I’ve been listening to Mink DeVille a lot lately. I’ve been a fan for a long time, but like so much of what we listen to in our late youth (say 17-22) we forget and let the music recede to memory. Part of it, for me, was the change in technology — the move from LPs and tape to CDs made the stuff that I had in my vinyl collection somewhat obsolete.
So, about three weeks ago (July 22), I decided to buy a compilation disk — The Best of Mink DeVille — because I’d missed the band’s mix of blue-eyed soul and punk-rock attitude.
Maybe I knew something I wasn’t supposed to know — Willy DeVille, the band’s artistic leader, its chief songwriter and singer, died this week after a battle with pancreatic cancer. The news, which I heard Friday, saddened me more than I would have thought — DeVille, as I said, had ceased to be a central player in my personal soundtrack. And yet, he was important to me as a roots-rocker with attitude.
In songs like “Cadillac Walk,” “Spanish Stroll” and “Let Me Dream If I Want To,” he created a geography of sound, a sense of place — a mythic Brooklyn of the past and present — that made him stand out from the rest of the punk scene.
DeVille for me combined what I liked best about Southside Johnny and early groups like the Drifters with that in-your-face sense that I got from the rest of his compadres.
Listening today, it might be easy to forget that DeVille was a central player among the New York punkers — mostly because we’ve narrowed our sense of what punk is. But DeVille and the rest of the New York scene (Television, Patti Smith, the Contortions, James Black and the Whites, The Shirts, The Ramones, etc.) were always about more than volume and speed. They were about experimentation and a deconstructed nostalgia that remade music at a time when it was dominated by flaccid arena rockers like Styx and REO Speedwagon.
I’ve probably listened to DeVille’s album on my iPod a dozen times since I bought it, not including the songs I’ve added to various playlists. I’m glad I rediscovered DeVille before he died and know his legacy will live on.
Hank Kalet 