Matador Records | Richard Hell

02/12/02 — Fresh from reading his new book Hot and Cold at the prestigious National Arts Club in NYC, the hard-working Hell is finishing the luxe artwork and liner notes to the upcoming ‘Time’ just down the hall, as we speak. Almost simultaneously he is the cover boy for the new (Feb. 2002) issue of The Wire magazine. The 2 CD/32 song ‘Time’ will be released in the US of A on March 19.

For more info on Richard’s publicity juggernaut and news on upcoming readings, etc, including his upcoming March 2002 book tour of the UK and France, be sure to check out his personal website.

11/01/01 — New Release of Old and Unheard Material
In early 2002, Matador will be release an as-yet untitled double CD of recordings by Richard Hell & The Voidoids. Hell, a founding member of the Neon Boys and the Heartbreakers, before forming the Voidoids in 1976, is a crucial voice in American music and literature. Credited by many as one of the originators of the punk movement, songs such as “Blank Generation,” “Love Comes In Spurts,” “The Kid With The Replaceable Head,” and “Time” are amongst the finest of that or any other era. The first Voidoids album, ‘Blank Generation’ (Sire, 1977) has been cited more times than we can count as one of the most influential of its time. The following commentary on Blank Generation is from Lester Bangs:

“Richard Hell identifies with no movement, with few people in fact. If you listen between the sonic blasts, his music is about a sense of aloneness beyond the old alienated antihero syndrome, but before that Richard Hell is a rocker. The music on this album is some of the strongest, truest rock & roll I have heard in ages. Like most great rock & roll, it stands alone; there are influences, not all of them musical and many of them literary, but he is no arty poseur, in fact this is also some of the most honest music I have heard in some time. As we trail out of the age of artifice (I don’t think I have to mention any names), artifice itself rides on the coattails of most of those who proclaim themselves an alternative. Richard Hell is different. I hear echoes in this record of rock & roll from time immemorial, and they are not contrived, they are rather the modus of a plain-speaking kid with an awesome intelligence and a great pain to speak plainly of... The toughness of the music is just defensive armor, courtesy the searchlight-destructive tag-team of Robert Quine and Ivan Julian on guitars. In this album they have slashed out some of the most fitfully dangerous rock & roll I’ve heard this decade. If you think I say that lightly you don’t know me. But at the center is Hell himself, his own ninth circle, pretending to be blank when his every move and word reveals a naked, impassioned intelligence in the throes of the only truly rock & roll artistic convulsion, which is to be driven so far into and paradoxically, simultaneously outside of yourself that you create as a matter of frenzy, instead of lowering your eyelids before the world in shame and loneliness.”

The forthcoming double CD will consist of the following:

Disc One
(the bulk of this CD was previously
available on the ROIR cassette ‘RIP’)

Heartbreakers — 1975 (Hell, Thunders, Nolan, Lure)

1. Love Comes In Spurts
2. Chinese Rocks (Previously Unreleased)
3. Can’t Keep My Eyes On You
4. Hurt Me

Voidoids 1977 (Hell, Robert Quine, Ivan Julian, Marc Bell)

5. I’m Your Man
6. Betrayal Takes Two

Voidoids 1979 (Hell, Quine, Julian, Xavier, Morrison)

7. Crack Of Dawn
8. Ignore That Door
9. I Live My Life
10. Time (Previously Unreleased)
11. Going Going Gone
12. Funhunt (Previously Unreleased)

Voidoids 1983 (Hell, Paumgardhen, Freeman, Wood, live in Atlanta)

13. I Can Only Give You Everything

Hell In New Orleans, 1984 (Hell, Sanzenbach, LeBon, McCollam, Quine, Modeliste)

14. I Been Sleepin’ On It
15. Cruel Way To go Drown
16. The Hunter Was Drowned
17. Hey Sweetheart

Disc Two
(previously unreleased live recordings)

Richard Hell And The Voidoids
Live at Music Machine, London 1977

1. Intro
2. Love Comes In Spurts
3. Liars Beware
4. You Gotta Lose
5. Lose Yourself
6. New Pleasure
7. Walking On the Water
8. The Plan
9 . Blank Generation
10. I Wanna Be Your Dog
11. Vacancy
12. Venilator Blues

Richard Hell & The Voidoids --
Live At CBGB, New York, NY 1978
St. Mark’s Church Poetry Project Benefit, FM Broadcast

13. Kid With The Replaceable Head
14. Don’t Die
15. You Gotta Lose (with Elvis Costello)
16. Shattered

There might still be a change or 2 to disc one, but we’ll let you know. Disc two — whatever it might lack in terms of “production value,” it more than makes up for in the performances. This is no mere historical artifact. Nothing against historical artefacts, but this sounds pretty devastating in on the brink of 2002.

‘Hot & Cold’, a huge collection of Richard Hell’s non-fiction essays, poetry, song lyrics, notebooks and drawings, has just been published by powerHouse books. You can order it from Amazon or you can think about it for a minute or 2 and order a signed copy instead from Richard’s website.