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When Clap Your Hands Say Yeah launched its debut album in 2005, critics offered acclaim for lyricist Alec Ounsworth’s DIY ethos and the band’s enthusiastic style. After two mediocre follow-up
Richard Hell only made two albums in his brief recording career, 1977’s confrontational landmark Blank Generation and 1982’s Destiny Street. In the informative and entertaining new liner notes for Destiny Street Complete, Hell describes the final mix of this less-successful sequel as a “morass of trebly multi-guitar blare.” Today, he’s seized the opportunity for a do-over, and then some. The two-disc Destiny Street Complete features four different takes on the album: the original version, demos from 1978 to 1980, a stripped-down edition from 2009 and a contemporary remix. If tha...
The residents of Caerphilly were taking no chances. Pubs and cafes locked doors and boarded windows, the local constabulary called in reinforcements and divine protection was sought by a Pentecostal preacher whose tirade outside the cinema could not have been more furious had Satan himself been about to appear. The four skinny young men scheduled to perform in the Welsh market town on that cold December evening in 1976 were the Sex Pistols, the punk rockers who were to become one of the most notorious bands in rock 'n' roll history. But they met their match in the good folk of Caerphilly. Eve...
Destiny Street must have seemed like a dead end to Richard Hell & The Voidoids in 1982. Unsatisfied with the art punk originators’ second and final album, perhaps troubled by its rather thin, muffled sound or its flailing chaos, Hell wanted desperately to remix the wild and woolly successor to 1977’s seminal Blank Generation debut. Unfortunately, the original 24-track masters went missing, preventing Hell from performing the necessary operation. As luck would have it, in the early 2000s, Hell stumbled upon a cassette from 1981 with all the LP’s rhythm tacks, which allowed him to instal...
Cherry Red/Strike Force Entertainment Like David Bowie and maybe one or two others, it matters not how “huge” Marc Almond’s individual records are. In the eyes of his diehard fans, of whom there are many, he remains akin to an underground cult, beloved by a select few folk, and offered widespread approval only for the hits that he occasionally spills out. The Stars We Are, from 1988, is a case in point. Buoyed by what would become a monster smash duet with Gene Pitney, “Something’s Gotten Hold of my Heart,” and the UK Top 30 “Tears Run Rings,” The Stars We Are may not, ultima...