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"Every bohemian scene has a beau ideal, whose breath itself defines cool. For 1970s punk, that nasty poster boy was Richard Hell, a fashion-forward poet as big in brains as in attitude. Though he played in three major bands and wrote punk's ultimate un-anthem, 'Blank Generation,' Hell is credited more as an instigator than as a musician. This comp helps correct that by uniting hard-to-find early efforts by the Neon Boys and Television and the best of the Voidoids, who showed how lyrical, if not melodious, punk could be. A '90s jaunt with Dim Stars, the 'supergroup' that Hell formed with Sonic Youth leader Thurston Moore, is overrepresented, but the modern mixes bring many formerly atrocious recordings out of their tin cans, and the liner notes include an interview with Hell, who is, unsurprisingly, a topnotch conversationalist."
--Ann Powers, Blender
"Spurts, 21 tracks with extensive annotation, successfully attempts to reconcile the whole Hell experience in one place, from the Neon Boys through Dim Stars. As such, it's a fascinating document of New York punkology through one man's anti-Zelig career. Partly due to the fact that Hell was never a prolific songwriter, there are renditions of 'Blank Generation' by Television and the Voidoids, and two 'Love Comes in Spurts,' one by the Neon Boys the other by the Voidoids. Judicious selection by Hell himself presents his rambling oeuvre in the best possible light, as a unique bridge between Tom Verlaine's high-strung pretensions and Johnny Thunders' strung-out despair. Hell is an important artistic figure, no doubt about that, and this is the proof. Perhaps the most surprising impact of rehearing Hell's work in the 21st century is how innocent it all sounds. When it was new, his obstreperous yelping, surrounded by intense musical iconoclasm and bathed in drug use, made him seem a ferocious figure. The angsty gist of what he was doing back then is still fully audible, but like a lot of '70s punk, it has been marooned in a pacific past by the subsequent de-evolution of popular culture. Having lived through Hell and survived, nothing's shocking anymore."
--Trouser Press
"Renaissance punk Richard Hell has always known just what he wants to do artistically, whether he’s writing poetry, novels, movie criticism, acting, drawing, or (as most of us know him) making music so idiosyncratic that it’s virtually a genre to itself. Sometimes Hell has seemed so cocksure in his intentions that his ego level’s been pretty near intolerable, yet he’s consistently managed to deliver work justifying every molecule of his good self-opinion.
"Spurts is the first official compilation of Richard Hell’s varied musical incarnations, and is pure Hell in his my-way selections and remixes. The mostly chronological order of the cuts details Hell’s long march through the rock cadres until he found the proper sidemen to make his determined visions whole. Hell originally founded the Neon Boys with his high-school friend Tom Verlaine in the earliest (pre-Ramones) days of NYC punk; that band mutated into Television, first with Hell as a member, and then as Verlaine’s personal guitar army. The Neon Boys’ 1973 demos (featuring a very different 'Love Comes in Spurts' prototype) and a 'Blank Generation' recorded with a nascent Television in 1974 included here contain all the excitement and nothing-to-lose hope of that Downtown dawn’s willed punk. Hell’s next stop was in the Heartbeakers, with refugee New York Dolls Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, and their 1975 'Chinese Rocks' (which Hell wrote with Dee Dee Ramone) could have been Top 40 if we’d all lived in another world.
"The happy-nihilist heart of Spurts may be the 11 cuts from Richard Hell and the Voidoids, that bracing aggregation of jagged chords and found fronk forever anchored by Hell’s vocals and bass, and by twin-genius guitarists Ivan Julian and Robert Quine. That lineup recorded 1977’s Blank Generation (still one of the very best albums of that decade), here represented by the title cut, the mature 'Love Comes in Spurts,' 'Liars Beware' and the jarring cover of Creedence’s(!) 'Walking on the Water' -- all Hell essentials, though why the equally seminal 'Betrayal Takes Two' and 'Down at the Rock and Roll Club' are absent is something of a mystery to me. The Voidoids are further represented by several later songs, including material from the 1982 Destiny Street album, with their 1979 cut 'Crack of Dawn' particularly rousing. Spurts also includes five cuts from the 1992 Dim Stars matchup of Hell with Thurston Moore and Steve Shelley, another guitar-heavy collective, but one in which the sound tends more to linear moodiness than to the Voidoids’ trademark rollercoaster-with-square-wheels chord plunges. In view of Robert Quine’s suicide last year, the Voidoids as such can never reunite, but Hell’s 2004 effort 'She’ll Be Coming (for Dennis Cooper),' with Ivan Julian aboard, shows he can still deliver the goods, albeit now in an Iraqabilly mode.
"This is a boss-ass comp, and I sleep better nights knowing that Richard Hell will no doubt remain too proud and stubborn ever to lease his music to a TV commercial (even as the mighty Ramones and Sonics have fallen)."
--Richard Riegel, Harp
"Take a look at the cover of Spurts, with Richard Hell leaning forward and mugging like some collaborative product between Malcolm MacLaren and Franz Oz (though his distinctive style predated both), looking defiant and probably a little strung out on something. Flip it over: There's Hell almost 30 years later, hair grown out and dyed [webmaster's note: Hell's hair is not dyed, for god's sake; rather, journalists often have personal problems that reduce their ability to be accurate], face filled out, looking over his shoulder through tinted glasses at three decades of music, mistakes, band breakups, and at least one certifiably classic document of the CBGB's punk scene, Blank Generation.
"Spurts is not the first time Hell has compiled his own material. He collected the odds-and-sods R.I.P. when he ditched music to pursue writing in 1984; it was later expanded and repackaged as Time -- inexplicably omitting 'Blank Generation' on both occasions. This time, the package features interview-style liner notes between Hell and critics Robert Christgau and Carola Dibbell giving background info on every track, and includes Hell's material with Dim Stars, recorded in the early 1990s with Thurston Moore, Steve Shelley, and Don Fleming. Hell himself claims this compilation should be 'his only album,' a definitive release that would 'cut straight through' like any album would.
"The Neon Boys were a precursor to the band Television; Hell was kicked out before they recorded their first album under the new name, but he was magnanimous enough to include two Neon Boys tracks at the start of the disc (not to mention close it with a live version of 'Blank Generation' as played by Television). The preliminary version of 'Love Comes in Spurts' had music written by Television's Tom Verlaine, and has next to no resemblance to the version on Blank Generation. But Hell's remix shows no signs of a bruised ego, pushing the guitars way up and his vocals down, serving the song well. The Stones-like fury of the rhythm guitar is well captured, and Verlaine's brief-but-inspired ascending lines can be felt in the back of your teeth.
"From Hell's time with Johnny Thunders as the Heartbreakers, he only includes the cream of the crop, 'Chinese Rocks'. Instead, the lion's share of Spurts leans on the Voidoids' Blank Generation and Destiny Street records. The Blank Generation work has aged best, coupling punk fury with eccentric delivery and rhythm that's not afraid to swing. It also features some inspired anti-guitar hero moments from the inestimable Robert Quine on 'Liars Beware' [another webmaster's note: the liner notes to Spurts make a point of indicating how this is Ivan Julian on guitar, not Quine] and 'Love Comes in Spurts'. Destiny Street would show a slightly poppier and more contemplative side to the band, though 'Kid With a Replaceable Head' is infectiously sinister and 'Time' and 'Ignore That Door' show Hell's songwriting growing more frank and direct.
"Hell returned to recording in 1992 with a Dim Stars EP preceding one proper album. The songs chosen here mostly sound like jam sessions, like the two-chord 'Dim Stars Theme', over which Geffen-era Thurston Moore scrawls recklessly while staying within the lines, bending the compositions but not breaking them, keeping a foothold for Hell's lyrics. 'Monkey' is Hell at his most forthright, and the distorted guitars in the background seem incongruous with the popping clean chords and his newfound tenderness ('I swear I held my own hand pretending it was yours').
"Spurts includes one more late-era compilation track from the Voidoids, 'Oh', and two previously unreleased tracks, the Dennis Cooper-inspired 'She'll Be Coming', which combines drum loops, Eastern tones, and a forced hillbilly accent, and the aforementioned Television of performance of 'Blank Generation'. The first side of Spurts is a righteous blast of indignant punk, and the second half indulges in some experimentation, some mood pieces, and some glances at hard-earned maturity. The best of his many compilations, and certainly the best place to start for the unfamiliar, Spurts flows as well as any original album [last webmaster's note: but we forgive the reviewer his erroneous assumptions when we notice that his '8.6' rating of this album is at this date the highest rating he's given any of the 68 albums he's reviewed for the magazine]. People still listen to those, right?"
--Jason Crock, Pitchfork
"Spurts rules, mostly because the selection is comprehensive enough to make it a definitive Richard Hell retrospective -- there's some early Neon Boys stuff, the awesomest Dim Stars songs, and all the hits off Blank Generation and Destiny Street. And due to the nature of Hell's whole trip, the album's got enough romp encased in it to still make any feisty 19 year-old kid, smart enough and bored enough, want to dig a Godard film, some alcohol and a pack of cigarettes with his girl. The packaging of Spurts is rad; the interview between Hell and Robert Christgau (which for some reason made me cringe initially) is informative and amusing in that 'musing way. Plus, Spurts has this really freaky new Richard Hell song, 'She'll Be Coming.' It's fuckin' nuts, man, the bizarre arrangements and Hell's howls to the traditional 'she'll be comin' round the mountain' nod to his Lexington, Kentucky, roots in real weird ways. It's dark, kind of scary. You know? Daddy-O? It's the Jesus."
--Steve Five, Skyscraper
"An overview of one of the most significant artists in American punk, handpicked by the man himself, Spurts is the ultimate Richard Hell album. It covers everything; kicking off with the Neon Boys' take on Hell's 'Love Comes In Spurts,' the record continues through Hell's groundbreaking garage-rock with the Heartbreakers, Richard Hell and the Voidoids -- whose 'Blank Generation' is a classic of the New York underground of the '70s -- Dim Stars, and Television. Hell's music is primal, but he was and is clearly an intellectual, and as a result, his writing is neither smug nor dumb. This body of work has aged incredibly well."
--The Buffalo News
"Richard Hell invented punk rock, which is like saying Chuck Berry invented rock 'n' roll.
"It's arguable, but why bother?
"Sure, the former Richard Meyers of Lexington, Ky., had antecedents: The Stooges, Velvet Underground, New York Dolls. But when the spiky-haired bassist and yelping singer first appeared onstage with Television at New York's CBGB in 1974 wearing a ripped, safety-pinned shirt, he instantly symbolized the 'blank generation' he wrote of.
"His fashion sense and theory of self-invention were absorbed by visiting Englishman Malcolm McLaren, who took these ideas overseas, where the not-yet-formed Sex Pistols were waiting.
"Spanning four decades of sporadic recording, Hell's sometimes nihilistic, sometimes tender poetry and primal avant-garde rock are definitively anthologized on Spurts: The Richard Hell Story, due Tuesday on Sire/Rhino.
"Jumping from band to band, Hell played with some of the punk and post-punk scenes' greatest guitarists. Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd in Television were lyrical and daft. Johnny Thunders in The Heartbreakers was buzzy, thrillingly sloppy and evocative of the New York rock junkie culture he and Hell became known for. Be-boppy Robert Quine and Ivan Julian in The Voidoids played on Hell's landmark album, 1977's Blank Generation. Noisy, dissonant Thurston Moore in the early-'90s side project Dim Stars bridged two great eras in New York rock: Hell's and Sonic Youth's.
"All of Hell's bands (including The Neon Boys, an early version of Television) are represented on Spurts. More recent stuff, such as 2001's 'Oh' by the reunited Voidoids, or 2004's Turkish saz-driven 'She'll Be Coming (For Dennis Cooper)' made me yearn for the current movie critic/poet/author to get back into a recording studio.
"Please, Mr. Hell?"
--Danny Hooley, The Raleigh / Durham / Cary / Chapel Hill News & Observer
and check these blog reviews:
SONG LIST & Discographical Annotation
[hear song samples at the Rhino site]
1. LOVE COMES IN SPURTS (Preliminary Version)
(Tom Verlaine/Richard Hell)
--The Neon Boys
2. THAT’S ALL I KNOW (RIGHT NOW)
(Tom Verlaine/Richard Hell)
--The Neon Boys
Tracks 1-2
Recorded in 1973
From Shake EP #101 (1980)
Produced by TOM VERLAINE
Remixed by RICHARD HELL for this release.
RICHARD HELL: vocals, bass
TOM VERLAINE: guitars
BILLY FICCA: drums
3. CHINESE ROCKS (Dee Dee Ramone/Richard Hell)
--The Heartbreakers
Track 3
Recorded in 1975
From Time, Matador #530 (2002)
Produced by THE HEARTBREAKERS
RICHARD HELL: vocals, bass
JOHNNY THUNDERS: guitar, moans
WALTER LURE: guitar
JERRY NOLAN: drums
4. BLANK GENERATION (Richard Hell)
--Richard Hell & The Voidoids
5. LIARS BEWARE (Richard Hell/Ivan Julian)
--Richard Hell & The Voidoids
6. WALKING ON THE WATER (John Fogerty/Tom Fogerty)
--Richard Hell & The Voidoids
7. LOVE COMES IN SPURTS (Richard Hell)
--Richard Hell & The Voidoids
Tracks 4-7
Recorded in 1977
From Blank Generation, Sire #6037 (1977)
Produced by RICHARD GOTTEHRER & RICHARD HELL
RICHARD HELL: vocals, bass
ROBERT QUINE: guitars, background vocals
IVAN JULIAN: guitars, background vocals
MARC BELL: drums
8. THE KID WITH THE REPLACEABLE HEAD (Richard Hell)
--Richard Hell & The Voidoids
Track 8
Recorded in 1978
From Radar [UK] single #ADA 30 (1978)
Produced by NICK LOWE
RICHARD HELL: vocals
ROBERT QUINE: guitar
IVAN JULIAN: guitar
JERRY ANTONIUS: bass
FRANK MAURO: drums
9. CRACK OF DAWN (Richard Hell)
--Richard Hell & The Voidoids
10. TIME (Richard Hell)
--Richard Hell & The Voidoids
Tracks 9-10
Recorded in 1979
"Crack Of Dawn" was first issued on R.I.P., ROIR #134 (1984)
"Time" was first issued on Time, Matador #530 (2002)
Produced by RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS
RICHARD HELL: vocals
ROBERT QUINE: guitar
IVAN JULIAN: guitar
JAHN XAVIER: bass
JAMES MORRISON: drums
11. IGNORE THAT DOOR (Richard Hell/Robert Quine/Ivan Julian)
--Richard Hell & The Voidoids
12. LOWEST COMMON DOMINATOR (Richard Hell)
--Richard Hell & The Voidoids
13. DOWNTOWN AT DAWN (Richard Hell)
--Richard Hell & The Voidoids
Tracks 11-13
Recorded in 1982
From Destiny Street, Red Star #5036 (1982)
Produced by ALAN BETROCK
Remixmastered by RICHARD HELL & IVAN JULIAN for this release;
"Downtown At Dawn" Edited by RICHARD HELL
RICHARD HELL: vocals, bass
ROBERT QUINE: guitars
NAUX: guitars
FRED MAHER: drums
14. DIM STAR THEME (Richard Hell/Thurston Moore/Steve Shelley/Don Fleming)
--Dim Stars
15. BABY HUEY (DO YOU WANNA DANCE?) (Richard Hell/Thurston Moore/Steve Shelley/Don Fleming)
--Dim Stars
16. MONKEY (Richard Hell/Thurston Moore/Steve Shelley/Don Fleming/Robert Quine)
--Dim Stars
17. THE NIGHT IS COMING ON (Richard Hell/Thurston Moore/Steve Shelley/Don Fleming)
--Dim Stars
Tracks 14-17
Recorded in 1992
From Dim Stars, Caroline #1724 (1992)
["Dim Star Theme" first appeared on Ecstatic Peace! #11 (1991)]
Produced by DIM STARS
"Dim Star Theme," "Baby Huey" & "The Night Is Coming On" Remixed by RICHARD HELL for this release;
"Monkey" Edited by RICHARD HELL for this release
RICHARD HELL: vocals, bass
THURSTON MOORE: guitar
DON FLEMING: guitar
STEVE SHELLEY: drums
ROBERT QUINE: guitar on "Monkey"
18. OH (Richard Hell)
--Richard Hell & The Voidoids
Track 18
Recorded in 2001
From Wayne Kramer Presents Beyond Cyberpunk, Music Blitz #30005 (2001)
Produced by RICHARD HELL
Remixed by RICHARD HELL & IVAN JULIAN for this release
RICHARD HELL: vocals, bass
ROBERT QUINE: guitar
IVAN JULIAN: guitar
MARC BELL: drums
19. SHE’LL BE COMING (FOR DENNIS COOPER) (Richard Hell/Ivan Julian)
--Richard Hell
Track 19 Recorded in 2004
[Previously Unissued]
Produced by IVAN JULIAN & RICHARD HELL
RICHARD HELL: vocals
IVAN JULIAN: guitars, bass
JIMMY LEE: saz
WILLIAM RUIZ: percussion
BONUS TRACKS
20. RIP OFF (Marc Bolan)
--Dim Stars
Track 20
Recorded in 1992
From Dim Stars, Caroline #1724 (1992)
Produced by DIM STARS
Remixed by RICHARD HELL & IVAN JULIAN for this release
RICHARD HELL: vocals
THURSTON MOORE: guitar, bass
DON FLEMING: guitar
STEVE SHELLEY: drums
JAD FAIR: sax
21. BLANK GENERATION (LIVE) (Richard Hell)
--Television
Track 21
Recorded live at CBGB, spring of 1974
[Previously Unissued]
RICHARD HELL: vocals, bass
TOM VERLAINE: guitar
RICHARD LLOYD: guitar
BILLY FICCA: drums
ALL SONGS REMASTERED BY IVAN JULIAN at Gatlian Music, Brooklyn.