Wednesday, September 24, 2008

From the Velvets to the Voidoids - A Pre-Punk History for a Post-Punk World by Clinton Heylin (Penguin Books 1993)


Being 'more suburban', they had something in common with other CBGBs favourites that existed largely outside the scene. The Shirts, like those other local faves the Tuff Darts, were more interested in securing a record deal than in reviving rock & roll.
Annie Golden: We were the hicks from Brooklyn, never aspiring to go across the bridge, but we had read about the Mercer Arts Centre, which had just crumbled, and the back room at Max's, and we went down to see Patti Smith at CBGBs . . . We were holed up in Brooklyn, we all had day jobs, we were rehearsing eight to ten hours into the morning, saving money for equipment. Bands in Manhattan were doing it another way. They were like artists; they were doing minimalist rock and they were starving. But we had this big light show and a big PA.

4 comments:

Kevin Williamson said...

Bought their first album for no other reason than cos it came out in blue vinyl. Should have stuck with black.

Imposs1904 said...

Blue vinyl?

The Velvets? The Voidoids? The Shirts?

I'm too young to remember these things. ;-)

For some reason Heylin is a wee bit sniffy about The Shirts, but I think that they weren't that bad. Didn't break any new ground but they did have a bag full of tunes.

I liked that quote because they were dismissed as hicks for being from Brooklyn whereas nowadays he seems like 97.8% of bands in New York come from there (here).

Kevin Williamson said...

The Shirts.

Apart from "Tell Me Your Plans" nothing really stood out. And nothing was really crap.

It was... okay.

The blue was a lovely bright sky blue though.

PB said...

I'm glad you enjoyed the Peter Laughner collection and thanks for linking by blog. I'll do likewise in the near future.