer/songwriter Van Duren standing against the mirrored wall of NYC's Hurrah in the summer of 1977.

Recalls Van Duren...

When the first few days of July come around each year I think about where I was in 1977. Healing from a broken relationship in Memphis, I had bought a one-way ticket to NYC to make my first album, what became "Are You Serious?" Arriving in the East Village with my guitars and suitcases, a few bags of weed and $130 in mid-June, I stayed in a tiny efficiency apartment at 175 Thompson St. with the album's producers, Jon Tiven and Doug Snyder, and within 2 weeks we had made a couple of train trips up to the Connecticut studio to begin recording. The following is an excerpt from my unpublished memoir:

"In late June Big Sound Records threw a press party/showcase in the City at a “New Wave” dance club called Hurrah, which was at 36 West 62nd St on the second floor. The party drew an interesting mix of music biz types, punk rockers, and a few longhairs like me. Two of the label's great bands performed, beginning with Roger C. Reale & Rue Morgue who opened the showcase. Chuck Reale was a schoolteacher by day and an amazing vocalist, bass player, and songwriter by night. His band featured my new friends Jimmy McAllister on guitar and Hilly Michaels on drums, and that trio was just a monster! The quick succession of short, very smart songs just electrified the room, and opened my eyes in a big way.

Big Sound’s most important and popular act, the Scratch Band, took the stage as the headliner, and proceeded to play a dazzling, tight set of R & B-infused rock and soul. Lead singers Christine Ohlman and Robert Orsi were riveting with Orsi also blowing an intense blues harmonica, and bassist Paul Ossola covered so much ground with his Fender Jazz bass that it was nothing short of an education for me. The guitarist was George “G.E.” Smith. This guy was truly a revelation on electric guitar, all the while with a huge grin on his face. Behind the drum kit was a young kid who held the whole thing together, playing with an amazing style that was far beyond his years. I instantly wanted to play music with him. Little did I know that this dream would find a reality in the near (and distant) future. His name was Mickey Curry.

One person who caught my eye was a striking young blonde woman, high cheekbones, mysterious smile. She was with a group of guys, in conversation, so I stayed where I was, leaning up against a mirrored wall, nursing a drink and a smoke. The event was only about two hours long, so when the club began to open to the public we spilled out into the street. 

I had brought 8 bags (ounces) of weed with me, as I mentioned, to sell and raise a little food money. One night Jon said he knew someone who wanted a bag. Great! “My friend, Richard, is dropping by.” The doorbell rang, and I opened the door: it was Richard Hell in a great trench coat, boots, and spiked hair. He was a very cool guy—a talented bassist and writer, and his band was one of the better New York bands I’d heard. Richard, Jon, and I talked a few minutes, but he was in a rush, so we made the deal and he went on his way. “That’s one for the autobiography,” I never even thought.

After we completed the initial guide tracks for the album in the studio on 7/1, the July 4th weekend was almost upon us. Doug and Jon were staying in Connecticut, but I decided to go back to the East Village on my own. The 4th was on a Monday, and we had scheduled Hilly's drum sessions to begin on Wednesday July 6th. The guys dropped me at the Conrail station in Milford, CT, on Friday the 2nd, and I caught the train to Grand Central in Manhattan. From there I took the subway downtown and walked to Thompson Street, stopping on Bleecker to pick up a hippie roll and a beer. I slept on one of the apartment’s beds that night. The cockroaches in that place were so big, you could hear them in the paper grocery bags of trash in the kitchenette. Truth! But I was in New York City...

When I walked past the Village Gate on my way to Thompson Street, I saw a poster out front promoting a band called Blondie starting a three-night run that very night. But what really caught my attention was the opening act on the third night: Alex Chilton. So on Sunday night July 3rd, I went to the Village Gate and saw Alex open the show with his trio, which included a guy named Chris Stamey on bass. They were beyond loose, and Alex was more disjointed than I’d seen him—which fit in perfectly in 1977 New York. After their set, I walked over and said hello to Alex, briefly, and introduced myself to Mr. Stamey, who was far more friendly. Eventually, Blondie took the stage, and I was pleasantly surprised at how good they were. But, wait a minute. The blonde girl singing was the blonde from the Hurrah party! Only then did I realize that she was Deborah Harry. Holy crap! I was really glad I had gone to that show. That's when I became a Blondie fan.

The next day, the Fourth of July, started out eerily quiet. Only then did I find out that many New Yorkers left the city for the holiday weekend, so the sounds of the neighborhood were somewhat subdued. In the late afternoon I decided to take a walk down into Soho, which was just a few blocks south of where I was. It was an Italian neighborhood in those days, closer to working class, and the people there had strung banners and lights and ribbons across the streets from building to building to celebrate Independence Day. Children were playing here and there as their parents talked and sang and laughed and drank. Older folks in folding chairs spoke in what I imagined were Italian dialects, and the whole scene was like something out of a 1930's film. It was beautiful. 

After a couple of hours I wandered back toward the Village as the sun began to set behind the World Trade Center and fireworks popped everywhere. I went in the apartment building’s front door, past our place on the first floor and took the stairs up 4 floors to the tar paper-floored rooftop. I sat there alone on the ledge, smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer, watching the fireworks all around the skyline. It suddenly struck me how romantic the moment was. And yet, those feelings were hopeless. In those moments, I felt like they would always be. While I was still trying to believe where I actually was, it didn’t really matter. Wherever I would ever be, I would be a romantic in exile." 

From "Cartwheeling: A Musician's Life" (copyright 2022 Van Duren) (And no, I don't know if it will ever be published). Get a copy of Van Duren's debut album "Are You Serious?" – reissued without much fanfare by Omnivore – right here. Check out "Yellow Light" below. Be sure to check out Wade Jackson and Greg Carey's fab 2018 documentary Waiting: The Van Duren Story (here's the link) and the excellent accompanying soundtrack. 

Stand-alone Richard Hell & Voidoids' Destiny Street Demos album due for RSD

The album of Richard Hell's demos – originally issued as part of the Destiny Street Complete – gets it's own release June 12.

Here's the scoop from Omnivore:

Richard Hell & the Voidoids: Destiny Street Demos

The 40th anniversary 2-CD deluxe edition of Destiny Street (titled Destiny Street Complete) was released earlier this year and contained three versions of the album, Richard Hell’s detailed liner notes, plus a fourth LP’s worth of demos and prior studio versions of the album’s material called Destiny Street Demos. Destiny Street Demos essentially compiles all of Richard’s songwriting output recorded between the release of Blank Generation in 1977 and the recording of Destiny Street in 1981. It includes demos, the original Radar Records single (produced by Nick Lowe), Hell’s 1980 single on Shake Records, and a performance of “Time” recorded at the Robert Quine memorial. For Record Store Day 2021, Omnivore is proud to offer Destiny Street Demos as a stand-alone clear vinyl LP on June 12th. 

Destiny Street was the follow-up album to one of the greatest punk albums of all time, 1977’s Blank Generation, which was originally recorded in 1981 and released in 1982, but not to Hell’s satisfaction. As he says in his new liner notes to the recently released vinyl Destiny Street Remixed, “The final mix was a morass of trebly multi-guitar sludge.” Now, for the 40th anniversary of its creation, the album is at last presented the way Richard Hell originally intended: “The sound of a little combo playing real gone rock and roll.” 

Richard Hell co-founded his first band, the Neon Boys, with Tom Verlaine in 1973. That band became Television. When Hell left Television in 1975, he formed, with Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, both formerly of the New York Dolls and the Heartbreakers. After another year, Richard departed the Heartbreakers and created Richard Hell and the Voidoids, which, along with other CBGB bands of the era, such as the Ramones and Patti Smith, formed the template for punk, the effects of which are still being felt.  Apart from Hell on vocals and bass, the original Voidoids comprised Robert Quine (guitar), Ivan Julian (guitar), and Marc Bell (eventually “Marky Ramone”). The Destiny Street-era band retained Quine, but otherwise the backing lineup became Naux (Juan Maciel) on guitar and Fred Maher on drums. 

Richard had wished forever that he could remix the original Destiny Street but was told by the record company that the original 24-track masters had been lost. In the early 2000s, Hell discovered a cassette from 1981 that contained just the album’s rhythm tracks (drums, bass and two rhythm guitars) and he realized he could add new guitar solos and vocals to that to obtain a cleaner, improved version of the songs. He enlisted Marc Ribot and Bill Frisell to overdub the solos (Quine had died in 2004 and Naux in 2009) and he re-sang everything. This was released as Destiny Street Repaired in 2009. Hell was pleased. Then, in 2019, three of the four original 24-track masters were discovered. Now, at long last, Destiny Street could be fully remixed, and Hell signed on Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) to help him with that. The result became the uncanny centrepiece of the 2-CD Destiny Street Complete extravaganza released in January of 2021 which you can still get right here; the stand-alone vinyl LP Destiny Street Remixed is also available.  

Check out Richard Hell's demos for "Ignore That Door," "The Kid with the Replaceable Head" and "I'm Your Man" followed by the album's track listing below. 

Richard Hell & The Voidoids - Destiny Street Demos

SIDE 1:

THE KID WITH THE REPLACEABLE HEAD

I’M YOUR MAN

CRACK OF DAWN

GOING GOING GONE

FUNHUNT

I LIVED MY LIFE

SIDE 2:

IGNORE THAT DOOR

SMITTEN

STARRING IN HER EYES

TIME

DON’T DIE

TIME (Live) [Bonus Track]

Omnivore issues ultimate version of Richard Hell's Destiny Street

At last, all the different versions of Richard Hell & The Voidoids' 1982 album Destiny Street are available in a sweet 2-CD package. 

Here's the scoop from Omnivore...

Richard Hell & The Voidoids' Destiny Street was the follow-up album to one of the greatest punk albums of all time, 1977’s Blank Generation. The album was originally recorded in 1981 and released in 1982, but not to Richard Hell’s satisfaction. As he says in his new liner notes to Destiny Street Remixed, “The final mix was a morass of trebly multi-guitar blare.”

Now, for the 40th anniversary of its creation, the album is at last presented improved the way Richard Hell has long hoped and intended: “The sound of a little combo playing real gone rock and roll.”

Richard Hell co-founded his first band, the Neon Boys, with Tom Verlaine in 1973. That band became Television. When Hell left Television in 1975, he formed, with Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, both formerly of the New York Dolls, The Heartbreakers. After another year, Richard departed The Heartbreakers and created Richard Hell And The Voidoids, which, along with other CBGB bands of the era, such as the Ramones and Patti Smith, formed the template for punk, the effects of which are still being felt.

Apart from Hell on vocals and bass, the original Voidoids comprised Robert Quine (guitar), Ivan Julian (guitar), and Marc Bell (drums). The Destiny Street-era band retained Quine, but otherwise the backing lineup became Naux (Juan Maciel) on guitar and Fred Maher on drums.

Richard had wished forever that he could remix the original Destiny Street, but was told by the record company that the original 24-track masters had been lost. In the early 2000s, Hell discovered a cassette from 1981 that contained just the album’s rhythm tracks (drums, bass and two rhythm guitars) and he realized he could add new guitar solos and vocals to that to obtain a cleaner, improved version of the songs. He enlisted Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell, and Ivan Julian to overdub the solos (Quine had died in 2004 and Naux in 2009) and he re-sang everything. This was released as Destiny Street Repaired in 2009. Hell was pleased.

Then, in 2019, three of the four original 24-track masters were discovered. Now, at long last, Destiny Street could be fully remixed, and Hell signed on Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) to help him with that. The result became the uncanny centerpiece of the 2-CD Destiny Street Complete extravaganza to be released in January of 2021. Destiny Street Remixed will also be available as a stand-alone vinyl LP.

Besides containing the three faithful versions of the album, the 40th anniversary 2-CD deluxe edition of Destiny Street includes not only Hell’s detailed liner notes, but a fourth LP’s worth of demos and prior studio versions of the album’s material—essentially all of Richard’s songwriting output recorded between the release of Blank Generation in 1977 and the recording of Destiny Street in 1981—including some of the best playing and singing in the four-part Complete—called Destiny Street Demos.

And for Record Store Day 2021, Omnivore Recordings will proudly offer this special material on its own stand-alone vinyl LP.

Significantly, all the material in this entire collection has been freshly remastered (or in the case of the Remixed, mastered) for these releases by Michael Graves at Osiris Studios.

According to Hell: “I’ve been working on this release for 40 years. Long road! Three different versions of the same ten songs, from the same basic tracks by the same four musicians. I couldn’t help myself, and I’m glad, god damn it. But really, each of the four parts (including the collection of demos) has its points of interest and then the whole is greater than the parts, for my money. It was a good trip, with lots of roadside attractions, but I’m happy to have reached the destination.”

Get a 2CD copy of Destiny Street Complete directly from Omnivore right here. Check the trailer and a couple of song clips below. 

 

 

DESTINY STREET COMPLETE track list

DISC 1 (DESTINY STREET – 2021 REMASTER):

THE KID WITH THE REPLACEABLE HEAD

I GOTTA MOVE

GOING GOING GONE

LOWEST COMMON DOMINATOR

DOWNTOWN AT DAWN

TIME

I CAN ONLY GIVE YOU EVERYTHING

IGNORE THAT DOOR

STARING IN HER EYES

DESTINY STREET

(DESTINY STREET REPAIRED – 2021 REMASTER):

THE KID WITH THE REPLACEABLE HEAD

I GOTTA MOVE

GOING GOING GONE

LOWEST COMMON DOMINATOR

DOWNTOWN AT DAWN

TIME

I CAN ONLY GIVE YOU EVERYTHING

IGNORE THAT DOOR

STARING IN HER EYES

DESTINY STREET

DISC 2 (DESTINY STREET REMIXED):

THE KID WITH THE REPLACEABLE HEAD

I GOTTA MOVE

GOING GOING GONE

LOWEST COMMON DOMINATOR

DOWNTOWN AT DAWN

TIME

I CAN ONLY GIVE YOU EVERYTHING

IGNORE THAT DOOR

STARING IN HER EYES

DESTINY STREET

DON’T DIE [Bonus Track]

(DESTINY STREET DEMOS – 2021 REMASTER):

THE KID WITH THE REPLACEABLE HEAD (Single Version)

I’M YOUR MAN (Single Version)

CRACK OF DAWN (Demo Version)

GOING GOING GONE (Demo Version)

FUNHUNT (Demo Version)

I LIVED MY LIFE (Demo Version)

IGNORE THAT DOOR (Demo Version)

SMITTEN (Demo Version)

STARING IN HER EYES (Demo Version)

TIME (Single Version)

DON’T DIE (Single Version)

TIME (Live) [Bonus Track]

 

Happy Birthday Richard Hell

Celebrating Richard Hell's birthday with a rippin' 1979 version of "Funhunt" featuring Robert Quine. 

The Bobby Lees vs. The Raconteurs vs. Richard Hell

The Bobby Lees and The Raconteurs both took a crack at Richard Hell's "Blank Generation" but it's tough to top the Voidoids.

Happy 70th Birthday Richard Hell!

Happy Birthday Tom Verlaine

Celebrating Tom Verlaine's birthday with a demo of Television's "Double Exposure" from 1974. 

Ork Records: New York, New York box set due from Numero Group on Orktober 30

As a follow-up to the Ork singles box, Numero's New York, New York set boasts a 190-page hardback book.

In August of 1975, the world’s first punk record label was born. Ork Records: New York, New York is a tale of Terry Ork, a film-obsessed fugitive of Warhol’s Factory set. Ork would pull damaged, literate new rock music from the pregnant Bowery grime of CBGB, resulting in debut 45s by Television and Richard Hell, as well as landmark recordings by The Feelies and Lester Bangs.

It’s a tale of Charles Ball, who’d steer Ork Records through solo exploits by Big Star’s Alex Chilton and the dBs’ Chris Stamey. And it’s a tale told across 2 CD or 4 LPs s in scorching sides by Richard Lloyd, Marbles, Prix, Mick Farren, Cheetah Chrome, the Idols, the Erasers, the Revelons, Student Teachers, and Kenneth Higney's brilliantly off-kilter disco cash-in attempt "Funky Kinky" (listen below) which really deserves to be reissued as a 12" with remixes by say DFA and/or François K. Numero Group's deluxe 190-page hardback book features evocative, unseen imagery, a portal opened by on-the-scene photojournalists as crucial to documenting punk’s conception in the squalid Lower East Side as the walls of CBGB itself.

Ork Records: New York, New York is a visionary glimpse of punk and new wave as invented, nurtured, feted, and forgotten by the street-level artisans who attended the genres’ arrival. Have a look at the Ork Records box unbundled below. You can order a copy directly from the Numero Group right here.


A limited-edition version of New York, New York includes a bonus Feelies 45 featuring two previously unreleased tracks. "The Boy With The Perpetual Nervousness" is an unreleased studio cut from 1978, while the flip is a cover of the Bacharach and David classic "My Little Red Book,” recorded live at CBGB December 14, 1976.



Ork Records: New York, New York tracklist
01 TELEVISION Little Johnny Jewel
02 FEELIES Fa Ce La
03 RICHARD HELL (I Belong To The) Blank Generation
04 THE REVELONS The Way (You Tough My Hand)
05 ERASERS I Won't Give Up
06 ALEX CHILTON All Of The Time
07 CHRIS STAMEY & THE DBS (I Thought) You Wanted To Know
08 PRIX Zero
09 MARBLES Red Lights
10 ALEX CHILTON Take Me Home & Make Me Like It
11 PRIX Girl
12 THE IDOLS Girl That I Love
13 MICK FARREN & THE NEW WAVE Lost Johnny
14 CHEETAH CHROME Still Wanna Die
15 THE IDOLS You
16 THE STUDENT TEACHERS Christmas Weather
17 ERASERS It Was So Funny (The Song That They Sung)
18 RICHARD HELL (I Could Live With You) (In) Another World
19 CHRIS STAMEY The Summer Sun
20 ALEX CHILTON Free Again
21 RICHARD LLOYD (I Thought) You Wanted To Know
22 THE STUDENT TEACHERS Channel 13
23 CHRIS STAMEY Where The Fun Is
24 PRIX Everytime I Close My Eyes
25 FEELIES Forces At Work
26 MARBLES Fire And Smoke
27 THE REVELONS 97 Tears
28 CHEETAH CHROME Take Me Home
29 RICHARD HELL You Gotta Lose
30 CHRIS STAMEY & THE DBS If And When
31 MICK FARREN & THE NEW WAVE Play With Fire
32 RICHARD LLOYD Get Off My Cloud
33 ALEX CHILTON The Singer Not The Song
34 RICHARD LLOYD Connection
35 ALEX CHILTON Summertime Blues
36 MICK FARREN & THE NEW WAVE To Know Him Is To Love Him
37 LINK CROMWELL Crazy Like A Fox
38 LINK CROMWELL Shock Me
39 KENNETH HIGNEY I Wanna Be The King
40 LESTER BANGS Let It Blurt
41 ALEX CHILTON Bangkok
42 PETER HOLSAPPLE Big Black Truck
43 PRIX She Might Look My Way
44 ALEX CHILTON Can't Seem To Make You Mine
45 PRIX Love You All Day Long
46 ALEX CHILTON Shakin' The World
47 PRIX Love You Tonight
48 LESTER BANGS Live
49 KENNETH HIGNEY Funky Kinky