Ramones, "Ramones"

CJ is generating steam heat

, and

Mar 16, 2022

CJ’s Pitch:

Me, Mitch and our friends Ryan and Mike were playing Liar’s Dice at a local watering hole late one night in the Witch City. The crowd was a vibrant mix of young and old, rowdy and laid back. A jukebox in the corner cranked out an eclectic bouillabaisse of rock and pop. Mitch mentioned that two bucks got you ten plays, so I popped a pair of crisp singles into the music machine and perused the playlist.

The first, and most obvious choice, among my options was “Beat on the Brat” by Ramones—just the thing for a divey bar with sketchy patrons (myself included). The song began to play immediately and I sang along as I made my other picks. Our waitress, a tatted-up, raven-haired riot grrrl who was half my age appeared at my elbow. (Not metaphorically half my age. More like if you took my age and divided by two, and then knocked a couple of years off that number, you’d get her age. Jesus…) Without hesitation, she picked up the tune and began to sing along with me even though the song pre-dated her arrival on this earth by several decades.

I told you this little anecdote not because I wanted to show you that Ramones music is trans-generational, which it is, but because I believe that it goes much deeper. This is primordial, lizard brain stuff that we’re hard-wired to enjoy. It’s like the first music in the world, when prehistoric people learned that banging on things created sound and you could express your emotions with these sounds. I bet if you look at the Lascaux cave paintings closely, you’ll see that one of the guys running away from the dinosaur is wearing a Ramones t-shirt.

***

With their eponymously titled debut album, Ramones completely upended the music world. Taking their band name and subsequently all their surnames from the pseudonym Paul McCartney used to check into hotels undetected (Paul Ramon), Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy didn’t sound like anybody else on earth at the time. When Joey shouts “Hey ho, let’s go!” to kick-off the opening track, “Blitzkreig Bop”, he’s not just starting a song. He’s launching an entire genre, lifestyle and attitude. With those four words, Punk was born.

Make no mistake, this is not going to be pretty. Ken will not be waxing poetic about the note sequence or pitch variation and Mitch won’t be dissecting the hidden philosophy in the lyrics because there is none. Ramones use three chords and brutally straightforward words to tell you exactly what they want or don’t want.

They do want to sniff some glue and be your boyfriend, though not necessarily at the same time. They don’t want to walk around with you nor do they want to go down to the basement. Although if you’re going to do something as low-rent as sniffing glue, there are worse places to do it than the basement.

They let us know that Judy is a punk and another friend of theirs is a loudmouth. They pay homage to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Mad Magazine’s iconic “Spy vs. Spy”. And when they’re bummed out over a woman, they’re going to listen to their hearts. (Or beat on a brat if that doesn’t work.)

There is one song that cuts a little deeper than the others, though. “53rd and 3rd” is a vicious and heartbreaking story of a Viet Nam vet who has to turn to prostitution to survive. Worse, he kills all his tricks just to prove to himself that he’s not gay. It’s two minutes and twenty-one seconds of sheer horror.

Speaking of time, 2:21 is about the average length of a song on Ramones. In fact, the sum total of all 14 songs comes in at just over 29 minutes. To put that in perspective, you could play the whole thing from start to finish and Goose would still be tuning their instruments. But, oh those 29 minutes! There’s not a wasted note, word or sentiment among them.

***

Sometimes you don’t want a lilting melody. Sometimes you just wanna jump around and yell. Sometimes you just wanna break stuff. Sometimes you just wanna beat on the brat.

Hey, ho. Let’s go, boys.

Mitch’s Response:

I learned long ago that the best way to win at anything is to be the person who defines what constitutes “winning”. If things aren’t going your way, just move the goal posts until you’re winning. Take golf, for example. There’s already a very obvious system for determining who wins. It’s called "the score", based on how many actual strokes you take. I realized that playing stroke wasn’t to my advantage so I introduced “stableford” scoring for all of our friends. It rewards good holes and discounts bad holes. It’s completely unnecessary and confusing, but I like it because I win at stableford more often than I win at stroke. See, moving goalposts. It’s easy, fun, and effective.

And look at how our CJ tried to move the goalposts for the Ramones! Apparently, inclusion in the prestigious Newbury St. Collection no longer requires music that is well-crafted, well-performed or meaningful. Nope, brevity and the endorsement of an (admittedly delightful) bartender is all that it takes to get in. Nice try, sport.

What CJ should have said is that the Ramones were riff-masters and used their debut album to give a masterclass in the importance of powerful, crunchy riffs in rock music. How you could strip away all of the filigrees and histrionics and still deliver the goods. How most of the time they didn’t take themselves too seriously, but they could still tackle serious subjects when they wanted to. And how their surprisingly-appealing sound can best be summarized as doo-wop on speed.

But the whole schtick of punk has always been “don’t judge us too harshly, we’re just punks who can’t play our instruments,” which is an insult to Strummer, Jones, Matlock and other punks who also happened to be incredibly gifted players and songwriters.

I’m giving my vote to the Ramones despite CJ’s pitch, because he also neglected to mention that the whole bar was dancing and singing along when I punched up Madonna’s "Lucky Star”, but we’ll save any more Madge talk for next week’s pitch.

Pitch Successful (Now I kinda wanna sniff some glue)

Ken’s Response:

I dislike so much of what I was forced to listen to this week, I’m not even sure where to begin. Let’s start with the music. CJ and Mitch can defend this until they’re both blue in the face, but this is simply not quality musicianship. It’s overtly basic, it’s extremely loose…one might even say sloppy, the lyrics range from violent to juvenile all the way over to nonsensical, and even the production seems like someone said, “Yeah, we’re kind of tired, that’s probably good enough.” As far as it being groundbreaking, so was putting hydrogen in blimps and look how that worked out.

But even with the high school-level guitars, the fake British accent, and the black/leather/metal couture, that isn’t the reason I don’t personally like this band or this album. It’s definitely the reason I’m voting to keep them out of the Newbury St Collection, but it’s not really why I don’t enjoy it.

I realized a while back that my life is a pursuit of safety. As a kid, I never felt safe. My family wasn’t financially secure, I had some friends but I was bullied a bit at school, I had a couple of dark family secrets that I couldn’t share, and it all made me very anxious and insecure. But a couple years ago I had a bit of a revelation that everything I enjoyed in life was something that made me feel safe. My summers at camp in New Hampshire, going to college 3,000 miles away where no one knew me, the friends I chose in my adult life, and living in the suburbs all gave me a feeling of contentment that had been missing. Nowhere was my search for safety more evident than the music I chose to love. Whether it’s The Beatles, or the folk-rock I adore, or even Grateful Dead shows, where your trip is your trip and no one judges anyone else, music has been an escape to safety for me for decades and I didn’t even know it until recently.

Ramones is not safe! Drug use, violence, images of nazism, and the acute angles on everything from leather jackets to mohawks all scream of tension and chaos-both of which I abhor.

So enjoy your punk rock. But leave me alone, I’m out smelling the first crocuses of the season.

Pitch failed (make sure to wear goggles with that chain saw)

CJ’s pitch was too tough (or wasn’t tough enough), and Ramones’ Ramones has been exiled from Newbury St.

Even if you wanna be sedated, please blitzkrieg the comments sections and let us know what you think about the Ramones’ Ramones. Don’t worry, we don’t want to grow up, either.

Exile on Newbury St.

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