Richard Hell & the Voidoids "Blank Generation" [1977]

As far as monikers go, "Richard Hell" overrates himself; at best, he should be "Dick Purgatory." The only album he stayed competently sober enough to record, "Blank Generation," is a failed approximation of where punk rock music was headed -- overly fussed-over with extensive modulation and most definitely the only punk album ever to incorporate the word "perpetual" repeatedly in its lyric sheet. Likely because he was booted from fellow CBGB band of vermin Television, Hell scrambled to find the nearest thing he could to pinheaded musicians to fill the void(oids) until he settled on the misanthropic Robert Quine, among others. Then, instead of professing some sort of simplistic nihilism that might have been appropriate for the punk rock milieu, Hell opts to write tunes about premature ejaculation and mooching drinks off his groupies, exactly like the frontman of any Rod Stewart tribute band would. That he insists on singing in a vocal range exactly where his voice cracks unfortunately gave The Cure's Robert Smith the brilliant idea to do the same thing, and for that Hell loses even more coolness points. About the only thing that survives from "Blank Generation" is the self-deprecating view of himself and his fellow 20-something nobodies, but even there he gets it wrong: it became Generation X in another dozen years; even dipshits like Billy Idol got that much right.