Anytime there is a particularly lengthy gap between posts on this blog, it's usually down to one or all of the following:
1) Heavy work commitments.
2) We have guests staying with us.
3) I'm doing research to help me with the next blog post.
All have applied here. Of greater pertinence with regards to Richard Hell and The Kid With the Replaceable Head was the fact that I spent Tuesday listening both to the first Voidoids album, Blank Generation and re-listening to John Peel's first punk rock special, which was broadcast on 10 December 1976 and which I last heard while sitting in an airport near Puglia about 15 years ago. I had a vague memory that Hell's work was what I'd responded most appreciably to. But while I thought that the Dylanesque Blank Generation was very good, I wasn’t so taken with the supporting album. Too many of the tracks seemed ponderous and plodding. Peel noted on his punk special that “punk rock” meant something different in the US to what it appeared to be in the UK, and Hell’s output in 1976/77 bore that out. The closing track on the album was over 8 minutes long, showing perhaps that the sonic self-indulgence of the American rock scene at the time could still bleed over into the supposedly new revolutionary music scene.
By 1978, punk was starting to cross over into New Wave and Hell had caught up with it, at least for a brief moment given that his musical output had dried up after the release of Blank Generation. The single, The Kid With the Replaceable Head is twice as much fun as anything on Blank Generation, though its superficially quirky surface potentially covers a darker underbelly with Hell himself as the titular Kid, shrinking his world due to heroin use, trying to stave off the fear courtesy of the dishonest dread, all while hanging out with his three best friends which, in this context, could be the needle, spoon and vein strap. Though, I think it’s more likely that the replaceable heads refer to the different faces Hell could present in different contexts i.e. private, public, family/friends etc.
Video courtesy of Richard Hell and the Voidoids.
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