So you probably already heard about Tommy Ramone over the weekend, I suppose. It’s interesting to note that the stature of The Ramones has apparently increased in recent years to the point where even the squarest of mainstream news sources were compelled to cobble together a tribute. (And rightly so, of course.)

It’s not been a great year or so for The Best Bands of All Time, has it? No more Stooges left, even if it looks like Iggy is set to live through a nuclear winter, Lou Reed’s passing puts a big full-stop on the story of the VU, and now The (original) Ramones are 100% gone – the recording of that first album is now lost to living memory, secondary sources only, not much closer to us than the Boxer Rebellion or Napoleon’s exile. It’s almost eerie, the totality with which these four guys – of whom Tommy was the oldest, at 62 – have met their maker in untimely fashion.

Those scanning a canned obit in the Sunday papers and shrugging it off with “oh, drugs, rock stars blah blah blah” may wish to recall that DeeDee was the only Ramone to die from the results of drug abuse, and indeed the only one who ever suffered from such problems to a noteworthy extent. Tommy by contrast always seemed pretty healthy and sensible guy (I particularly like DeeDee's admiring comment in his autobiography, that Tommy was the only member of the band who was able to buy meat and potatoes and single-handedly cook himself dinner, as if that was some ability completely beyond the ken of the others), and he hadn’t even toured with the band since the late ‘70s. Bile duct cancer isn’t the kind of thing that zeroes in on bad boys in leather jackets – like the vast majority of cancer deaths, it’s just random, and sad, with no ill-informed talk of fate and lifestyle guilt needed.

Though he was only officially ‘Tommy Ramone’ for a few years, Thomas Erdelyi always seemed like a great guy. Here are but a few of the things he did, beyond setting the template for punk rock drumming for decades to come.

1. Like most truly great bands (I suppose?), each member of the original Ramones line-up was an integral part of the whole they created. Their contributions can be chopped up equally, more or less – 25% each – and I have no time for bickering arguments about who was the more or less important among their number. Remove any one of them and the entity we know as “The Ramones” would not have existed. Tommy, as those who even remotely care will no doubt be aware, was the *organiser* - the guy who did pretty much everything to make the band happen during their first few years together. Booking practice, getting equipment, convincing the others that their songs were actually good and that being in a band was worth doing, booking gigs, recording demos, recording the albums, random managerial duties… you name it. Seems likely the others would never have got past the ‘pissing about on a Saturday afternoon’ stage without his input.

2. He also wrote ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’, and provided the initial draft for ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, so surely that alone makes his life worthy of celebration.

3. The production on the first album – what can you say in the face of such utilitarian rock n’ roll genius? Bass on the left, guitar on the right, drums in the middle – no worries. Back when I was a teenager and a friend first lent me a Ramones tape, he told me that they’d recorded it that way because that’s where the amps were placed in the studio, and they put all the mics in the middle. I don’t know whether or not that’s true, but it’s a good story. I seem to recall reading that, having hired this big, empty studio for the band to record in, Tommy and Craig Leon just figured it all out from scratch, doing whatever seemed to work. It’s definitely got that sound about it – a straight, functional document of the band playing, figured out piece by piece with no external meddling or extraneous sounds whatsoever, and the results will live forever.

Whereas other good ‘70s punk records tend to present a dense, mad racket or a riot of screeching blather (which is great, don't get me wrong), ‘Ramones’ has a pure minimalism to it that sometimes seems closer to ESG or Young Marble Giants, and that, at the time, must have sounded completely new in rock music – everything on show with zero flash, instantly understandable and copy-able to the kids back home. It is this sound, as much as the simplicity of the songs and the performances, that lent ‘70s punk its WE-CAN-DO-THIS-TOO, ‘levelling of the land’ effect. How many bands across all sub-genres in your record collection might never have been formed if teenagers across the world hadn’t put this on, and realised they could play along?

4. And, just a few years after he was scratching his head over where to put the mics, ‘Road To Ruin’, also recorded by Tommy, takes the complete opposite approach - a big, classic, professionally produced rock record that just sounds AMAZING. I have an original pressing of this one on vinyl, and I am consistently stunned at how brilliant it sounds compared to other records of its era – such a bright, bold, monolithic sound, exhilarating but also quite nuanced, with all these lovely touches on the slower songs. As much as I usually tend to fall on the side of the lo-fi in my listening preferences, this is a perfect example of a band taking a big step up in fidelity and totally winning. Purely from an emotionally neutral, audiophile POV, I think it totally buries the subsequent album they recorded with Phil Spector, which has got to tell you something.

5. By contrast, I continue to think that the albums Erdelyi later recorded for The Replacements (‘Tim’ and ‘Pleased to Meet Me’) sound absolutely *terrible*. In fairness, it’s difficult to gauge how much of this was his fault, as I can’t imagine that working on major label albums in the mid ‘80s for a notoriously unreliable and inebriated band was exactly the most conducive environment for quality music recording. At least he got his groove back for Redd Kross’s ‘Neurotica’ in 1987, which I seem to remember sounds pretty great.

So, there ya go. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you to raise a glass to Tommy Ramone, but maybe raise another one to Tommy Erdelyi whilst you’re at it, and ponder what we might have missed out on without his contribution to the past 40 years of rock n' roll.

Labels: deathblog, The Ramones, Thomas Erdelyi, Tommy Ramone

#1
Dee Dee Ramone -
Poison Heart:
Surviving The Ramones

(Firefly Publishing, 1997)

“They say that the Chelsea Hotel is haunted. I agree. A dragon fly is flying around my room right now. A ‘she’ dragon. Like Connie, one of my demons from a long time ago.
[…]
It’s the beginning of the 90s now and I am fed up with it all. I am going to fight back. I give the dragon fly a look that could kill, but she shrugs it off. She’s in a frenzy now, flying at me from behind, then changing direction and flying straight at me. Trying to sucker me to look into the light. Fuck that. That ain’t gonna happen.
I am going to send every shitty memory I have of this hotel straight back to hell. I start a fire on the rug and come at her from behind. I set light to her head with another match, then watch her burn. Then I feel normal again. So I start to relax and stare at an unplugged fan, trying to will it to spin. Don’t fuck with me. If you’re experienced, I think you’ll understand.”

I remember once reading an interview with King Buzzo of The Melvins, in which he said something like, “all books about music are shit… except for DeeDee Ramone’s book, which is brilliant”. I think that says it all really.

I wasn’t expecting much from ‘Poison Heart’ when I first borrowed a copy from Leicester library a few years back. I was just bored and didn’t have much money, and I love The Ramones and like hoovering my way through pointless rock biographies, so… y’know, why not?

From the generic “sole audience = uncritical die-hard fans” cover design to the dread co-writing credit, nothing about this book exactly screams “raging outsider anti-literary masterpiece of some kind”, but…. well, that’s what I’m writing this list for, y’know. To let you know. For every hundred middle-aged rockin’ bozos who manage to make a few thousand bucks on a book deal, you only get one DeeDee Ramone. Hundred, did I say? Man, on this whole PLANET, you only get one DeeDee Ramone. That’s kinda the point.

The introduction quoted above was my first clue that this was gonna be something a bit different. (For the sake of brevity, I’ve left out a few additional paragraphs where DeeDee starts reminiscing about his ex-girlfriend Connie trying to kill him with a broken champagne bottle.)

Second clue comes when he opens chapter one, page one with “My mother was a drunken nutjob”, and by page two, when he starts threading his mother’s childhood memories into his own imagined account of what life must have been like for the people of Berlin during the war (“those were terrible times”), I knew this was going to be quite a read.

God only knows what the texts that comprise this book must have looked like before Veronica Kofman compiled/transcribed/edited/whatevered them into shape for publication, but she certainly deserves credit for turning in just about the most UN-ghost written co-authored autobiog ever to hit the shelves. I mean, seriously, it doesn’t read as if she’s done much more than just correct the spelling, as DeeDee poured out his unstoppable, stream of consciousness exegesis. No bland ‘scene-setting’ paragraphs, no fact-checking, no logical framework – this is 100% pure, unfiltered DeeDee experience.

Want to know about The Ramones? Who they were? What they did? How their personalities meshed and how/where/why they recorded their songs? Well, there’s some of that here, but only viewed through the lens of the extent to which DeeDee found the whole thing a continuous hassle. I think the first four albums whiz by in a couple of pages, because they were presumably kinda painless.

Want to know about the best ways to score GI-issue morphine vials in post-war Berlin though, or glam-rock knife-fights and feral drag queens on the streets of New York, or how a six year old feels going to see a double-bill of ‘The Mummy’ and ‘The Ten Commandments’? Step right up!

One of the best things about this book is that DeeDee is pretty ambivalent about The Ramones. He describes the things that struck him about the other members of the band when he met them (referring to them by their full Ramone names at all times, as in “Johnny Ramone always said..” or “the thing about Johnny Ramone was..”). But by the time they get to being a vaguely successful band, his attention drifts. He prefers thinking about other things. It kinda reads like he spent the next fifteen years being thrown on a bus and taken to places where he’d meet odd people and get into situations where it was hard for him to find drugs. Boy, did he ever hate singing “Warthog” though. Yeah, he didn’t like that at all. He makes that perfectly clear.

DeeDee writes plenty here about the ugly, dysfunctional relationships he seems to have kept getting mixed up in, and about the kind of squalor he tended to end up living in. But mainly he writes about taking drugs – that being pretty much what he did, besides being in The Ramones. All drugs, any drugs, it seems. He could never quite decide on a favourite, I guess. By the halfway point in the book, he reaches some kinda hilarious-although-it-really-shouldn’t-be state of mind wherein he seems to have decided that beginning the day with seven joints of his favourite weed and a case of beer is a basic human right, and that anyone asking him to do anything places an unbearable stress upon his fragile equilibrium. What do you mean you can’t get any cocaine in this stupid country? What the hell? But I need it now! And you’re making me sit in this room with just a bunch of alcohol while all these creepy journalists with suspicious eyes ask me questions, and now there are people phoning me in the middle of the DAY, hassling me about playing some bass part on some stupid song I wrote? Can you imagine? It was like living in hell! “And they made me play volleyball. It was a nightmare!”

We shouldn’t laugh really, but the way he writes this stuff just cracks me up – short, clipped sentences and weird non-sequiturs, demanding the reader’s full sympathy and understanding at all times as he basically describes his behaviour as an unmanageable, substance-abusing maniac as if it were the only rational course of action open to him, given the unbearable horrors he was faced with on a day to day basis. Ramones tours or periods of confinement in secure institutions – it all seems much the same to DeeDee, with about the same level of discomfort either way.

Sounds like it could degenerate into yr standard self-pitying rock star stuff, but there is a kind of wide-eyed, manic energy about DeeDee’s recollections of all this stuff that’s impossible to describe if you’ve not read it firsthand. Something about the way that he can barely remember which continent he was in half the time, but he seems to have perfect recall of precisely which clothes people were wearing at different points in time, where they bought their shoes, and which brand of beer he was drinking.

There are also numerous instances here where his writing just goes completely over the edge when you least expect it, opening up surreal vistas of what I can only describe as ‘cosmic horror’, filling late night readers’ heads with images of an apocalyptic swamp inferno / alligator attack that transpired when he and Marc Bell hitched a lift to a Florida gig with some mysterious character known only as ‘Zippy’ (“Yes, yes, yes, even Zippy needs a little vacation now and then”, DeeDee records him as saying, in a brilliant example of the kind of unlikely, garbled dialogue he attributes to other people throughout the book), or with shuddersome memories of tour manager Monte Melnick terrifying him into submission using hideous, inhuman ‘lamb noises’.

(Did you know that, shortly before his death, DeeDee published a ‘horror novel’ entitled “Chelsea Hotel Horror”, in which he himself was the central character, fighting his way through said hotel pursued by the undead spectres of all his dead punk rock comrades..? Sounds like some pretty grim business, but nonetheless, do any publishers out there KNOW how much I want to read this book..? Trying to find a copy from the original print run has proved a dead-end, so please, whoever holds the rights these days – make it happen. If you’re worried about sales, I’ll personally guarantee, say, 50% of the print-run.)

One of the things you’ve got to love about DeeDee is that although he essentially lived the life of an archetypal ‘self-destructive punk dude’, he never contrived to become that character, however much he might have traded off it in his later years. Throughout this book, he wishes he could walk away from the whole thing. All he wants to do is walk around on a sunny day with a smile on his face, looking at things, talking to people, being normal. He fantasises about the life he might have had as a guy who delivers bread to a supermarket, looking wistfully at these ‘regular’, everyday activities as if they were part of a glamorous, alien world that he’ll never be a part of. I guess they offer a glimpse of the order and safety that might have been his, if his life hadn’t been an ugly mess of chaos from day one.

The mantle of the ‘punk dude’, the ‘druggy outsider rock star guy’, has been picked up so many times over the years by so, so many healthy, well-adjusted people that it means nothing. What DeeDee spent his life clumsily trying to make us understand is that, for him, it was never a decision. When you’re a dumb, bullied kid living in poverty with a violent alcoholic mother, things like this are not really ‘decisions’, any more than the feeling you get when you listen to a Stooges record is a ‘decision’, or being driven to hang out with other misfits who like The Stooges because there’s nobody else who’ll talk to you, and trying to fit in by starting a band with them, is a ‘decision’.

If life had allowed him a shot at it, maybe DeeDee would have been a supermarket delivery guy, or a baker, or whatever. Would he have been a totally kick-ass, legendary baker? Probably not, he’s a bit too all-over-the-place and irresponsible for that, but he would’ve done ok. He probably wouldn’t have written amazing songs like ‘Poison Heart’ and ‘53rd & 3rd’, and he probably wouldn’t have written this astounding book. But then, he also probably wouldn’t have got stabbed or passed out in public places quite so much, probably wouldn’t have been committed to so many mental institutions, wouldn’t have sold his ass on the street for dope money*, and wouldn’t have died of an overdose at the age of 50.

So… I guess what I’m saying is, that’s something for all you ‘punks’ to think about before you put on the leather jacket and take the path of most resistance. At the heart of your record collection, there’re some guys like Douglas Colvin who didn’t select this from a list of options. Rejecting the kind of grounded normality that they never even had a chance to touch is… fine if you wanna, but just remember that you’re basically just doing a Live Action Role Play of the people who weren’t given a choice in the matter.

Jesus, what the hell am I talking about? How did I end up going off on that particular tangent? Anyway, I think we’ve temporarily lost sight of the fact that, above all, this book is A HOOT. It’s hilarious, it’s action-packed, it’s incredibly weird, you can read it again and again and still find new stuff to marvel at. Get it. Get all these books in fact. Learn from them, and stare contentedly at their spines on the shelf. They will make you better at liking music.

*Allegedly. Not something he chooses to tell us about in this book, which is fair enough. ‘Please Kill Me’ has the dirt if yr particularly interested.

Labels: books, Dee Dee Ramone, The Ramones

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow.

Shamefully, I nearly missed the fact in the midst of the assorted crap that constitutes ‘life’, but today marks ten years since Joey Ramone passed away.

Ten years! Ten years since I spent a week stomping round a midlands university campus, wearing black jeans black shoes and my black Ramones t-shirt. I’ve still got it; I was planning on wearing it tomorrow, oddly enough.

To mark the occasion, here are five brilliant Joey-penned songs that often get overlooked.

1. I Remember You



I’ve been kinda obsessing over this song recently – it’s never quite hit me in the past for whatever reason, but I think it’s one of the absolute highlights of ‘..Leave Home’. It’s got that kind of beautiful, doomed midtempo feeling, like you hear in the tougher live versions of ‘Here Tomorrow, Gone Tomorrow’ from this period, or of course on ‘I Just Wanna Have Something To Do’ a few years later – moments when Joey’s heartbreak and Johnny’s metallic riffage seem to be working in complete unison to take pop to sad, dark places. Joey’s vocal delivery on this track is absolutely stunning.

2. Babysitter



Another recent obsession. WHAT A SONG! I want to start a band that just plays this one song, over and over again until they’re forced to leave the stage. It’s perfect. Imagine a band so good that they deem this an outtake. Live versions are even better, but I can’t find any on youtube.

3. 7/11



I was gonna say ‘everybody knows I love this song’, but obviously they don’t – I’m talking to fucking strangers on the internet, why would they? I’ve played this my myself on the guiter for years and have tried to record it two or three times but never quite done one I’m happy with. A bit of an overcooked example of a crushing teenage heartbreak song some might say, but it makes me cry frequently enough.

4. She Talks To Rainbows



It has long been my belief that if you compiled all of the sporadic really good tracks The Ramones recorded in their lacklustre post-‘Too Tough To Die’ years, you’d have one of the best rock n’ roll records of all time. This would be on it, of course. Written by Joey for Ronnie Spector, I believe.

5. I Want You Around



What can I possibly say that this clip doesn’t?

When we listen to the Ramones, we are all Riff Randell.

Let's raise a glass tonight to the coolest guy who ever lived.

Labels: anniversaries, deathblog, The Ramones

Quote of the Week.

"Much of that incredible vitality came from anger, aggression and hopeless energy, the amazing power they unleashed. But there was something else, something that wasn’t there, for me, with The Sex Pistols or The Clash. A note of longing, of yearning, of loss. A bittersweet tone, a beauty, that I think came from Joey’s singing, from his voice. I recognized it immediately in that song, in the choked off last word to the line “I just want to be with you…” and the haunting sweep of the repeated “tonight,” that opens up to take in the world of everything we love and can’t touch."

-- David Gordon has written a beautiful piece about Joey Ramone for Boogie Woogie Flu.

Never seen that neat surfing pic before either!

Labels: quotes, The Ramones

Blah, Blah, Blah.

So I was going to wait until we got a decision on who's in charge of the country before writing a new post, but I'm bored now.

So, seriously, how great are Shonen Knife?

The chorus of that song has been playing in my head continuously since I watched the video three days ago, which really shouldn't come as a surprise, given my history.

When I saw Shonen Knife at The Windmill last year, they played a new song about barnacles. Yeah, that's right, barnacles.

Naoko said that she admired the tenacity of barnacles in clinging on to rocks and so forth. The song went;

"Barnacle
HEY!
Barnacle
HEY!
This is a song about the barnacle!"

Shonen Knife are fucking brilliant.

I suppose at this point I could heave in some unwieldy metaphor comparing Gordon Brown to a great big barnacle or something, but... let's just not.

Labels: politics, Shonen Knife, spacefiller, The Ramones, videos

THE RAMONE MANIFESTO.

(Brought to you via Flaming Pablum, and this ILX thread.)

Things The Ramones did want to do: Be your boyfriend, sniff some glue, dance, be a good boy, Carbona, be well, have something to do, have some fun, have some kicks, get some chicks, be sedated, live.

Things The Ramones did NOT want to do: Walk around with you, be learned, be tamed, go down to the basement, be a pinhead no more, be taught to be no fool, live this life anymore, be buried in a pet semetary, fight tonight, grow up.

Things The Ramones could not, would not, or did not do: Be, care, give you anything, make it on time, care about history, know why she wrote that letter, go surfing 'cause its twenty below, let it happen, seem to make you theirs, control themselves.

Things The Ramones did do: Make a living by pickin' a banana, serve as green berets in Vietnam, go out west where they belonged, swallow their pride, know your name, know your game, remember you, want you around, go mental, be affected, live on Chinese rocks, hate the teachers and the principal, watch Get Smart on TV, want the airwaves, want everything, sit in their room (humming a sickening tune), think of you (everytime they ate vegetables), believe in miracles, love you.

Things The Ramones told you to do: Shut it up, beat on a brat with a baseball bat, ring up the FBI to find out if their baby's alive, eat that rat, give them shock treatment.

Things The Ramones warned you about doing: Shutting it up, killing that girl, talking to commies, opening that door.

Things The Ramones did not like and were against: politics, communists, games, fun, anyone, Jesus freaks, circus geeks, summer, spring, sex, drugs, waterbugs, playing ping pong, the Viet Cong, Burger King, anything. Also crummy stuff.

Things The Ramones wondered about: why you want to walk around with them, why things are always this way, if you've heard about the bird, what you want to talk to them for, if you remember rock n roll radio.

Things you didn't do for The Ramones: come close, mean anything to them.

Things The Ramones would do next time: listen to their hearts.

In my head, I always vote Ramone.

Labels: politics, The Ramones