{"id":2314,"date":"2009-09-03T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-03T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-09-03T00:01:17","modified_gmt":"2009-09-03T00:01:17","slug":"repairs-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/repairs-needed\/","title":{"rendered":"Repairs Needed?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mnbEQt3sGS0?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\n<strong>Townsman Al<\/strong> saw the following review in the <em>New York Times<\/em> and thought the idea of remakes like this &#8211; and suggestions for other albums that might benefit from it &#8211; might make a thread for RTH. Check it out and see what you think!<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>RICHARD HELL &amp; THE VOIDOIDS<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Destiny Street Repaired<\/em><br \/>\n(Insound.com)<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a myth out there that some of the most gifted and cursed rock \u2019n\u2019 rollers make one great record and then explode, felled by some demon: excess or self-doubt or disgust. More commonly they make two: it usually takes that long for defeat to settle in. On the list of two-albumers are some important New Yorkers, including the New York Dolls and Richard Hell and the Voidoids.<\/p>\n<p>In 1977 Mr. Hell and the Voidoids recorded \u201cBlank Generation.\u201d It helped define punk, so we\u2019re often told, but it\u2019s much more than that: it\u2019s literary, romantic (boy-girl), Romantic (intellectual tradition) and, because of Robert Quine\u2019s guitar solos, intensely musical, an album of high-grade improvisation.<\/p>\n<p>Five years later came \u201cDestiny Street.\u201d Some of its songs had sharp lyrics, but in general the record sounded like a misplaced attempt at a straighter kind of rock \u2019n\u2019 roll. (Three were covers \u2014 of songs recorded by Van Morrison, the Kinks and Bob Dylan.) Mr. Hell was addicted to heroin, and unavailable, metaphorically and literally, for stretches of its making. In liner notes to an old CD reissue of the album, he wrote: \u201cI was a rodent at the time, dying to be human. I was so scared.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It also had a dismally unfocused production, with too many undifferentiated layers of guitar overdubs. In 2006 Mr. Hell, who quit music after \u201cDestiny Street\u201d and has since written poetry and fiction, acquired the rights to the album and took it off the market. Then he remade it, using the original rhythm-section tracks from a surviving tape made at the session. (The master tapes, with all the guitar solos, couldn\u2019t be found.)<\/p>\n<p>On \u201cDestiny Street Repaired,\u201d released through Insound.com, Mr. Hell, now 59, resings the songs in his older-man\u2019s voice. More drastically, he arranged for the guitar leads to be rerecorded, displacing the work of Quine, one of rock\u2019s greatest guitarists. Quine died in 2004, but Mr. Hell recruited some of his admirers: the excellent improvising guitarists Bill Frisell and Marc Ribot, as well as Ivan Julian, rhythm guitarist from the original lineup of the Voidoids.<\/p>\n<p>This is dicey business, although the new guitarists are respectful. They approximate the spirit, not the letter, of the original solos. If you find a copy of \u201cDestiny Street\u201d \u2014 good luck with that \u2014 and compare it to \u201cRepaired,\u201d you\u2019re likely to appreciate the new version\u2019s clarity. But your heart might sink here and there.<\/p>\n<p>In the old version of \u201cLowest Common Dominator\u201d Quine\u2019s first solo was inspired: it began with a dive-bombing slide down the high E string, settled into a dark, woozy chord, and then built a compressed narrative, racing through runs and harmonics and wild tremolo-bar jitters. That\u2019s gone, replaced by Mr. Ribot\u2019s tasteful but inevitably more slack imitation.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Hell\u2019s voice has grown thicker and slurrier, but he still pulls off his Jaggerish yelp. He doesn\u2019t attempt some of the old album\u2019s vocal grace notes, however, like the spastic scream that began \u201cIgnore That Door.\u201d And in \u201cDestiny Street\u201d \u2014 a story-song about a man who encounters a younger version of himself, takes him home and falls in love \u2014 Mr. Hell\u2019s recitation sounds halting, almost distracted. The story resonates with his current project, though. How should he act around the work of his old self? Should he imitate it or assert how much he\u2019s moved away from that person? &#8211; BEN RATLIFF<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Townsman Al saw the following review in the New York Times and thought the idea of remakes like this &#8211; and suggestions for other albums that might benefit from it &#8211; might make a thread for RTH. Check it out and see what you think!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2314"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}