NuDisc

Way back in 1982 I was a nineteen year old college student discovering punk and new wave via my college radio station, KCMU. Yes, MTV was a factor in my alt-rock education, but to a much lesser degree. At the University of Washington’s student-run 90.3 FM (atop the Communications Building in room 304), we had the run of all the records in its library. It had decades’ worth of rock ’n’ roll, but what I was most attracted to was the current records coming out that were in the station’s daily rotation. One of them was RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS’ Destiny Street, the 1982 sophomore release from the once member and co-founder of Television. On the covers of KCMU’s records were stickers for the DJs to scribble their comments, and if I remember right, more than one of the older jocks had written “not as good as Blank Generation” as their sentence-fragment review; naturally I had to dig that one up and decide for myself. Between the title track and “Love Comes in Spurts,” I think I did like Blank better. But Destiny Street wasn’t too shabby, either.

I tended to gravitate, at least early on, to songs with kooky titles, so things like “The Kid with the Replaceable Head” and “Lowest Common Dominator” were my initial faves. These were tunes propelled by twangy, angular/staccato guitars, a pretty funky bass and fairly straight ahead drums. I don’t remember if, at the time, I was bothered by Richard Hell’s out-of-tune, subtle caterwauling or not – I was probably too unschooled to notice it much and it likely was hidden by what I thought was just a highly unique vocal delivery. (It was years before I noticed, for instance, how flat my beloved Elvis Costello sings, so…) Anyway, the band’s semi-punk, semi-new wave sound was fairly new to me, and the couple of ’60s garage covers on the album weren’t in my radar yet (“I Gotta Move” and yes, even “I Can Only Give You Everything”), but the record was pretty dang cool regardless of what I did or didn’t know then.

Today, Richard Hell isn’t someone I’d choose all that often to listen to – I am a much bigger fan of Television – but I can appreciate various aspects of what he and his Voidoids put down. When you pick up this reissue of Destiny Street you’re gonna get FOUR different versions of the album. First, the original from ’82, then a 2009 version entitled Destiny Street Repaired that uses the original’s basic tracks but features re-recorded guitar solos and new lead vocals. Version three – Destiny Street Remixed – is a brand new mix of the original (from the 24-track tapes), and finally a selection of demos of most of the songs that were destined for Destiny Street. Why so many versions? I guess the answer to that would have to be, for lack of a better answer, why not?! I can think of a couple reasons, actually. Hell has apparently always disliked the way the original album turned out, so in 2009 he drafted Bill Frisell and Marc Ribot to add some guitar parts (original Voioids guitarists Robert Quine and Naux had passed away). That might have been the final version of the record, but then, just last year the original multitracks for 3/4 of the album turned up and so Richard, not satisfied with version two either, set about remixing the original tracks with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner. After listening to these three different versions three times I don’t find enough difference or improvement in the “repairs” or remixes to really warrant all this fuss. (I will say that Remixed seems to put Hell’s vocals more up front in the mix, which doesn’t exactly improve the album…)

BUT… I DO find that Destiny Street, regardless of which version I’m listening to, is a much better album than I remember and I’m really enjoying it. I like the Clash-style guitars in opener “The Kid with the Replaceable Head” (a la “Capitol Radio Two,” though those electrics are toned down enough in the later versions that you don’t quite notice the resemblance), I like “Ignore That Door” with its souped-up Steppenwolf vibe, and I like the title track and its spoken word narration.

So if Richard Hell wants to go to all this trouble after all these years to redo his band’s swan song release, and a reputable record label wants to put it out as a deluxe 2CD set (or just the Remixed portion as a single LP) AND it rekindles the Voidoids’ flame, I guess I can go along with it. I mean, you know when Hell and his honchos were running this concept up the flagpole they must have been considering what I, Marsh Gooch, would think about the enterprise. Psych. – Marsh Gooch

3/5 (Omnivore Recordings OVCD-410, 2021)