rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

Who Says It's Good To Be Alive?: The Case For Richard Hell

     Return with us now to those days of yesteryear, the late '70's, to be nearly precise. The nascent punk rock scene had moved from it's murky and humble origins of the Mercer Arts Center, where bands like the NY Dolls and Suicide (more on whom later) literally brought down the house, to the now endangered tourist trap/shrine CBGB, where artists like Television, Patti Smith and Ramones ushered in what is to my mind the last great era of rock and roll. They did this mainly by stripping away the Emerson, Lake and artifice that rock had become in those dry, dreary days and creating art that rocked and rock that was, in it's way, the greatest art of all: the expression of self.

     As a working stiff in his early 20's, working on a loading dock in Mahwah, NJ at the time, I was hardly surrounded by folks who shared my love for this new, raw music. These were the days of Styx and Journey and all that that implies; processed cheesefood masquerading as, if not art, then at least the folk music of it's time. The days of Billy Joel in his brand new leather jacket boasting of walking through Bedford-Stuy alone and actually driving his motorcycle in the rain. This was the twaddle that my friends accepted as real rebellion at the time. And, honestly, the less said about heavy metal in general and Black Sabbath in particular, the better. I remember hearing a dj I almost respected making fun of Richard Hell and the Voidoids on air one afternoon after tearing the needle off the title cut of their debut record 'Blank Generation' before the song had finished.

     It was at that moment that I knew the revolution would not be aired on the radio (I wish there was a more concise radio version of the word 'televised', but, apart from 'broadcast, there isn't. So what?) and that the CBGB bands  would be prophets without honor in their own country, so to speak. Let's face it, if NY radio wasn't going to respect these bands, then Radio Idaho wasn't about to see the light, now were they? It has always been thus with mass media: when confronted with anything that varied in the slightest from the feel good nothingness of musical prozac, they at best ignore, at worst ridicule. All these bands that contemporary critics swoon over in print, all the praise now heaped upon the Sex Pistols by folks who plainly weren't there is revisionist history. When the lightning struck, most of us were hiding under trees shaped like the latest Led Zeppelin record. In the words of David Byrne: 'Same as it ever was.'

     But I'm not here to bitch yet again about missed boats and the general tastelessness of the American public, or at least I'm done doing so for the moment, I'm here to talk about Richard Hell. I've given Richard Hell a lot of grief in print, and I guess I'm going to continue to do so here, but it's struck me that, much like my continual war against god on the few Christian messageboards I have not yet been asked to leave, I spend an awful lot of time considering and writing about something I clearly don't get. As a favor to the late and sainted Lester, and possibly to myself, I pull out my worn and original vinyl copy of Hell's 'Blank Generation' at least thrice yearly and try to listen hard enough to hear what Lester heard. Lester has gone down on record as calling this work a classic and, I'm sorry Lester, I still don't get it.

     Much of my problem with this record, and Richard Hell in general is close to what made all those Billy Joelsters and Journey-men/women of the 70's dismiss punk to begin with; the celebration of the negative that Hell was like the poster boy for. I've got nothing against the negative, per se, which anyone who's read this page for any length of time can attest to. It's the cheap, whiny and ultimately false nihilism that Hell and lesser imitators presented as real angst. And yes, there was something about the Voidoids that setthem apart from, say, the Dead Boys or the Viletones (both quasi-suicidal 3rd rate garage bands, or at best guity pleasures of the day) and his name was Robert Quine who died by his own hand last year. On the cover of the record stands Hell, nee Richie Meyers, looking for all the world like Bob Dylan's afterbirth, weak and petulant, his shirt torn open to reveal the words 'please kill me' scrawled across what could be the chest of an anemic chicken.

     Hell's hook, so to speak, and really all the mainstream press saw in his work, and much of punk in general, was a theatrical indifference to life and a profession in a belief in nothing save the futility of human existence. Punk, to the mainstream, was all torn clothes, razor blades and a mindless, kneejerk hatred of the sanctity of, well, anything, but most vivdly, life itself. Hell gave long, psuedo intellectual interviews questioning the value of life with the tossed off nonchalance of someone who practiced the speeches he gave while fastiduously combing his hair in an ever present mirror, coaxing and taunting it until it reached the proper level of chaos. It takes a lot of work to look like an unmade bed all the time. Lester wrote a piece that I thought was wonderful (I think pretty much everything Lester wrote was wonderful, but in this case I think I think that for good, if not right, reasons) where he called Hell on the lameness of his so-called disavowal of his humanity and promised, in print, that if Hell ever did kill himself-and there was plenty of doubt in the prose-that he, Lester, would dig Hell's body up and kick his cold, cold ass.

     You gotta love the humanity in that sentiment, especially when utterred by one who loved life so much he killed himself trying to live it. And remember Lester was born in December and died in April at the age of 33, much like another lover of humanity. Only if Lester came back, he's tear down any churches in his name. Maybe the other guy would too, at least I'd like to think he would.

     Anyway, as it turns out, Lester needn't have worried. About a year and a half ago a friend of mine from NY (Hi, Elaine!) sent me a newspaper clipping that made me laugh out loud. Apparently our boy Hell had recently sold his 'papers' to a university, I believe it was Rutgers, but I'm not sure, for the princely sum of $50,000. His 'papers' consisted basically of every flyer, every review, every journal entry, every single piece of tangible minutae regarding those halcyon days that he had saved and had been saving for upwards of 20 years. Now I ask you, does a suicidal/tragic poet/nihilist look that far forward, scrimping and cataloging their days of rage in the hopes of establishing a memorial library worth $50,000? Apparently his own life wasn't worth saving, but damn it, Dee Dee, don't spill any of that heroin on my Mudd Club poster, that's gonna be worth big bucks someday!

     Cheap, gimcrack nihilism by a failed male model who could barely play bass (and yes I know neither could Sid, but Sid was real. Real sad, granted, but real). Of course the case could be made, if cases are really worth making for something as trivial and mandatory as an artist's intent,  that Hell was correct and actually smart enough to not believe his own publicity,as he was pressing it between pages like lovers' autumn leaves and building a nest egg. Smart, but ultimately false as one really can't be heroic and hedge one's bets at the same time. Hell spewed forth a philosophy of self loathing that he clearly did not believe, but does that cheapen the philosophy? Or just the philosopher? And we all know how cheap philosophers can be. The question that Hell raised in his mien and actual song title was 'Who says it's good to be alive'? and that life was nothing but a 'perpetual jive.' That he freeze dried these sentiments along with track sheets and blurred photos doesn't lessen the importance of the question, it just makes it harder and harder every year for me to see what Lester saw.

      So the question remains, is life worth living?

       I find myself asking myself that question with alarming frequency these days and, sorry folks, but lately the answers been a resounding 'no'. Life anymore has become an seemingly endless stretch of days waking up to walk the dog and feed the cats and little more. Oh, I'm looking for work and am doing basic yard work around town on a piecemeal basis to keep me and the kids in cigarettes and Friskies, and I no longer lash out at my few remaining friends about my suicidal ideation. I just sit quietly and ponder, what would really be missed should I shuffle off this mortal coil? I would of course remand Buster and the kittens to the various loving homes that have been offerred them, not in expectation of my snuffing it beacause neither my friends nor I actually believe I  have the guts to do it, but in deference to my  mental health. Friends find me so fragile to think that the stress of caring for these creatures might be what's overwhelming me at present. To this notion I have to say thee nay, it's the animals that are presently keeping me going. It's people I can't stand, or rather one person in particular. The guy responsible for the drivel I'm surprised yr still reading.

     Would I appreciate Richard Hell's music more had he killed himself in, say 1980? I doubt it. I still find his lyrics weak and his yelping vocals a poor imitation of La Smith. I still love Quine's guitar work on this record, but no more since he murdered himself. Would I  respect Hell more as a person had he put out the big light? Sadly I have to say probably yes. I have a softer spot in my heart for Quine and Vicious and Joy Division's Ian Curtis (and yes, also Cobain) because they had the guts to end the story themselves than I do for the archivist Hell, who played the agonized soul while profiting off souls who blazed briefly in their own, real agony. Wasted lives you might say, but I respect more the individual who takes the reins no matter where they lead more than the individual who continues to suffer the slings and arrows of the deadening day to day.

     Now before you write to tell me this would all be fixable if I had a real relationship with god, Carl (and others) fear not. Yr humble reporter has neither the stones nor the inclination to actually off himself. But there are days like these when I wish I did. I'm gonna go home, walk Buster, play with Bleeker and MacDougal, wait for word on work and listen to the Waterboys and hope that something close to holy rubs off.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 18:41 | link | comments (4)

Billy Pilgrim, Unstuck in Time:David Bowie's Brilliant Mistake

     During the last few, black days I've been immersing myself in the work of two of my favorite artists. First off, to avert the depression I heard coming down the hall (and all of my own making, to be sure) I finally started to go through the myriad boxes I've kept under my 'kitchen' table in the studio apartment I share w/Buster and the Damage Brothers, Bleeker and MacDougal. Apart from various black t-shirts, mismatched dishes and ruined headphones I found my 'collection' of Kurt Vonnegut paperbacks as well as one set of headphones that weren't ruined. So I revved up the A.C. (it's been 100 plus degrees this last week here in god's country, and I surmise that it's god's country 'cause no one else wants it) and settled back first with 'Slaughterhouse Five', then on through 'Galapagos', Hocus Pocus' and am now in the middle of KV's first novel, 'Player Piano".

     Having spent the last month with only the few vinyl LPs I'd gathered from various locations, I've not been listening to much music as even Iggy and the Sonics get old after a while and I found out yesterday that Bleeker Street Kitten is deathly afraid of Patti Smith.  I put on 'Easter' and the poor kid ran under the bed like his tail was on fire. And before you think it's music in general that scared him so I have to tell you that he slept like a baby through the Tangerine Dream record I played for about 10 minutes until I took it off, declaring it the biggest load of rubbish I'd heard since Grand Funk Railroad reunited in '99. No, it was the, to me, rapturous 'Moses-on-speed' whirling dervish vocal pyrotechincs of my queen that sent the poor cat a-runnin'. No accounting for taste, I suppose but I will in the future educate the kitten to thwe wonders of La Smith, who - the older I get -  reveals herself to be my favorite, favorite artist.

     Anyway, to soothe my kitten's most decidedly un-=punk rock nerves, I unpacked the old Sanyo cassette deck Lynn gave me in the divorce, salvaged the one set of headphones that worked and started digging through a box of cassette tapes.

     Mark my words, cassettes are the wave of the future!

     Plugging the headphones in I was less than delighted to discover that only one earpiece worked. I've decided to view this as the universe, in all her infinite wisdom, illustrating how my normal life wioll be returned to me in pieces, on the celestial installment plan, if you will. In any event, one speaker is better than none, and listening through 'phones spares my kitten's delicate constitution and allows me to listen to music without completely shutting the world out. Which I'm beginning to realize is a good thing. I've mostly used music as a wall between myself and the world. Hiding behind not only the persona and microphone Iemploy with the various bands I play and have played with as well as the occaisional solo performance, but the music I listen to, also. Like back in High School, I'd walk around with copies of 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' and 'Mein Kampf' to put people off and to both quietly and loudly announce that I was a troubled intellectual who you would nevber understand so there's no point in talking to me anyway so I'm not hurt by yr lack of attention, you plebian, provincial peer group you.

     But in the midst of my pose, things filtered through. I actually started reading the books I'd been carrying as props and bits of wisdom, all twisted and filtered through the brain of an antisocial/scared of his own shadow adolescent. 'Mein Kamf', apart from a failed idealogy was just a lousy book. Nietze cut a bit deeper and it's his work that is largely responsible for the blackness of my mood and wardrobe (Sorry, Lou.) I don't know how I came upon Vonnegut, but I remember the first book of his I read 'The Sirens of Titan' caused me to fairly gasp and ask myself "You can DO this??!!'. Vonnegut's characters, all frail and venal or confused, sweeping or swept up in bizarre events seemed at first ridiculous, until by the end of the book you recognized folks you knew and no small part of yrself in the citzens of his psyche, all flailing against the inevitability of life crushing all fairness from the scene. KV has been called a black comic and our own Jonathan Swift, heir apparent to Mark Twain. I get no comfort from his depictions of the human animal as a small minded, small hearted builder of death machines, and the creator of it's own untimate end, unless you can consider finding someone who sees thing the way you do, no matter how bleak, to be comfort.

     For now I do. Word on the street has it that KV is in the process of writing what will probably be his last novel (I believe he's pushing 80 and raedy to 'retire'- say it ain't so). I wait patiently for more dark wisdom from the master. Bringing bad news to the masses in such a delightfully entertaining way is a great gift. Vonnegut is a national treasure who rats out the nation unto itself in short, sharp, shocks of recognition. If you haven't read him, you owe to yrself to do so. If you have read him, you owe it to yrself to read him again. There's always something new to be found and his prescience regarding man vs technology suggests that 'novelist' might better be replaced by the sobriquet 'prophet'.

     Which brings me to David Bowie. Throughout the 70's Bowie was one of the biggest influences on a certain skinny, young songwriter who's behind this particulat cyber-curtain. Up unto the release of Patti's 'Horses', Bowie was IT as far as I was concerned. His combination of camp and doo-wop grand opera on 'Ziggy Stardust', the winsome cabaret of 'Hunky Dory', the black light/black heat guierrorisms on 'The Man Who Sold the World' were an oasis of smartrock in a desert of Sabbaths and Zeppelins. His move through the sci-fi 50-isms on 'Alladin Sane', the cybersoulman of 'Young Americans' on through the 'Berlion Trilogy' of '"Heroes'", 'Low' and 'Lodger' told me that rock and roll needn't stagnate or devolve into the posturings of the nascent heavy metal movement of the day. A blessing.

     I got off the Bowie bus around the time of 'Let's Dance', basically when the bulk of America got on it. There's that 'outsider' mentality of mine rearing it's poseur head, I guess. Although in retrospect I honestly believe to this day that 'Let's Dance', 'Tonight' and 'Never Let Me Down' were just lousy records. Oh well. In the late, late 80's in thoose few moments before Nirvana turned the music world upside down by, oddly enough, releasing what for all intents and purposes was a 3rd rate Replacements record, Bowie came back with a vengeance. And nobody, I mean nobody bought it. Enter Tin Machine.

     Bowie's great experiment with Tin Machine was this: In Ton Machine he was simple the singer in the band. All music was co written by Bowie and the band, which was comprised of Soupy Sales' sons Hunt and Tony on drums and bass respectively and an incredible guitarist named Reeves Gabrels who combined the then requisite virtuosity of the Van Halen/Vai school of shred with the atonal screed of the Branca generation. Gabrels' genius was knowing when to dazzle with an almost unnatural flurry of 64th notes and when to just lean into his Steinberger and make it go 'KRSSSSHHHHHHHHHKKKKKK'. A rare talent. Their first, self titled rcord contained gems like 'Under the God' and the immortal 'I Can't Read', where Bowie spat out perhaps the most vindictive, apocalyptic lyrics of his long and storied carrer while Gabrels played the guitar like some bastard son of Yngwie Malmseen and a nine car pile up and the Sales brothers laid down a black and blue carper upon which the duty dance with death was performed.

     Nobody bought the record, but because he was David Bowie, their record company allowed them Tin Machine II, a record that took me a little while to get into, as it wasn't as bloody and immediate as the first. Nobody bought that one either so I don't know how 'Oy Vey, Baby' the live, third and final Tin Machine record came to pass, but I've been listening to it all night and, boy, am I glad it was.

     Opening with a cover of the sainted Roxy Music's 'If There Is Something' the band careens like a 'tigers on vaseline' , laying down a blueprint for the 21st century that no one in rock and roll picked up on; that of a sci-fi punk band that really saw no future and were dancing on the impending grave of a civilization that just might deserve death. Much like Kurt Vonnegut, these records show me that even in the midst of sheer hopelessness, there's still reason to dance if you beat back the devil with a backbeat and a guitarist from Mars. Check 'em out, folks, odds are you'll be able to find the entire Tin Machine catalog in cheap bins or used bins in record stores across the country and the tainted paste jewels of of Kurt Vonnegut Jt are just a library visit away.

    This ain't rock and roll, this is genocide.

     And so it goes..................

Posted by: timbyrnes at 18:49 | link | comments (7)

The Coal Black Sea Waits For Me, Me, Me

..... it's been how long now that I've been raging about the positive side of things? Offerrng little rays of sunshine to ye electronic strangers, replete w/typos and flawed, flawed logic? Too long, as I finally have to look the devil that I've been and am in the eye and say: It's all been hogwash. I know, I know I fold back on myself like some kind of spiritual chaise lounge (and some might say that I'm a lounger in the spiritual chase. Hi Jim, get that TV yet?) but isn't that how life is? I mean are any of us, including militant right wing Christians sure about anything? Aren't most of us merely whistling in the graveyard or shouting allegiances to get through the valley of the shadow of dewath. And doesn't death always win anyway, laughing at us and the churches we buils with and without hands?

      Probably and I don't want to be a drag - I just am - but all means nothing in the final analysis and I for one am bending from the strain of pretending that it doesn't. I'm sick of painting a happy face on a wasted life. I'm 50, the night clerk at a convenience store in the middle of nowhere. If this is all there is then I don't want it anymore. I'm gonna go home and go to sleep and hope I never wake up.

     Don't worry, all I'm gonna do is hope (and that's all that's left of hope right now, that the driver will just let me get off the freaking bus. I'm not gonna jump out the window. Honest, I'm far to great a coward for that particular act of bravery/defiance.) I gotta get home and feed the dog and the kittens. I love all 3 of them, honest, but right now there the only thing that's keeping me from getting on a bus (a real one, no metaphors need apply) and just get the hell out of this s-hole town, with all it's stranglied/strangling history and make a new start. Or just go from bar to bar, drinking again, hoping that I'll piss the right drunk off just enough so he'll beat me to death. That wouldn't be suicide, would it. And tangentially, when Jesus went to his death, knowing it was his death, wasn't THAT a form of suicide. And when he said 'My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" wasn't THAT a lapse of faith? If even Jesus wasn't sure god loved him then how can any of us...............

     I gott get some sleep. Anybody want to buy a dog that doesn't like Sonic Youth and 2 cats that do?

Hanging in there, if only by a thread.

tb

Posted by: timbyrnes at 18:18 | link | comments (5)

Bleeker and MacDougal: Greetings From the Known  New York

     As my buddy Simmons has already told you, I turned 50 about a week ago. I got through the weekend with surprisingly little drama and have been settling into the new digs at a very slow pace 'cause that's how olp people are, y'know? I n any event, I was belatedly gifted last night by my friend Jackie with 2 - 8 or 9 week old kittens. I had been wanting a cat  as the apartment didn't seem complete without one, so now I have 2. Bleeker and MacDougal, 2 boys Colorado born and bred but named after a (to me) famous intersection in New York's East Village, where a young Robert Zimmerman perhaps became Bob Dylan.

     Yesterday morning, in the waning hours of my pre cat existence I happened to stop at Sid's, a local second hand store. Obstensibly looking for a typewriter I stumbled onto a box of records where I found a dead mint copy of Patti Smith's 'Easter', a record I hadn't heard inyears and had forgotten how much I loved it. I have 'Horses' and 'Gone Again' on CD and 'Dream of Life' and 'Peace and Noise' on cassette. But 'Easter' had been a lost record for me for some time now. It brought back memories of the late 70's and living in Rockland County, NY a mere stoner's throw from where it was ALL going down at the time. NYC, just like I pictured it, skyscrapers and EVERYTHING!!! I used to go to the Village by bus at least twice a month in those days to buy records, get drunk, buy pot from the Rastas in Washington Square Park, stop at CBGB's, usually plastered to see what there was to see.

     After the initial, blinding rush of mid 70's creativity; Patti, Television, Ramones, Talking Heads was over, we were left with a flood of cookie cutter cutups in skinny ties and black leather, a precious few (Mink DeVille - a soul band, really or the Shirts, power pop fluffy, but cool) rising just far enough above the herd to be interesting, but it all changed after England, and Richard Hell never became our Elvis Costello.

     Elvis had to do that himself. Which he did, and continues to do with an alarming level of artistic and critical success to this day. Go, Declan. Once the Ramones and Television went to England and gave Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious a hairstyle and a heroin habit respectively, punk rock became the province of the Pistols, and all that follwed stood in their shadows. The art-colony vibe of the early cbgb years was lost, which is probably for the best as it leaves the real artists like Patti and Ramone (all of them) the space away from the spotlight's glare they need to create personal work, free of the rock and roll sweepstakes and, more deadly, the 'Man'.

     Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly how they see it. There appears to be a Broadway musical about the Ramones on the horizon. I'm not sure how to feel about this. Not that it matters, of course, but it's damn odd to see one's high school yearbook becoming Mount Rushmore. I love those years, that music, the memories, but I fear it's codification and the final mainstreaming falling of the axe that such a musical suggests. I know a lot of you don't get them (Like Buster and Carl and Joe S) but really man, Sonic Youth are the only NYC band that has, in this reporter's estimation, stayed true to an uncompromising and uneasily digested vision for nigh onto 20 years now and I think we all ought to name them NYC's Favorite Sonbs (and daughter) now that the Ramones are 3/4's underground and bound for the Great White Way. (Underground and Broadway Bound: An Aesthetic Reveals It's Flaws   -   alternate title, maybe?)

    Well, as usual, I'm sleepy and have no idea what I'm talking about but that's never stopped me from talking before. Viva Patti Smith! Viva Sonic Youth! Viva Roxy Music! (who saw that one comin', huh?). Viva life. I gotta go home, walk Buster and visit Bleeker and MacDougal in my mind and on my couch. Love to all.

tb

Posted by: timbyrnes at 19:24 | link | comments (2)