Dearest Joey, Ten Years Gone

Ten years ago today, the world was robbed of a glorious mutant- Queens native Jeffrey Hyman, who struggled with poor health and mental illness throughout his life, but managed to transform himself into beloved rock icon Joey Ramone, succumbed to lymphatic cancer and died in New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Jeffrey was, according to his brother Mickey (nee Mitchell Lee Hyman) Leigh's memoir, I Slept with Joey Ramone, born with a Sacrococcygeal teratoma, the removal of which affected the development of his nervous system. As a clumsy, extremely tall and gangly kid, he was often the target of bullies. Despite all this, he was able to forge a career as a rock pioneer, fronting seminal punk band the Ramones.

Joey's was the quintessential "ugly duckling" story- he was the perpetual outsider who, through hard work (made difficult by his Obsessive–compulsive disorder- documented in Mickey Leigh's book- and generally poor health) and his own particular, peculiar brand of charisma, changed into a "swan" of unconventional beauty. In the afterword of I Slept with Joey Ramone, Mickey Leigh writes about leaving the hospital after Joey's death, and hitting the streets on which the Spin Magazine "25 Years of Punk" poster featuring a picture of Joey were plastered:


But when we left the hospital, I saw my brother all over the city. Not only on those posters on the walls, but all over the place. I saw him in the thousands of kids on the streets who wore holes in the knees of their jeans and oval-shaped sunglasses. I felt him the songs he’d written and sung.

He was still everywhere. But mainly, he was in my heart and my soul, in my flesh and blood, and in my mind. To his kid brother, he was a towering hero- not just because he was Joey Ramone but because he was so much more. He was the ultimate underdog who soared to a place far beyond mere overachievement. As low as he’d been, he never let it prevent him from setting his sights on astronomical heights. His brave plight was inspiring, as I intend his story to be.


I fell in love with the Ramones as a child... their catchy, demented songs, and unforgettable, uniform look were fascinating to me. Luckily, I discovered a radio station which not only played Ramones music, but often featured call-ins or guest spots by Joey Ramone. Yeah, the Ramones were a prominent part of the soundtrack to my life. I didn't know about Joey's physical and mental health issues- he was just an extremely distinctive, larger-than-life figure who sang bizarre songs about grotesque, often hilarious, subjects such as cretin hops and blitzkrieg bops. Coming from a large, close-knit family, We're a Happy Family was a particular favorite. I have to say, the John Holmstrom cartoons on the liner of Rocket to Russia were also a considerable part of the Ramones' appeal to my smartass teen self.

By the time I was old enough to see the Ramones live, they were already on the decline- I remember Joey looking bloated, like a gigantic harvestman which had been deprived of four of its limbs, and he dropped the mic stand, but he was glorious, he was Joey Ramone! Of course, even at the ebb of his powers, he put on a better show than most other performers.

I found out about Joey's death while driving home from celebrating Easter at my mom's place in Northern Virginia (she moved there in the late 90's) with my brother Sweetums. When we got to South Jersey, within range of the big AM stations in NYC, we turned on the all-news station and heard that Joey had died. Tears streaming down our cheeks, we memorialized Joey in the only appropriate fashion- we blasted the Ramones Anthology CD set (Tommy Westerberg never travels far without a little Big Star- I never roam far from home, without a bunch of Ramones) the rest of the way home, singing with heavy hearts.



GRRR... I'm not getting any Youtube "embed" codes using my antiquated browser on my antiquated laptop- I'll try to post some Ramones videos when I get to work, and can use the office Binary Numbers Mill.

UPDATE: Post title changed to something more poetic...

SECOND UPDATE: Thanks to BDR, who saved me from "Youtube N00b" status, I can add some Ramonesy goodness to the post- here are three of my favorites:











So as not to seem remiss, here is Joey's cover of What a Wonderful World, released posthumously (gotta love the fact that it starts with the riff from "Pretty Vacant"):





Joey's last album also included his heartfelt tribute to (!!!) Maria Bartiromo.

The Last Original Ramone

It was with great sadness that I read of the passing of Tamás Erdélyi, the Budapest-born musician who reinvented himself as Ramones' drummer Tommy Ramone. I always thought of him as "the short one", because he stood on a small "ledge" while posing for the cover of the band's debut album. Even more significantly than serving as drummer on the band's first three albums, Tommy co-produced the albums. He also served as the "straight man" in a band that featured three demented characters. To give you an idea of Tommy's role in the band, this anecdote, from Mickey Leigh's wonderful family memoir I Slept with Joey Ramone, should suffice:


Johnny had his own idea of fun, a fascination with depraved people like Hitler and Charles Manson. Dee Dee shared it, especially the Nazi thing- possibly resulting from his boyhood fantasies while growing up in post-World War II Germany, or possibly because he was just mentally unbalanced. For whatever reason, some of this found its way into the fabric of the band's compositions.
Tommy brought a few songs to the table, as well. He'd written "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" himself and had come in with a new one called "Animal Hop". "Animal Hop" is a prime example of how the personalities, styles, and visions of the band's members clashed and how the collaborative process really paid off.
"I wrote 'Blitzkrieg Bop'," Tommy Ramone declared. "I wanted to contribute, too, but the guys weren't real receptive to my input. Whenever I wrote a song for the band, it'd have to be incredibly good. This wasn't John, but mostly Dee Dee, because Dee Dee was very competitive. I don't know how Joey felt, because Joey was very quiet. Joey would just sit there not saying anything. But I wrote this song originally called 'Animal Hop', and it was too good to be rejected. It wasn't about Nazis. It's about kids going to a show and having a good time.
"It went, 'They're forming in a straight line, they're going through a tight wind, the kids are losing their mind, the Animal Hop.'
"There's a line that goes, 'Hey, ho, let's go, they're shouting in the back now.'
"Dee Dee said, 'Animal Hop'? Let's call it 'Blitzkrieg Bop'! Dee Dee was sabotaging the song," Tommy recalled, exasperated. "He said, 'I don't like that line "They're shouting in the back now"- say, "They shoot 'em in the back now."' He wanted to do the Nazi thing, so that it would never get played on the radio!"
As Johnny summed up the confusion, "Basically we decided to write some crazy bubblegum music.

Besides writing such Ramones staples as the uncharacteristically sweet "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" and the sabotaged-to-the-point-of-transgression "Blitzkrieg Bop", Tommy was involved in the production of the band's first album, and as Mr Leigh relates in his book, he bumped up against Johnny with regards to the use of overdubs. Tommy wanted to use overdubbed tracks to create a fuller sound while Johnny insisted that the band use single tracks to keep a spare, "live" sound. I have to say that I think Johnny was right in this instance, and that Dee Dee's sabotage of the probably-soon-to-be-forgotten "Animal Bop" resulted in a transcendentally, transgressively gonzo masterpiece- the Ramones' first album had some truly warped material on it, something which has been lost in the cartoonish sanitization of the band.

Besides producing albums for the Ramones even after Marky Ramone replaced him on drums, Tommy Ramone produced the Replacements' masterpiece Tim (my favorite track on the album is the heartachingly sad "Here Comes a Regular"- the sort of downside of "Cheers"). Tommy's latest project was in the acoustic duo Uncle Monk, along with his S/O Claudia Tienan.

Enough of the eulogizing, it's time to remember the man in the best possible way, blasting some of his music! Here's Tommy doing an acoustic version of "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend":





Here's the famous 1977 live version of "Blitzkrieg Bop" off of the seminal album It's Alive:





Goodbye, last standing original Ramone, and thank you for keeping your totally gonzo bandmates grounded just enough to put out some of the best headbanging music ever released.

Missing Joey More than Ever Now

A major news story in these here United States is Chief Justice Roberts' surprise vote blocking a Louisiana law that would restrict abortion clinics. Predictably, Susan Collins was wrong about Barty the Boofer, proving how useless she is.

Anyway, that's not what I was going to post about... poking around the t00bz, I found a reference to a performance by Joey Ramone at a 1993 pro-choice benefit, fronting a pickup supergroup called The Resistance (Joan Jett put in an appearance playing guitar). The band played mainly covers,
from John Lennon to Sam Cooke to, in a case of foreshadowing, Louis Armstrong. I found an audio recording of the performance, which is wonderful:





Longtime readers will know that I have been a huge Ramones fan since I was a child, and it's nice to know that, while he played a cartoon lunatic delinquent in his band persona, Joey Ramone was a sensitive, articulate liberal. His monologue at the beginning of this performance is a testimony to his values, to his humane nature. We lost Joey to lymphoma on 4/15/2001, a loss which I took pretty hard (my brother Sweetums and I were returning to NYC from Easter at mom's house in Virginia, and when we heard the news on the radio, we blasted All the Stuff and More all the way home, singing along with tears in our eyes). Looking back, it was a loss for all of America. We could use more voices like Joey's, and I'm not just talking about his Queens-accented sorta-bleat/kinda-croon.

An Addendum to My Last Post

The Ramones, despite their posthumous ubiquity, were a cult band- their only gold record in the States was career retrospective/greatest hits album Ramones Mania. Part of the band's failure to attain greater commercial success was, no doubt, due to the fact that many of the band's songs were transgressive. In his memoir (co-authored with Legs McNeil) I Slept with Joey Ramone, Joey's Brother Mickey Leigh recounts some of the appalling, often hilarious, subject matter of the band's songs. Regarding Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World, in which a nice Jewish boy (as the cliche goes) from Forest Hills sings about being a Nazi:

(Sire Records executive) Seymour Stein came up to the studio in the afternoon and complained, "You can't say, 'I'm a Nazi baby, I'm a Nazi, yes I am,'" referring to the opening lines of the song "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World," which had become the Ramones' signature closer at live shows. It was kind of ridiculous, but not to Seymour. The words are:

I'm a Nazi, baby; I'm a Nazi yes I am
I'm a Nazi shatzi, y'know I fight for the Fatherland.
Little German boy, being pushed around
Little German boy, in a German town

It didn't offend me, and I'm a Jew.

It didn't offend my brother.

Tommy, whose parents had narrowly escaped the death camps during the Holocaust, was more sensitive to this issue but acquiesced so as not to impede the band's artistic freedom and black humor. To me, the song conjured up the image of a weak, skinny German kid, who after being bullied in his own little burg, found a way to become one of the bullies. It was like a glimpse into the mind-set of a typical Hitler Youth member, brilliantly summed up in two lines.

Seymour was insistent that the band change the lyrics. The Ramones were sticking to their guns. A heated and emotional argument ensued; it looked as if this could be a deal-breaker.

Then they started talking about alternatives and came up with the line, "I'm a shock trooper in a stupor, yes I am."

Even that was too much for Seymour; to him, it was equally offensive.

But after a big struggle he finally gave in and allowed them to go with "shock trooper."

"I don't know if I should admit it," Seymour later confessed, "because I got over it pretty quickly, but I wasn't pleased with the Nazi references in the songs. You can't throw away twenty years of Jewish upbringing in Brooklyn."





Regarding 53rd and 3rd, Mickey Leigh recounted this:

"We got away with a lotta stuff then that we wouldn't have if we'd been big," said Johnny. "Dee Dee came up with '53rd and 3rd' on the first album. I thought it was funny: I didn't know it was anything from real experience. I thought we were just singing about warped subjects that no one else sang about. It doesn't mean that we had to be doing it."

Fifty-third Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan was the notorious spot where young male hustlers made themselves available.

"To Johnny's dying day," Danny Fields (the band's manager) laughed, "Johnny would never admit to knowing that '53rd and 3rd' was about Dee Dee turning tricks!"





My favorite anecdote concerns the choice of first single from the second album, Leave Home:

In January 1977," Legs McNeil recalled, "about a month before the Ramones' second album, Leave Home, came out, Danny Fields held a private listening party for me and John Holmstrom at his loft on Twentieth Street. After we listened through it twice, Danny reappeared and asked us what our favorite song was and what should be the single. I blurted out, 'Carbona Not Glue,' which to me was clearly the best song on the record. The song was written as a follow-up to 'Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue.' It was meant to clarify that while glue might not be good for you, the cleaning fluid Carbona was definitely a better high.

"Danny said, 'I was afraid you were going to say that. Carbona is a registered trademark and we might have to take it off the album.'

"I was shocked," Legs recalled. "It was such a great song, so radio-friendly- like a song the Beatles or the Rolling Stones would have written if they were just starting out in 1976 with great harmonies and catchy lyrics."

"Carbona Not Glue" a "radio-friendly" song?

Though Legs's (sic) enthusiasm was totally sincere, his logic had betrayed him.

As much as I loved Leave Home, I didn't expect to see radio programmers adding a song about getting high by inhaling toxic cleaning products to their playlists anytime soon.

Carbona Not Glue was removed from the album, and Sheena is a Punk Rocker was substituted for it. The song wasn't re-released for years:





Seeing that I've excerpted heavily from his book, I'm going to make a plug. I Slept with Joey Ramone is not a RAWK GAWD hagiography- it's a no-punches-pulled look at living with a fascinating, sometimes-difficult individual. If you're a Ramones fan, or are interested in the history of punk, it is an indispensible read. If you love or have loved someone who is sometimes infuriating, it is a good read. It's funny, it's melancholy... Mickey Leigh gives us an unvarnished view of his family, his friends, and himself- he spares no one but there's an underlying affection for the often-dysfunctional persons with whom he's shared his life.

As a coda, here's a video for I Won't Be Your Victim, a Screamer of the Week (Joey called into the radio station to cast his vote) by Mickey Leigh's band "The Rattlers", which has been made into a video for the It Gets Better Campaign:





Mickey's voice bears a resemblance to his older brother's unforgettable croon. Unable to hold notes for long, Joey tapped his brother to sing backup (Blitzkrieg Bop and I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You) and additional vocals (the "ooh's" on Judy is a Punk and I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend) on the first Ramones album.

The Architect of Much of My Musical Taste

On Tuesday, the local NPR affiliate had a really great interview with Seymour Stein, who co-founded the Sire Records label with musical genius Richard Gottehrer. Mr Stein was one of the godfathers of the NYC punk scene of the 1970s, having signed my beloved Ramones, Talking Heads and Dead Boys. He also brought such overseas bands as the Undertones (Derry's Ramones), Echo and the Bunnymen, the Smiths. He also signed the Pretenders and some woman named Ciccone, who sang lead on some Sex Pistols effort. He also signed the Replacements and Ice-T to Sire Records.

Needless to say, Seymour Stein has had an outsized influence on my musical tastes, since I was a wee lad. The list of artists recording for Sire encompasses much of my music collection. One of my favorite stories about Seymour Stein was recounted by Joey Ramone's brother Mickey Leigh in his memoir I Slept with Joey Ramone, an account of Seymour's distaste for a particularly transgressive song recorded for the first Ramones album:


(Sire Records executive) Seymour Stein came up to the studio in the afternoon and complained, "You can't say, 'I'm a Nazi baby, I'm a Nazi, yes I am,'" referring to the opening lines of the song "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World," which had become the Ramones' signature closer at live shows. It was kind of ridiculous, but not to Seymour. The words are:

I'm a Nazi, baby; I'm a Nazi yes I am
I'm a Nazi shatzi, y'know I fight for the Fatherland.
Little German boy, being pushed around
Little German boy, in a German town

It didn't offend me, and I'm a Jew.

It didn't offend my brother.

Tommy, whose parents had narrowly escaped the death camps during the Holocaust, was more sensitive to this issue but acquiesced so as not to impede the band's artistic freedom and black humor. To me, the song conjured up the image of a weak, skinny German kid, who after being bullied in his own little burg, found a way to become one of the bullies. It was like a glimpse into the mind-set of a typical Hitler Youth member, brilliantly summed up in two lines.

Seymour was insistent that the band change the lyrics. The Ramones were sticking to their guns. A heated and emotional argument ensued; it looked as if this could be a deal-breaker.

Then they started talking about alternatives and came up with the line, "I'm a shock trooper in a stupor, yes I am."

Even that was too much for Seymour; to him, it was equally offensive.

But after a big struggle he finally gave in and allowed them to go with "shock trooper."

"I don't know if I should admit it," Seymour later confessed, "because I got over it pretty quickly, but I wasn't pleased with the Nazi references in the songs. You can't throw away twenty years of Jewish upbringing in Brooklyn."


If you are at all a fan of any of the bands signed to Sire Records, the NPR interview is a fun listen. After many years of playing songs by bands Seymour Stein signed, it was nice to hear the voice of the man himself.

Bye Bye Baby, Thanks for the Music

Today's bummer is news that Veronica Bennett, known to music fans as Ronnie Spector, has left us at the age of 78.  With her glorious voice and stunning good looks, Ronnie was a pop music icon in a decade suffused with a cavalcade of girl groups.  Starting off as Ronnie and the Relatives, the Ronettes, composed of Ronnie, her sister Estelle, and cousin Nedra Talley, were known as much for their big hair and brassy attitude as they were for their glorious harmonies.  The trio got their first big break during an attempt to enter the Peppermint Lounge while underage- the club manager mistook them for the house band's background dancers, and bandleader David Brigati actually handed the microphone to Ronnie.  This led to Ronnie and the Relatives being hired by the Peppermint Lounge as regular house performers.

One of the earliest singles by the Ronnie and the Relatives was the 1962 release Silhouettes, a gorgeous song about unrequited love:

In 1963, Ronnie and her relatives auditioned for Phil Spector, who wanted to sign Ronnie as a solo act, but her mother insisted that the family members be signed as a package deal.  The band was then dubbed the Ronettes.

The Ronettes' first single, Be My Baby, was a smash hit, and an influential one (Brian Wilson wrote Don't Worry Baby as a tribute, and Billy Joel's Say Goodbye to Hollywood was also inspired by it).  To hear it is to fall in love with it:

The follow-up, Baby I Love You, was recorded by Ronnie backed by Sonny and Cher and Darlene Love, Estelle and Nedra, aided by their cousin Elaine, being obliged to tour across the US with Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars.  Again, while I prefer the yearning of Be My Baby, I have to say that Ronnie absolutely knocked it out of the park vocally:

In 1964, the Ronettes toured the UK, where they met the Beatles and had an obscure band called the Rolling Stones perform as their opening act.

Upon their return to the US, the Ronettes recorded Keep on Dancing, but Phil Spector refused to release the single (perhaps a harbinger of bad, horrible things to come).  It's a nice single, I can't imagine why Phil dinged it, but I'm not a control freak:

 

Phil was a violent, abusive control freak, he insisted that Ronnie remain in California when the Ronettes toured as an opening act for the Beatles in 1966.   After the tour, the Ronettes recorded I Can Hear Music, which inexplicably wasn't a hit, though the Beach Boys charted with a cover version:

 

The Ronettes broke up after a 1967 European tour.

Things got worse after Ronnie married Phil Spector in 1968- Spector kept her confined to their house in California and threatened to kill her if she left him.  Eventually, her mother was able to sneak her out of the house.  Not content with holding her captive and subjecting her to emotional abuse, Phil Spector also withheld royalties from Ronnie, Estelle, and Nedra.  He also used his industry clout to stymie any efforts by Ronnie to restart her career, though she did record some interesting songs, such as this George Harrison penned number:

And here's where I note that the local Indian restaurant closed over an hour ago...

In 1976, Ronnie sang a duet with Southside Johnny on a Bruce Springsteen composition, You Mean So Much to Me:

She also recorded a cover of Billy Joel's homage to her, Say Goodbye to Hollywood:

Although she had admirers and collaborators among up-and-comers like Springsteeen and Joel, a mainstream comeback was seemingly out of reach for the erstwhile chart-topper.  In the 1980s, her comeback came when journeyman rock-and/or-roller Eddie Money, looking to jumpstart a flagging career, insisted on having Ronnie Spector sing on his 'Hail Mary' comeback single.  Eddie recalled his phone conversation with a skeptical Ronnie Spector, still traumatized by her abuse by Phil Spector:

“I could hear clinking and clanking in the background,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Ronnie, what are you doing?’ 

She said, ‘I’m doing the dishes, and I gotta change the kids’ bedding. … I’m not really in the business anymore, Eddie. Phil Spector and all that, it was a nightmare.”

Thankfully, Ronnie Spector decided to sing backup on Money's Take Me Home Tonight, which hit number four on the American record charts, and brought her out of exile from the music industry and put her back where she belonged, at the top of the pops:

 

 Soon afterwards, the Ronettes won a lawsuit against Phil Spector for unpaid royalties.

Other collaborations followed Ronnie Spector's comeback, notably an EP produced by Joey Ramone, who also had his traumatic run-in with Phil Spector, though the extent of Spector's malfeasance in this paarticular instance (he did end up murdering a woman) may be exaggerated.  Here's Ronnie singing a duet with Joey Ramone on Bye Bye Baby:

Here's to Ronnie Spector- star, survivor, proof that second chances are possible.  Thankfully, she was able to overcome the obstacles set in her way and continue to record for decades after her return to the music industry.  She exuded graciousness and gratitude regarding her comeback, and she was very funny, despite the trauma she experienced:

What an amazing legacy... thankfully, we weren't totally robbed of it.

Good Night, Sweet Lou

I learned of the death of Lou Reed at one o'clock this morning after working a long, somewhat punishing day at our fall fundraiser. It was somehow appropriate that Lou shuffled off this mortal coil on a Sunday morning, that being the title of an incongruously pretty Velvet Underground song:





Brooklyn-born Lewis Allan Reed was the quintessential New York musician- cerebral, cutting edge, deadpan, and transgressive. His career spanned from the nascent days of the hippies to the salad days of the hipsters, his loyalty to the city never waned even through the Bad Old Days of the mid-to-late 70s or the sterile, crass days of the Giuliani administration. Of course, the only way to memorialize a man like Lou Reed is to listen to his body of work, and compiling this post will allow me to deal with my melancholy by listening to a lot of great music (I have to confess that Lou's death didn't hit me like Joey Ramone's death did- me being older now, and Lou being a lot less fragile than Joey was- I shed a tear for Joey on a drive with my brother Sweetums from Mom's house in Virginia to our native New York and blasted the two-disc Ramones compilation- I merely felt a bit melancholy when I heard that Lou had died, and blasted the traffic report on my drive home). Anyway, Roy has a great take on Lou's career, but here's my personal take on Lou's music, and its place in my life.

While some pundits characterized Lou as a malcontent, there was a lighter side to him that was made evident in his deadpan jokey love letter to his Brooklyn boyhood:





Another goofy oddball entry in the Reed canon (which is full of serious oddball material) is Reed's take on cartoon villainy, as he embodies an evil, postapocalyptic proto-furry in a somewhat obscure Canadian animated feature:




A guy who took himself too seriously couldn't have recorded that number.

Reed's best-known song, inexplicably played on mainstream radio stations despite its transgressive subject matter, was Walk on the Wild Side, which offered biographical snippets about members of Andy Warhol's "Factory". The song detailed the migration of disaffected suburbanites to the Big City and their subsequent transformation into superstars:





Years later, with the hard times in NYC in the 70s and the Reagan-era AIDS policy that ravaged the NYC arts scene having left their mark, Lou wrote Dirty Boulevard... the "TV whores" Reed describes in this song didn't have an escape into "superstardom" like Candy did. Dirty Boulevard describes living on the wild side, with no prospect of escape:





And now, on to Sweet Jane, my all-time favorite Lou Reed song, a song which perfectly encapsulates Lou's range. A 1969 live version, recorded before the song debuted on the album "Loaded" is a tender, almost jazzy number:





In contrast, the version which made it onto "Loaded" is more of a straightforward rocker, and the 1974 live version from "Rock and Roll Animal" may be the most "rock and roll" rock and roll song ever performed. I'm going to post a lesser known live version from a 1974 Paris concert (even though the video quality leaves something to be desired and the organ levels are too high- heh heh) because it has actual performance footage:





Of course, one could go on, citing even more great songs like Sister Ray, Heroin, Who Loves the Sun or more recent ones such as Romeo Had Juliette (sic). Brian Eno was reported to have said, "The first Velvet Underground record sold 30,000 copies in the first five years, I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!” Whether actually true or not, Lou certainly had an influence disproportionate to his chart positions. He lived longer than I would have guessed he would if you had asked me back in 1987 or so, in light of his "rock and roll lifestyle", but his passing leaves me with a sense of melancholy. Thanks for the legacy, Metal Machine Music Man.


Post title conflates Hamlet and the 1970s Yankees roster

The Feast of San Jose de la Selva de las Colinas

On this day in 1951, Joey Ramone was born. I've written about Joey and the band before, so I figure the best way to commemorate Joey's birthday is to post an entire Ramones concert from the height of the band's career:





For an read sure to interest Ramones fans, this blog has been dissecting all of the Ramones' tracks in order. It's been a while since I've caught up with my reading.

Wow, two "dead rock star" posts in a row. I must be waxing nostalgic here.

Beavis Goes to Bitburg

This weekend saw dueling fascist snoozefests in DC- the emo-boy Nazis and the insufficiently Aryan fascist contingent that they hate. At any rate, less than a hundred fascists showed up at both rallies, proving that Saturday Right Fever isn't bringing all the boys to the yard... not even all of the milk-drinking 'Proud Boys'.

Despite the unpopularity of the Anime Nazi contingents, the cool kids all noticed that Eric Trump is now sporting the 'fashy haircut' popular with the cartoon frog set... Beavis Goes to Bitburg.

Besides making the joke in the post title, this post gives me an excuse to post one of the few Ramones songs that was overtly political:





Despite the fact that the Ramones often sang about transgressive topics and invoked Nazi imagery for shock value, Joey Ramone was a nice, liberal Jewish boy from Queens... for all of his Blitzkrieg Bopping, I'm sure he'd be appalled at the rise of openly neo-Nazi groups, and the media's refusal to condemn them.

The Universe Being Weird, or Earworm Confirmed

Last Saturday, I was inflicted by an earworm, a song I hadn't heard in years, the title and artist unknown to me. I had a lyric to go by, a somewhat generic 'I want to tell you today'. Poking around the t00bz, I found the song, a dance number from 1983 called Tell You (Today) by a band named Loose Joints, which was musician Arthur Russell and a revolving cast of collaborators. It's a jaunty tune, with just a hint of wistfulness For the record, I found the concert I posted last Saturday by Googling vocalist Joyce Bowden and discovering that she had collaborated with Joey Ramone in The Resistance. Ever since Saturday, I've been binge listening to various versions of the song, remixes, even a cover by Robyn (but not the one you're thinking of). This evening, when I stopped at the H Mart in Yonkers, I heard a by-now once-again familiar song on the store's sound system:





It was weird to hear this song completely randomly so soon after I had rediscovered it... the universe is a pretty bizarre place, to be sure. As a sad coda to this post, I have to note that Arthur Russell, a multi-instrumentalist who worked in musical genres ranging from minimalism to disco, a perfectionist who often didn't finish projects, succumbed, like all-too-many artists in late 20th Century New York City, succumbed to AIDS in 1992. As a kid, I never found out his name, now that I am a fan, I lament that fact.

Combing Through the Archives of an Alternate Universe

Thunder's comment on my last post inspired me to do some gazoogling, and I found a blog which is going to do a track-by-track dissection of the entire Ramones' oeuvre, including rarities and demos. The blog has its genesis in a post by the same author on his other blog which posits an "alternate universe" debut album by the Ramones. For a taste of what could have been, here's the demo version of Judy is a Punk:





The album version features Mickey Leigh (Joey Ramone's brother) singing "OOO-OOO-OO-OOO" during the bridge:





Here's a live version, for great justice the sake of completeness:





Here's the demo of Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World complete with the lyrics which caused Sire Records' Seymour Stein's toenails to curl:




The album version has slightly "tamed" lyrics:





If you are a Ramones fan, you owe it to yourself to check out thes two blogs, but be forewarned, they are a bit of a "time sink"... you didn't need to read the news, though.

I Don't Want the President to Be a Pinhead no More

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I am a huge Ramones fan- the band played a big role in the soundtrack of my live ever since I was a pup. The goofy, cartoonishly transgressive music of the Ramones was gleefully, intentionally dumbed-down (the concept behind the band, with its ironclad standardized image, revealed a hidden sophistication). Put succinctly, the Ramones were really smart about playing dumb... unlike the current occupant of the White House, whose bone-stupid handwritten notes inspired this bit of hilarity:

somebody on twitter today: trump's weird hand-scrawled denial today sounds like a ramones song.

me: pic.twitter.com/mynZjx0E0M

— Alex Kliment (@SaoSasha) November 21, 2019

By hilarity, I mean terror... the President of these here United States is a real pinhead, unlike fellow son of Queens Joey Ramone, who played at being a pinhead:





'Gabba Gabba Hey' is more eloquent than anything The Donald has ever uttered.

One Ticket to Paradise

I pretty much gave up on 'Classic Radio' when I was eleven years old, when I found the storied WLIR on the left side of the dial, and then discovered college radio, in all of its glorious anarchy. That didn't mean that I didn't get an earful of 'Classic Rock'. One of the rock-and-roll 'journeymen' who played the sort of reliable background music for a kegger was Eddie Money, nee Mahoney, who succumbed to esophageal cancer and heart disease at the age of 70. I didn't know that he was a Brooklyn buy, but as Tengrain relates, he kicked off his rock career in the SF Bay Area.

My introduction to Eddie Money's music was Two Tickets to Paradise, a working class kid's plea to a girl that he can't afford to take on an exotic vacation:


“Well, I was going with a girl at the time. She was in college and I was in college and her mother wanted her to meet somebody that was actually making a living,” Money told Rolling Stone of the song’s inspiration in 2018. “She had been dating the mayor’s son and I didn’t have any money to take her to Bermuda or Hawaii or anything else like that. So I wanted to take her on a Greyhound bus ride to the California Redwoods. It would only cost maybe 62 dollars for the both of us. But she dumped me and it never happened, so who knows?”





Like a lot of rock stars, he had his problems with substance abuse, but he survived and recovered, and was upfront about this unfortunate phase of his life. In the mid-80s, his career had stalled, but he pulled himself out of his slump with a simple song about romantic, by which I mean erotic, yearning... in a genius move, his lyrics incorporated a reference to 60s girl group icon Ronnie Spector, who had been hounded out of the music industry by her abusive, powerful husband... and he invited her to accompany him on the song. The story of the collaboration is quite remarkable:


“I could hear clinking and clanking in the background,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Ronnie, what are you doing?’ She said, ‘I’m doing the dishes, and I gotta change the kids’ bedding. … I’m not really in the business anymore, Eddie. Phil Spector and all that, it was a nightmare.”


The resultant song, Take Me Home Tonight served its purpose, hitting number four on the Billboard top 100, thereby reviving Money's career and bringing Ronnie Spector back from exile and putting her back where she always belonged, at the top of the charts:





A simple song about wanting to bone became a transcendent comeback narrative for both artists, and led to a Ronaissance, as Ronnie headlined a Christmas concert series and collaborated with unabashed girl group fan Joey Ramone. Besides his own considerable body of work, I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to Eddie Money for coaxing Ronnie back into the studio.

He also came across as a decent guy, married to the same woman for thirty years, father to five kids. He owned up to his mistakes, overcame them and maintained a good sense of humor about his life and career, with a knack for self-deprecation:





For the record, I think my favorite song by the guy was I Think I'm in Love, the video for which showcases a goofy sense of humor, which is refreshing for a RAWK GAWD:





I think he earned that ticket to paradise.

Happy Valentine's Day

Today marks the celebration of the solemn Feast of St. Valentine, a day devoted to the celebration of gang violence. On this feast day commemorating a celibate martyr, we celebrate love and passion by purchasing lumps of carbon gathered by desperate, brutalized peasants and the fermented embryos of a tropical tree. On the topic of love, a wiser man than I said:


Love crops up quite a lot as something to sing about,
cos most groups make most of their songs about falling in love
or how happy they are to be in love,
you occasionally wonder why these groups do sing about it all the time -
it's because these groups think there's something very special about it
either that or else it's because everybody else sings about it and always has,
you know to burst into song you have to be inspired
and nothing inspires quite like love.

These groups and singers think that they appeal to everyone
by singing about love because apparently everyone has or can love
or so they would have you believe anyway
but these groups seem to go along with what, the belief
that love is deep in everyone's personality.
I don't think we're saying there's anything wrong with love,
we just don't think that what goes on between two people
should be shrouded with mystery.


Of course, I'd remiss (un-loving even) if I didn't post a video for the amazing Anthrax by Gang of Four:





Now I feel kinda bad... like I came across as bitter and cynical. That's no way to spend Valentine's Day. How about something tender? Here's a little number that's sweet, yet fuzzy- like a piece of bubblegum that was idly stuck in one's pocket, and is covered with lint:





Last night, the Ramones won a lifetime achievement Grammy award, almost ten years after the death of Joey Ramone. Effin' Grammys, how do they work? To show how out of it the Grammy nominating commission is, this guy damn near swept the Grammys in 1981. Gadzooks, the music industrial complex cannot crash and burn quickly enough.

Set a Course for Eternity

It's not often that the death of a celebrity hits me hard (the death of Joey Ramone being one of those occasions), but the death of Leonard Nimoy is genuinely saddening. Mr Nimoy's alter ego was a guest in our house at 6PM Eastern Time almost every Saturday, when one of the local TV stations broadcast episodes of the syndicated Star Trek original series. Even though he played the stoic, unemotional Vulcan science officer, Mr Nimoy was able to convey a wry sense of humor with the mere lift of an eyebrow, and his terse responses to the emotional DeForest Kelley formed much of the appeal of the show (as puberty raised it's hairy, hormonal head, the usual parade of hawt space chix was also an undeniable part of the show's appeal).

Leonard Nimoy was one of those exceptional actors who was as noble as the hero he portrayed on television. He insisted on supporting actor's pay equity for Nichelle Nichols and used his clout to ensure that Ms Nichols and George Takei were included in the vocal cast of the "Star Trek" animated series (tip of the hat to Alicublog commenter FMGuru). Mr Nimoy was every bit the activist that castmates Nichelle Nichols and George Takei have been. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry likened Mr Nimoy to the "Conscience of Star Trek".

I'll forgive Mr Nimoy for his rare lapses in taste, such as lending his gravitas to the pseudoscience extravaganza In Search Of... and whatever you wish to call this. Besides his acting career, he was a film director, a photographer, and a poet. His last tweet, as reported by Tengrain was a perfectly lovely example of Mr Nimoy's grace and wit:

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP

Speaking of tweets, perhaps my favorite "Spock" moment from the original Star Trek series was his straight faced delivery of the line Logic is a little tweeting bird chirping in meadow. Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell bad."





And what other actor could emote like a ham while interacting with a pulsating pool of plastic puke without looking utterly ridiculous?





Cutting through the patina of cheesy Sci-Fi, that scene represents a plea for tolerance, mutual understanding, and the need to break out of a cycle of violence and vengeance... man, it's hard not to get a little misty-eyed even despite the cheese factor.

Also in the comments at Roy's place, Megalon clued me in to a Spocksploitation movie that Leonard starred in in 1973... guess what I'll be watching this weekend:





For many of us, losing Leonard Nimoy was like losing a friend, and to cerebral, cool-headed guys, a role model. The universe is a little sadder, and a little less logical, with his passing.

The Burning Question of Last Week

My goddaughter, having been raised correctly, asked her mother to buy her a Ramones T-shirt a couple of weeks ago. There being no Ramones T-shirts at the store in which they were shopping, the dear girl chose a Hogwarts T-shirt as a consolation prize. This raised a question in my mind... which original Ramone would have been chosen by the Sorting Hat for which House of Hogwarts. I came up with this sorting:

Joey- Hufflepuff
Johnny- Ravenclaw
Dee Dee- Slytherin
Tommy- Gryffindor

Of course, others may have a different opinion regarding the wizarding potential of each individual Ramone. At any rate, here is a video of the famous 1977 London concert which became the source for the live album It's Alive:




I hear they caught the train for Hogwarts the next day.