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Blank Generation (album)

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Untitled

Blank Generation is the first album by punk rock band Richard Hell and the Voidoids, produced by Richard Gottehrer and released in 1977 on Sire Records. The title track is loosely based on the single "The Beat Generation," a late-1950s collaboration between Bob McFadden and poet Rod McKuen.

Cover design

The original album sleeve feature a front cover photo of Hell in black jeans and shirtless, opening a frayed jacket to reveal the phrase, "YOU MAKE ME _______", written across his chest. The photo was taken by CBGB's unofficial photographer, Roberta Bayley. The back cover featured a posed photo of Hell and the Voidoids taken by Kate Simon.

An interesting feature of the inside cover collage is a set of perfectly meaningful words in Croatian, that constitute a perfectly meaningless sentence. The text goes: „Za svatko taj trpjeti i izgubiti!” A word-for-word translation back to English makes the gibberish understandable: “For everyone that suffers and loses!” (The correct Croatian sentence would be: „Za svakoga koji trpi i gubi!”).

1990 CD reissue

The 1990 CD reissue of Blank Generation differs in several ways from the original vinyl album. It includes two bonus tracks: a version of the pop standard, "All the Way", and an original, "I'm Your Man" (not the Leonard Cohen song of same name). Both are outtakes from the original album sessions. Also, "Down at the Rock & Roll Club" is a noticeably different take than that which was on the original LP; it features no drums during most of the verses. The CD album cover is also different than the original.

Track listing

All songs written by Richard Hell except as indicated.

Side one

  1. "Love Comes in Spurts" – 2:03
  2. "Liars Beware"* (Hell, Ivan Julian) – 2:52
  3. "New Pleasure"* 1:58
  4. "Betrayal Takes Two" (Hell, Julian) – 3:37
  5. "Down at the Rock and Roll Club" – 4:05
  6. "Who Says?" – 2:07

Side two

  1. "Blank Generation" – 2:45
  2. "Walking on the Water" (John Fogerty, Tom Fogerty) – 2:17
  3. "The Plan" – 3:56
  4. "Another World"* – 8:14

*Recorded at Electric Lady Studios, all other tracks recorded at Plaza Sound.

CD reissue bonus tracks

  1. "I'm Your Man" – 2:55
  2. "All the Way" (Sammy Cahn, Jimmy Van Heusen) – 3:22

Personnel

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