Happy Belated Deathday

Today while listening to an April 15 edition of WFMU's Three Chord Monte program, DJ Joe Belock mentioned that not only was it tax day but also the 7th anniversary of Joey Ramone's death. Seven years!

Joey Ramone - seven feet tall, skinny, ugly, coke bottle glasses - was, and still is, one of the most instantly recognisable and arguably most important figures in rock & roll. Many of my peers may scoff at remarks like this because they think the last good rock record was J Geils or Bob Seger, and the youngsters just consider him an old dead guy, but were it not for Joey Ramone you probably wouldn't be listening to whatever you listen to today, unless its Jay-Z or Mariah Carey in which case who gives a shit about you & your shitty musical opinions anyway.

In 1976 Creem Magazine started reporting on The Ramones (Rolling Stone was too "hip" to cover them - yeah, & today's issues are like a 21st century Tiger Beat). Growing up I thought the new stuff was always - always - worth listening to (how else did we get to Beatles & Stones?), and since a lot of the Creem journalists had New York ties in one way or another, The Ramones & the burgeoning downtown NY punk scene was getting a lot of coverage, way before any punk rock records were released. I was listening to Bowie and Roxy Music at the time so I couldn't for the life of me imagine what The Ramones sounded like, their name was like they were a Latino band - like Santana or something. I had heard Patti Smith in '75 but was disappointed because I thought it was just not polished enough or rockin' enough - that's fair, but at the time I didn't quite understand the scene. So on my 23rd birthday I dropped my ex-wife at her grandparents and went round the corner to the local Harmony House stockists & took a chance on the first Ramones lp, hoping it wasn't another Patti Smith art-fest (although I bought that one the previous year, too). I was used to taking chances -I bought Roxy Music because Melody Maker said 'brilliant!'- and everything in Creem pointed to this being a safe bet.

As soon as that needle hit the grooves everything changed, and forever after (the Pistols took it a step further the following year, but thankfully that was the nature of the scene). Buzzsaw guitars, solid four-four drums, and Joey's voice was a mixture of British pop and New York pizza parlor. They came informed by 50's rock'n'roll. The British Invasion. Girl Groups. Brill Building. Phil Spector. They had a great sense of humor: "beat on the brat with a baseball bat", "now I wanna sniff some glue", "I don't wanna walk around with you so why you wanna walk around with me" - hyuk, it was like Mad Magazine came to life! Alfred E. Newman backed by The Who!

I talked two friends into seeing The Ramones first ever Detroit show in September 1976. We went to the 10:30 late show, and people were exiting the venue from the early show, obviously very excited about what they had just witnessed, yelling & screaming, echoing Dee Dee Ramone's shouted-out "one-two-three-four!" intros. My friends and I looked at each other in disbelief - the streets were filled with people, happy people. We were definitely going to see something big. We were well oiled by showtime. They hit the stage & never stopped. I remember standing in front of the stage & singing along to every song (I had been listening to the album pretty much non-stop for the past three months - everything else seemed so old fashioned) Fifteen or sixteen songs in about 30 minutes. And it was such an energetic and powerful show that I certainly did not feel short changed by the length of the set. And besides shortly thereafter I had read that's all they knew how to play. Perfect!

There are two Ramones dvds that are must-haves: "End Of The Century" which tells the entire story better than anything I could ever hint at, and "It's Alive!" which is three hours plus of 20-some years of live performances.

The Ramones were the tightest band ever, there was no fat - no guitar solos, no drum solos, no song over three minutes (most of 'em clocking in at just two), and they were true rock'n'roll fans, you could tell. Reports many years later from different cities echoed the same thing, that after they hit town a definite local scene had started where previously there was none. Detroit was probably no exception, except that they never know how to sustain & grow. Maybe Detroit WAS the exception: Bookie's, the only punk club in town, didn't open until two years later.

The Ramones lasted more than twenty years and their vision was singular. Their sound got bigger, and faster, unbelievable as that may seem. And they were pretty much great for most of that time. They became massive world-wide, and that's without radio airplay (TV picked up "Blitzkrieg Bop" for commercials long after their demise). Joey died from lymphatic cancer in 2001. Bassist Dee Dee Ramone died two months after they were inducted into the Rock&Roll Hall Of Fame in 2002, and guitarist Johnny Ramone went after him in 2004, also a cancer victim, the same day the Ramones museum opened in Berlin (still the only one to this day). Only Dee Dee's death was drug related. Drummer Tommy Ramone is the sole remaining member, and ironically he left the band after the first three albums.

In addition, it was also 37 years ago that I participated in my first major anti-war protest march. It was April 30, 1971, the march on the Warren Tank Plant. The first car that picked me up hitchiking to the rally died en route; the second was involved in an accident, totalling the car.

Gabba Gabba Hey!