Destiny Street
July 21, 2006
"Destiny Street" by Richard Hell and the Voidoids
1982
Five years after laying the groundwork for the punk rock boom with "Blank Generation," Hell finally got his lazy ass back into the recording studio to craft a follow up. By then the style he had helped form had gone off in different directions (louder, faster, a little bit stupider) while he had stayed pretty much the same. That Hell also didn't have a lot of new material to offer and was doing a few too many drugs didn't help matters much either. Three of the album's ten tracks are covers while the opening, "The Kid With the Replaceable Head," was a 1979 b-side. Hell's frequent absences from the studio are also evident in the high level of guitar filler on some tracks (he's rather frank about this in the liner notes of the CD release). All of these elements ought to have made the album a forgettable little disaster, but instead it turned out to be nearly as good as the band's original groundbreaker. The cover of the Kinks' "You Gotta Move" is a jittery burst of energy while the covers of Them's "I Can Only Give You Everything" and Bob Dylan's "Going, Going Gone" top the originals (most covers of Dylan will top the originals, so no surprise there). The original material also shines through, particularly "Downtown at Dawn" (a lament about the emptiness of nightclub life) and the punk rant "Lowest Common Denominator," which are two of the best rock songs of the period. The band is in fine form, with guitarist Robert Quinn and Naux each giving standout performances, overall making for an energetic piece of NYC rock.
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