Alan Betrock died on April 9th at the age of 49, less than two months after being diagnosed with cancer. Richard writes about him: "Man, I was really sorry to hear about Alan Betrock. Let's see, that makes Johnny Thunders, Lester Bangs, Cookie Mueller, Anya Phillips, Barbara Triani...who else? I can't remember (Mercifully, as they say.) When people die, of course, it's the people left alive who have the problem! The dead ones don't know. Alan wasn't a close friend, but I really admired and liked him and appreciated how good he'd always been to me. He was really friendly and helpful in the treatment he gave us when he started New York Rocker in 1976, and then brought out the Neon Boys/new Voidoids stuff (incl. the original "Time") single on Shake in 1980, and then produced Destiny Street in 1982. The thing that really set Alan apart though among the people in music that I've had professional relationships with is that for him it was always a labor of love (not money nor ambition). I think the best way to remember Alan is to check his head: 'Bikinis & Lingerie: a Pictorial Guide to Pin-Up Magazines, 1949-1959;  Hitsville: The One Hundred Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Magazines;  Sleazy Business: A Pictorial History of Exploitation Tabloids;  Girl Groups: The Story of a Sound;  The I Was a Teenage Juvenile Delinquent Rock'n'Roll Horror Beach Party Movie Book: A Complete Guide to the Teen Exploitation Film, 1954-1969;  and Jayne Mansfield Vs. Mamie Van Doren: Battle of the Blondes...' Those are all books he wrote (and usually published himself on Shake). The man had class." We also have posted at the Forum Jay Schwartz's great last letter to Betrock as well as Ann Powers's NY Times obituary. [posted May 25, 2000]

At 11:00 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday, March 30th Richard will be online for a live chat hosted by music365.com, a large British music site (the hour there will be 4:00 Greenwich Mean Time). (Chat transcript now there. The site also has up a new interview with Hell.--No, not, actually--this big website now [9/3/01] defunct. But this time we thought to download and save the pages, both interview and web chat) [posted March 23/April 3, 2000]

Richard will be in California in mid-April and will give two readings, one in Los Angeles and one in San Francisco. He'll read with the piercing novelist/poet Richard Grossman (check his website) in Venice (L.A.) at Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., at 7:30 P.M. on Friday, April 14th. The phone there is (310) 822-3006, and admission is $7.00. In S.F. he'll be appearing solo at the Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., at 8:30 on Tuesday the 18th. The admission there will be $5.00 and their phone is (415) 647-2888. [April: Now read eyewitness Forum reports on these readings.] [posted March 13, 2000]

On Thursday, February 17th the exciting, ambitious new Pioneer Theater ("Showplace of Independent Cinema" ...website) will open at Ave. A and 3rd St., N.Y.C., with a weeklong festival entitled BLANK GENERATION & BEYOND. Hell is a star of six different movies (including music documentaries) that are featured during the week. Of special interest is the program for Friday, Feb. 18 when at 8:00 P.M. Hell is scheduled to introduce video projections (large screen video) of the 20 minute 16mm 1990 film Meet Theresa Stern which he wrote, directed, and acts in, as well as the 1978 35mm color feature fiction film Blank Generation by Ulli Lommel (not to be confused with A. Poe's CBGB documentary) starring Hell and Bunuel/Bond/Chanel French actress/model Carole Bouquet, and including three songs played live by Hell and the Voidoids at CBGB's; plus at midnight Susan Seidelman's Smithereens (1982) with Hell will be screened. More Hell in the course of the festival: the Poe film with the '75 Heartbreakers, NightClubbing videos from the '70s with Heartbreakers and Voidoids, and Nick Zedd's Geek Maggot Bingo. Other terrific films by Richard Kern, James Nares, Vivienne Dick, Beth and Scott B., and Abel Ferrara (Zoë Tamerlis in Ms. 45) will be shown on various nights. Call (212) 777-2668 for information. [posted January 29, 2000]

More Gallic Hell (Are we galled yet?), but this new book is very pretty, and furthermore bilingual: French and English on facing pages... An edition returning to print, for the first time since the 1973 original, Hell/Verlaine's Wanna Go Out? by Theresa Stern. If you don't know about Theresa, there's a taste of her on site. Due September 20, it's a classic severe but luxe production on heavy rag laid paper with text in Bodoni. [10/26/99 Now available from site.) Its publisher is Éditions Anna Polèrica, and the translator is Michel Bulteau. Richard will read with him in Paris on September 28 at the club La Maroquinerie. Hell will also appear September 25 in Stockholm at The Second Coming Spoken Word Festival, and in London on October 2 he'll read and show a short movie at The Chamber of Pop Culture, The Colonnade. [posted September 11, 1999]

There will be a Memorial for Zoë Lund (see previous notice) on Sunday, September 12th from 3:00 to 5:30 p.m. at Cinema Classics, 332 E. 11th St. (betw. 1st & 2nd Aves.) in NYC. The public is invited. [posted September 5, 1999]

The premier Beat Literature website, Literary Kicks, brainchild of Levi Asher, celebrates the 5th anniversary of its existence with a marathon poetry reading presenting about ten minutes each of our Richard and such writers as Lee Ranaldo, Charles Plymell, Eliot Katz, Brian Hassett, musicians John Cassady (son of Neal) and David Amram, as well as such web-based authors as Mark Thomas, Leslie Harpold, Xander Mellish, Meg Wise-Lawrence, Phil Zampino... 7:00 p.m. on (Hell ca 11:00), Wedn., July 21, at the Bitter End, 147 Bleecker Street, New York City, (212) 642 9784, admission $5.00.

[Note: This event also marks the publication of The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, a highlight of which is Hell's "Postmortem Notes" re William Burroughs.] [posted July 13, 1999]

CUZ Editions book-release reading announced: There will be a reading hosted by Richard and featuring all-stars Mike DeCapite, Nick Tosches, and Rene Ricard to celebrate the publication of the four new CUZ Editions books (now listed in the CUZ catalog). Will Patton is in California making a movie, so he probably won't be able to make it, but Richard may try to imitate him. The reading is at Manitoba's bar (982-2511), 99 Avenue "B" between 6th and 7th Streets in NYC, and will be held on Tuesday, June 29, at 9:00. Door charge'll be $5. [posted June 3, 1999]

Gargoyle #42 presents the first story, "Boy Meets Death, Boy Falls In Love," in a series Hell's working on that are all written in the same "voice" (almost like a novel). (Its very first appearance in print was actually in Japanese last year in a Tokyo literary magazine, American Book Jam.) Beware: it's depressing. Except nothing well written is really depressing. Judge for yourself: we have the entire story up. Gargoyle has a webpage too. [posted May 27, 1999]

Zoë Lund, also known as Zoë Tamerlaine or Zoë Tamerlis, died last month in Paris of heart failure. She was an actress and a screenwriter, star of Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45, and writer of his Bad Lieutenant (which she also had an outrageous scene in). She was a friend of Richard's. Richard writes, "It always makes me happy to think of Zoë. I've known a lot of serious drug users, but Zoë was Queen. You've got to admire someone as committed to it as she was. She didn't just LOVE heroin, she believed in it. (I might be way out of date, as I saw her most in the '80s and then she moved to Paris a few years ago...) Unlike the stereotype of the junkie, she was always stoked with enthusiasm, for drugs of course, but also for revolutionary politics, movies and writing, and then for RATS. I'll never forget visiting her in her huge old East 10th St. apartment in the early '90s and finding it carpeted (I'm not exaggerating) with rats. It was positively psychedelic. All surfaces were alive with them. A bureau drawer was the maternity ward, quivering with dozens of translucent little rat babies. We talked about doing the movie I'd written about Theresa Stern, and I have a great 45 minute videotape of her reading the part. She looks so gorgeous, but what's up with that finishing school accent?" Her former husband Robert Lund has created a page of more information from and about her including writings, photos, and links. [There is now a fuller version of this recollection of Zoë by Richard as published in the French film magazine Balthazar. -- 2002]. (Thanks to Robert Lund for the photo here.) [posted May 15, 1999]

A French translation called L'œil du lézard of Hell's novel Go Now (NY: Scribner, 1996) is published by Editions de l'Olivier, Paris, as one of the first three books in the publisher's new "Marges" series of blushing English-language novels (the other two being by Irvine Welsh and Tim Willocks). In case you're wondering Richard's also trying to figure out how you get from "Go Now" to "The Lizard's Eye," and what the fuck that Hollywood smirk is doing on the cover (The publisher says the French will get the "irony." Irony this, ya donut.). [posted April 7, 1999]

Springtime in Paris, it is... Paris, Hell. Parisian international and multilingual art/lit zine Purple publishes the first chapter-and-a-half of Richard's new novel-in-progress in the issue that hits stands in April (it's #3, dated Summer 1999). The novel is about poets and takes place in New York in the early '70s and the late '90s. The Purple passage starts like this. We now have copies available at Hell Lit, and you can check the magazine's website for vibe if you like. [posted April 3, 1999]

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