Townsman Al saw the following review in the New York Times and thought the idea of remakes like this – and suggestions for other albums that might benefit from it – might make a thread for RTH. Check it out and see what you think!
RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS
Destiny Street Repaired
(Insound.com)There’s a myth out there that some of the most gifted and cursed rock ’n’ rollers make one great record and then explode, felled by some demon: excess or self-doubt or disgust. More commonly they make two: it usually takes that long for defeat to settle in. On the list of two-albumers are some important New Yorkers, including the New York Dolls and Richard Hell and the Voidoids.
In 1977 Mr. Hell and the Voidoids recorded “Blank Generation.” It helped define punk, so we’re often told, but it’s much more than that: it’s literary, romantic (boy-girl), Romantic (intellectual tradition) and, because of Robert Quine’s guitar solos, intensely musical, an album of high-grade improvisation.
Five years later came “Destiny Street.” Some of its songs had sharp lyrics, but in general the record sounded like a misplaced attempt at a straighter kind of rock ’n’ roll. (Three were covers — of songs recorded by Van Morrison, the Kinks and Bob Dylan.) Mr. Hell was addicted to heroin, and unavailable, metaphorically and literally, for stretches of its making. In liner notes to an old CD reissue of the album, he wrote: “I was a rodent at the time, dying to be human. I was so scared.”
It also had a dismally unfocused production, with too many undifferentiated layers of guitar overdubs. In 2006 Mr. Hell, who quit music after “Destiny Street” and has since written poetry and fiction, acquired the rights to the album and took it off the market. Then he remade it, using the original rhythm-section tracks from a surviving tape made at the session. (The master tapes, with all the guitar solos, couldn’t be found.)
On “Destiny Street Repaired,” released through Insound.com, Mr. Hell, now 59, resings the songs in his older-man’s voice. More drastically, he arranged for the guitar leads to be rerecorded, displacing the work of Quine, one of rock’s greatest guitarists. Quine died in 2004, but Mr. Hell recruited some of his admirers: the excellent improvising guitarists Bill Frisell and Marc Ribot, as well as Ivan Julian, rhythm guitarist from the original lineup of the Voidoids.
This is dicey business, although the new guitarists are respectful. They approximate the spirit, not the letter, of the original solos. If you find a copy of “Destiny Street” — good luck with that — and compare it to “Repaired,” you’re likely to appreciate the new version’s clarity. But your heart might sink here and there.
In the old version of “Lowest Common Dominator” Quine’s first solo was inspired: it began with a dive-bombing slide down the high E string, settled into a dark, woozy chord, and then built a compressed narrative, racing through runs and harmonics and wild tremolo-bar jitters. That’s gone, replaced by Mr. Ribot’s tasteful but inevitably more slack imitation.
Mr. Hell’s voice has grown thicker and slurrier, but he still pulls off his Jaggerish yelp. He doesn’t attempt some of the old album’s vocal grace notes, however, like the spastic scream that began “Ignore That Door.” And in “Destiny Street” — a story-song about a man who encounters a younger version of himself, takes him home and falls in love — Mr. Hell’s recitation sounds halting, almost distracted. The story resonates with his current project, though. How should he act around the work of his old self? Should he imitate it or assert how much he’s moved away from that person? – BEN RATLIFF
I would be interested in hearing them both, but not really either on it’s own (maybe a 2 disc set)
Didn’t OZZY do this with his back catalog just other way around: he replaced the bass and drums and left in the guitar and vocals! (screw you other guys who are not Randy Rhodes)
I’d buy it, but then again I’ll buy almost anything the guy puts out, RIP Collection, ROIR live stuff, even the remixed collection a couple of years back. His stuff is always flawed; the only thing he did that was great front to back was the original Ork Blank Generation EP, but he always has those moments. The first album was pretty swell but it did have a couple of missteps, “The Plan”, musically interesting but pathetically desperate to shock, and the horrible re-recording of “Another World”, my favorite song on the EP.
Destiny Street is not horrible in by book. There is probably too much overdubbed guitar, but some of the songs are really sharp, with great parts that could’ve stood out with the more stripped down sound of the guitar attack on the first album. Quine was the shit, but Hell’s other guitarists, Ivan Julian on Blank Generation and Naux on Destiny Street were both really good. I saw Naux with a really avant-Rock band that Nona Hendryx had in 1981 or so, and I bought his solo album based on that performance. These guys sounded like a cross between the Velvets and the Miles Davis Agharta era bands. I always regretted that they didn’t get a record out.
It’s apparently an Insound exclusive. I just bought it as a download. I hurried to listen to the song Time, which I’ve always really liked, especially Quine’s uncharacteristically melodic solos. The solos on this version are extremely fractured, pointlessly so it seemed to me. And he’s dubbing guitars and vocals on top of rough mixes, because the original tapes are gone. Things didn’t seem exactly in tune either.
I no longer have Destiny Street, but I have most of the tracks from it on the Spurts anthology. Listening to Time there, I was reminded that it was actually a lost 7-inch version, which had a different feel, that I really liked best.
Oh well. I’m sure I’ll listen to the other tracks later.
I was happy when Raw Power got remixed and mastered. I like Let It Be Naked. I don’t like the redone Star Wars Trilogy or ET with flashlights instead of guns.
Maybe Aerosmith’s first album could get this treatment. I like it as it is, but people are always complaining about the spare, vaguely crappy production.
That version of Time is on the collection calld Time. It was the band with Quine and Julian with James Xavier on bass and Jim Morison from Tuff Darts on drums. It’s a pretty good set, one disc studio outtakes and one disc of live stuff circa 77/78.
That’s the collection with Elvis Costello sounding out of place on the live side? Thanks for reminder, geo.
An appealing thing about Hell is his humility, or more accurately, his realistic take on himself. He knows that he wasn’t cheated; he was the main perpetrator of the shamble of his career. The booklet of that collection has him comparing himself to Costello who briefly looked over the lyrics to “You Gotta Lose” and went out and sang every one of ’em. Hell sees the professionalism and knows he just didn’t have it tigether regardless of the strength of his vision.
I think Ozzy did it because the other guys on the original recordings were trying to claim royalties and Sharon wasn’t having that.
They really screwed up the ZZ Top stuff, didn’t they? Terry Manning has railed on about that. Zappa replaced some drums on his recordings too, I believe.
I wonder what the Crenshaw fans think about “Field Day,” as that album seemed to be panned by the critics for having muddy production. Do you think it would be bettered with a new mix? I’m not sure.
I always liked Field Day fine. I think the criticism was that the production was overblown is overblown. The spare, modest sound of the first album was cool, but Steve Lillywhite’s big sound has its virtues, in my book anyway. I think part of the problem was that people were thinking of Crenshaw as primarily a songwriter rather than as a guy who made recordings, and that was a straitjacket he didn’t want to wear.
Are we going to start saving the original, unmixed tracks for all recordings so they can be remixed and resold later? That sounds like a whole new scam the record industry could pull to sell our record collections to us over and over again. I wonder if Elvis Costello has pondered this as a way to rererepackage his early back catalogue.
That’s already happening… a number of people have released their songs, not as completely multitracks, but as stems. I know Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Duncak Sheik have done this, and there was also some stuff floating around after the reissue of “my life in the bush of ghosts.”
The ZZ Top stuff was horrific when it came out on CD in 1987. They released the 1st 5 records and El Loco (not Degüello,the one before it though) as a 3 disc set with 6 full records. It was the only way to get these records on CD. They remixed the tracks to sound more like Eliminator and triggered the drum tracks to electric drums on every song. (these are not new tracks though..just digital drum triggers used in place of the acoustic drum sounds..and you would be surprised how many engineers do this to acoustic drums they track)
To this day, Tres Hombres, Fandango and Degüello are the only pre-Eliminator records that have been (finally) released and remastered but not remixed.
There was a box set a few years back, maybe they used the original mixes for this. (anybody know?)
I would do a repair session to Van Halen’s 5150. In order to get a clean sound out of Eddie’s still in construction studio (named 5150) they used electronic drums for the entire record. They sound like ass. The songs though were the best of the Van Hagar era and the performances were pretty good.
Maybe by the time this record is up for the 30 year anniversary Dave will be back on the enemies list and Ed can do a remixed version of this one (and add Wolfie on bass just to stick it to Mike A)
No. I don’t want to hear fixed songs. Move on. Re-record the song. Or the album. Reinterpret it, whatever. But please move on…
I’m always disappointed when I pick up a CD and discover that the songs have been touched up years after they were originally recorded– I’m thinking specifically about some collections of early dBs and Sneakers stuff.
Still there are a lot of albums that were spoiled in the production room. I’m in a pop mood these days… so the Chills’ Brave Words comes immediately to mind. I can understand the desire to reclaim and reintroduce songs to the public. Thankfully, there are live recordings and radio sessions available.
Recently, there was a really good post out there on the internets about different versions of “Can’t Hardly Wait” the Mats have out there. I love the Replacements, and I love Tim, but there is something fucked up about that record. It’s still a great record despite itself. It ought to be the-greatest-fucking-record ever made, but it’s not. And it wasn’t the band, it was the production. I don’t know if Tommy was/is deaf or what, or what, but…. Still, I hope to God that Westerberg never gets it in his head to try to fix it.
It wasn’t a repair job by any means, but I thought the stereo mix of Pet Sounds was very nicely done.
RIGHT ON, butcher pete! I’m still bugged just thinking about the Gang of Four re-doing Entertainment. There was an interview with Andy Gill in a recent issue of TapeOp and Larry Crane never pushed him on why he did that to a perfectly weird debut album. What’s Andy Gill and company done of real worth in all those years? Solid Gold is an album of good songs that sounds like crap.
Butcher Pete, I think we’re safe with Westerberg. He seems pretty much uninterested in his past, and he always seemed to be the kind of guy that stops before whatever it is that’s making the song really work gets covered up or lost.
I didn’t know people didn’t like the production of the first Aerosmith album. I just listened to it the other day, and I was surprised at how much I liked it. There was plenty to like songwise, and I definitely liked the recording. If they cleaned that up, they’d sound like they do now, and that’s suckish at best.
I think it’s mainly the band that complains about that album. I love it. I think most fans love it. One Way Street is such a cool song.