Blank Generation
Blank Generation
A classic early punk album by Richard Hell and
the Voidoids, released in 1977 on Warner Brother's "Sire
Records" imprint.
The lyrics here may be somewhat nasty and nihilistic but have
more poetry going for them than much of what was later
done under the "punk" banner.
The off-kilter, high-energy of the music is driven largely
by Robert Quine's rapid, complex angular licks, show cased
most impressively on the lead song "Love Comes in Spurts",
where hell rages against the impermanece of love in the
real world compared to the imagination of his youth:
There's a minor controversy about the meaning of the song
"Blank Generation". Many people adopted it as a nihilistic
anthem of the mid 70s, but an off-hand remark about how
Hell meant it as a comment on "generation" songs (e.g.
"My Generation", etc), produced a long standing notion that
it wasn't really about *being* blank, it was blank in the
sense of fill-in-the-space-on-the-form. Pretty clearly that's
only one of the possible meanings though, and more recently
(in a letter in to The Wire magazine)
Hell has pointed out that there are other obvious resonances in
the lyrics, e.g. references to blank walls, vacant lots:
And the chorus:
in dangerous flirts
and it murders your heart--
They didn't tell you that part.
but when I dine it's for the wall that I set a place
Then carry it up flights of stairs and drop it in the vacant lot
and I can take it or leave it each time