richard hell takes apart poor journalist

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i enjoyed this a lot

― miccio (miccio), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:23 (nineteen years ago) link

Hell is pretty cool. In college, I e-mailed him to see if he would donate his services to my little radio station. He totally followed through over the course of 3 months with regular contact made to let me know about his progress.

― S!monB!rch (Carey), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:31 (nineteen years ago) link

He always seemed to be quite a level chap, through it all.

Apparently, Pete Astor from the Weather Prophets wrote him for the words to one of his songs "Time", and got a handwritten reply with them, which eventually made a b-side.

― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:45 (nineteen years ago) link

from eggers: "do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them" - surely it "shd be do not dismiss a person until you have had a baby"?

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:45 (nineteen years ago) link

do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one

This is stupid, in case not everyone realized this.

― sunburned and snowblind (kenan), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:47 (nineteen years ago) link

do not dismiss a person until you have had a baby!!!

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:48 (nineteen years ago) link

do not dismiss Spaghetti Bolognese until you have made one

― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:49 (nineteen years ago) link

do not dismiss a person until you have built one from scratch

*thunder and lightning*
*swirls of electricity play up and down the antennae*
*mad pomo laughter*

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:51 (nineteen years ago) link

do not dismiss a big mac until you have taken the order for one

― debden, Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:52 (nineteen years ago) link

Love me, Love My Homunculus

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:52 (nineteen years ago) link

Pah. Now I've made a Frankenstein you should see.

― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:52 (nineteen years ago) link

I thought that said *mad porno laughter* for a second.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:53 (nineteen years ago) link

Makes as much sense as "pomo laughter."

"My laughter is a pastiche of all modernist laughter."

― sunburned and snowblind (kenan), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:56 (nineteen years ago) link

what's so unclear about that?

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:57 (nineteen years ago) link

Do not dismiss laughter until you have laughed...

― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:57 (nineteen years ago) link

OTM sunburned. Any subject takes a risk when he consents to being interviewed, but the reporter/critic must be honest about any objections. If the reporter had told Hell at the beginning, "Your poetry isn't as good as your music," it would have set the tone for an objective and merciless interrogation.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:58 (nineteen years ago) link

exactly: here is my pastiche of all modernist laughter WHERE'S YOURS!!

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 16:59 (nineteen years ago) link

(yeah, that Eggers thing is the one I was talking about)

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 17:18 (nineteen years ago) link

Hell should do these kind of commentaries on some of Pitchfork's album reviews every day of the week.

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 17:55 (nineteen years ago) link

Richard Hell to Tuning Fork, GO.

― Xii (Xii), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:36 (nineteen years ago) link

i think they are both being unreasonable, but hell less so

― geeta (geeta), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:42 (nineteen years ago) link

I can't get "Let's Submerge" out of my head.

― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 18:56 (nineteen years ago) link

If you go to Richard's web site, you can read the first chapter of the novel.

― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 19:10 (nineteen years ago) link

The Eggar's thing doesn't seem so big a deal to me. Neither does the intro of this Hell piece. Looking for reasons to hate?

― Eleventy-Twelve (Eleventy-Twelve), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 21:37 (nineteen years ago) link

I say yes, and Wayne Coyne says yes, and if that makes us the enemy, then good, good, good. We are evil people because we want to live and do things. We are on the wrong side because we should be home, calculating which move would be the least damaging to our downtown reputations. But I say yes because I am curious. I want to see things. I say yes when my high school friend tells me to come out because he's hanging with Puffy.

That whole paragraph is my reason to hate.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 22:25 (nineteen years ago) link

That whole paragraph is my reason to hate.

Why? Is it that you don't like how it treats criticism as mere negativity to be shunned?

― Eleventy-Twelve (Eleventy-Twelve), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 22:30 (nineteen years ago) link

Am I the only one who thinks Hell's complaints here are niggling and self-absorbed? If someone writes something that expresses an opinion about your work -- i.e., you get press -- I think it's near-reprehensible to tell him he's a "callow kid" without the "right" to that opinion.

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 22:38 (nineteen years ago) link

No, you're not. I read his comments like he's talking to his own 21-year old self. Tried to say so up-thread but nobody agreed.

― the gotterdammerung, Tuesday, 8 March 2005 22:51 (nineteen years ago) link

Picking through the original intro, it does seem poorly written and patronizing of its subject, but hey, what isn't? All the points RH makes are valid, but I don't know if the 21 year old kid deserves such a lambasting. Has anyone else taken the cheap shot yet of saying: if only he applied his keen analytical mind to editing his own work?

― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 23:01 (nineteen years ago) link

"poorly written and patronizing of its subject"
Yeah, but who cares. Why should Mr. Blank Generation, who I bet was pretentious as fuck as a kid, hanging out with people who adopted for surnames French symbolist poet's, act like a dick to some rock critic kid? I love how slippery punk is. Don't be a dick like everyone else, except when you're being a dick. Fuck you, Dick Hell.

― thegotterdammerung, Tuesday, 8 March 2005 23:07 (nineteen years ago) link

Bravo to this guy for printing the whole thing. Most people would be afraid to do that.

― Mark (MarkR), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 23:58 (nineteen years ago) link

"poorly written and patronizing of its subject"
Yeah, but who cares.
I thought that's what I was trying to say- further along in the same same sentence even, and if fact in almost the same wording as the reply. But maybe this is one of those threads where whatever one types is bound to be misinterpreted. And so it goes, to quote the producer of "The Kid With The Replaceable Head."

― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 00:14 (nineteen years ago) link

I was mostly agreeing with you Ken!

― thegotterdammerung, Wednesday, 9 March 2005 00:25 (nineteen years ago) link

Why should Mr. Blank Generation, who I bet was pretentious as fuck as a kid, hanging out with people who adopted for surnames French symbolist poet's, act like a dick to some rock critic kid?

Cause "the kid" sent it to him for approval or something?

― dan. (dan.), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 01:14 (nineteen years ago) link

haha "was" "as a kid" HE STILL CALLS HIMSELF RICHARD "HELL" FOR CHRIST'S SAKE (sez the guy who leaves the space out from between his first and middle names ["Michael" and "Angelo," respectively])

I like this, too, for many reasons cited already, esp. Mark S's.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 01:39 (nineteen years ago) link

HE STILL CALLS HIMSELF RICHARD "HELL" FOR CHRIST'S SAKE

And why shouldn't he?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 01:43 (nineteen years ago) link

Because: "l'enfer , c'est les autres."

― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 01:49 (nineteen years ago) link

richard hell is a great name!

― j blount (papa la bas), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 01:51 (nineteen years ago) link

Is it that you don't like how it treats criticism as mere negativity to be shunned?

You call that "shunning"? Writing a blistering, preening, epic email to some poor college kid? I call it massive insecurity combined with outsized self-importance, both of them rendered ridiculous by citation of the Flaming fucking Lips.

(sorry, not trying to hijack the thread. i'll take my eggers anger elsewhere.)

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 01:57 (nineteen years ago) link

haha that interview was the beginning of the end for eggers poor guy

― j blount (papa la bas), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 01:59 (nineteen years ago) link

Didn't Hell do some liner notes to one of his ROIR comps maybe, parody oof rock writing, and sign it "Lester Meyers," Meyers being his birth-handle (so maybe it was partially a self-parody)

― don, Wednesday, 9 March 2005 02:09 (nineteen years ago) link

he should call himself whatever he wants, the point is that someone is saying he "used to be pretentious," and I'm pointing out that the name is pretty pretentious now, too. it's a great name, obv., and "pretentious" doesn't have to be a pejorative.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 02:20 (nineteen years ago) link

Yeah I got your point. And pretentious is next to ambitious, ideally. Just wish he was still pretentious enough to make us some new records!

― don, Wednesday, 9 March 2005 02:27 (nineteen years ago) link

I dug the way Hell was almost acting as the Ghost Of Christmas Future in a fucked up kind of way...I doubt he would have done that to the kid if there wasn't something in him he liked. He overreacted, sure, but it's a pretty memorable way to learn a lesson. But, all ruminations aside, i cringed for the kid. I don't think I'm alone when I say I recognised that "Hi I'm 21" introduction. It could've been my own!!

― VegemiteGrrl (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 04:49 (nineteen years ago) link

I think Hell treated him with kid gloves, actually. Maybe Hell does come across as snide, but his points are all valid and the kid's tone is out of line (and not in any sort've "punk" way, either). Moreover, this has nothing to do with being a "Punk" (a term which probably makes Richard Hell gag these days) and more to do with being ambushed by a snot-nosed kid who was doing a hatchet-job on him.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 13:56 (nineteen years ago) link

ihttp://www.widerecords.com/no_flash/res_photo_gallery/jpg_big/richardhell.jpg

"Open up, kid, you got a significant cultural impact comin' to you!"

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 14:03 (nineteen years ago) link

I hate it when pics don't appear.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 14:04 (nineteen years ago) link

even as a "hatchet job" it is tepid and by-numbers and (i'd say) pointless

there are (arguably) harsh things a snot-nosed unearned-attitude kid might see and say that no one else ever had, but this is hohum-received-wisdom-pts-43654-9

and this still strikes me as more "tough love" than tantrum

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 14:12 (nineteen years ago) link

(sez the guy who leaves the space out from between his first and middle names ["Michael" and "Angelo," respectively])

aw, don't pull back the curtain, wiz!

― Ant Honey Miccio (miccio), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 15:15 (nineteen years ago) link

as for Hell, he may have been a little mean but I consider it to be a victimless crime.

― miccio (miccio), Wednesday, 9 March 2005 15:15 (nineteen years ago) link

Skipping 13 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

Now that's an index worth reading aloud, no lie. "Anyone else": were you there, Ken?

― don, Thursday, 10 March 2005 04:38 (nineteen years ago) link

that eggers bit upstairs is a bit obvious (to anyone out of highschool it should be), but otherwise mostly on point, i think. i don't think he wants to cancel out all criticism... i don't think he's speaking about theoretical/critical analysis.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Thursday, 10 March 2005 05:21 (nineteen years ago) link

xpost:
I was there in the audience, that's how I know about it. Were you there reading, don? I guess not.

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 10 March 2005 14:56 (nineteen years ago) link

That Hell tribute of Bangs tribute is pretty amazing

― Tonal Scope, Thursday, 10 March 2005 15:28 (nineteen years ago) link

Ken, I didn't mean that as a challenge, I meant Please tell us about it!

― don, Thursday, 10 March 2005 16:46 (nineteen years ago) link

I'm trying to remember. It was a while back-early nineties, I think. Just about all I can remember is that various people read excerpts from the book and then Richard was the last guy to go and he said "OK, I'm gonna read my excerpt now - from the index!" He had a big grin on his face while he read, it was only a page or a column of a page, I think it was around the letter H, but I don't know if he actually got to his own name, it was pretty brief. Then the thing was over and I think he was one of the first to leave, IIRC.

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 10 March 2005 17:01 (nineteen years ago) link

I wonder if Bangs would have still died had he reached 1984.

― Pete Scholtes, Thursday, 10 March 2005 22:35 (nineteen years ago) link

Why 1984?

― don, Thursday, 10 March 2005 22:40 (nineteen years ago) link

I don't know, it's just harder for me to imagine him being able to give up on music (more or less) in that grand year, and maybe this would have helped him not die.

― Pete Scholtes, Friday, 18 March 2005 03:13 (nineteen years ago) link

At least one early account had him calling up a friend,"Hey, I just wrote this new song, you gotta hear it," or something like that, enthusiastic. When the friend got there (Lester supposedly always left his door unlocked, as a matter of principle), LB was sitting on his sofa, amp on, guitar in lap, and dead. But that doesn't mean there wasn't some underlying desperation or something. Apparently started using drugs again, and his death was related to that. If so, maybe desperation took the form of trying too hard for inspiration, and that was the/one reason, or rationalization, for taking drugs again?

― don, Friday, 18 March 2005 06:11 (nineteen years ago) link

four years pass...

richard hell is great

― cool app (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, 20 May 2009 18:25 (fifteen years ago) link

this is also a good thread

― cool app (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, 20 May 2009 18:25 (fifteen years ago) link

i'd like to note that Hell didn't like Meltzer at least partly because Meltzer didn't like Hell. (Unsure whose dislike came first.) Meltzer wrote in at least one essay if not more that one of Lester's unsupportable tenets was using Richard Hell as an example of anything positive. Sounded like a personal vendetta.

Meltzer's written plenty of crap over the years, but when he's on his game, he's as strong and thorough as any first-rate writer. Hell? I can't say. Blank Generation, the album, is a masterpiece. But I've never been inclined to read his prose. I might be missing something here. Am I?

My own extremely limited experience with both of them was completely cordial. I didn't ask them to share a room.

― OCONDOR (Pt.1), Thursday, 21 May 2009 01:30 (fifteen years ago) link

A good complement to this one is Prindle's interview w/ Hell:

http://www.markprindle.com/hell-i.htm

― Mark, Thursday, 21 May 2009 05:10 (fifteen years ago) link

Speaking of musicians taking apart poor journalists:

There's trainwrecks, there's horrible uncomfortable trainwrecks, and then there's Mark's interview with HR of Bad Brains. Awesome!

― Mr. Snrub, Thursday, 21 May 2009 18:41 (fifteen years ago) link

the chapter Hell wrote in Rock & Roll Cagematch about the Stones vs. Velvets was pretty good.

― Italics in Baltimore (some dude), Thursday, 21 May 2009 18:45 (fifteen years ago) link

three years pass...

Xgau on Hell's autobio, and Hell's whole thang---really rich:
http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Rock-Roll/Richard-Hell-The-Thrill-Seeking-Years/ba-p/10073

― dow, Saturday, 16 March 2013 23:49 (eleven years ago) link

And speaking of rich, leave us not forget Hell on Bangs upthread: terrific!

― dow, Saturday, 16 March 2013 23:52 (eleven years ago) link

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