Music : Blank Generation

Rating: - Still thrilling
A must have. Hell had already performed versions of some of the key tracks - including Love Comes in Spurts and Blank Generation - during his spells with Television and the Heartbreakers. But the versions on this legendary album finally allowed the songs to stand out as some of the great recordings of the punk period. Hell's lyrics - among the sharpest of the era - find their ideal foil with Ivan Julian and Robert Quine's uncanny guitar interplay. While Hell's wordplay and decent bass playing fitted made him an ideal frontman, Quine is in many ways the star of the show. His remarkable solos heralded the arrival of a major talent, whose work - despite spells with Lou Reed, Lloyd Cole and Matthew Sweet - never really got the recognition that one of the all time great guitarists deserved.

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Rating: - New York Art Punk
This album appeared the same year as the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind The Bollocks and is in the same league. But the sound here is more varied and the lyrics more poetic, like on the harrowing slow song Betrayal Takes Two with its intricate guitar work. My favorites include the subversive tour de force Love Comes In Spurts, the anthemic title track and the melodic song The Plan, while others are interesting. Different avenues of rock are explored - it’s more than just angry 3-minute anthems. Unfortunately the album isn’t consistently good, it has its weaker moments. Five stars for historical importance, three stars for the music.

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Rating: - The Hives with rips in his clothes and too much hair soap.
My sister used to work for a record PR company in the late 70's and came home with an armfull of Richard Hell. This record stuck itself to my turntable.

Love Comes in Spurts and Blank Generation, especially stuck in the groove as my stylus wore it down. Lovely tunes, fantastic energy, not discordent at all.

Keep hearing The Hives on TV trailers of late. Nice tunes and energy, reminds me of this great underheard album. Some great tracks. Love comes in Spurts.. Oh no it hurts.

Lick it and See.

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Rating: - Spiky, Abrasive - The Persona Of Punk
Richard Hell, the influential punk/poet self styled Rimbaud figure of New York punk. It follows that his music with the Voidoids should also be suitably nihilistic. It is. Love Comes In Spurts is Hell's love song, with an unmissable double entendre. His voice is shaky, unsure, like an American Vic Goddard. His lyrics however, are sharp, clever and reveal his intensly intelligent mind which is hidden behind the dumb punk exterior. The sublime Blank Generation, one of the classic punk singles of all time, influenced the Sex Pistols Pretty Vacant. The connection is obvious. But the differences are vast. The Pistols... lyrics offer no passion, no ideals and no sense of a future other than a superficial one. Hell offers us the blank to fill in as we choose. Instead of I Belong To The Blank Generation, Hell intended there to be a space where 'Blank' should be. You work out the rest. Hell remains a romantic, albeit a doomed one, throughout and his follow up album Destiny Street is just as good if not better. Guitar supplied by 'virtuoso' and one time Lou Reed guitarist Bob Quinn. An excellent album, punk noise but ethics from somewhere else altogether.