Yeah and I remember the day my parents came home from Portland with two New Wave records and Road to Ruin by The Ramones...that was...4th grade. My sister saw them with DOA when she was 8. My dad saw them in a pizza parlor in Seattle and my mom's favorite song is "Bad Brain". And yeah I remember in 9th grade going to see them on the "Too Tough To Die" tour. Does anyone have a copy of Wig Out with Bon's Joey Ramone article? My friend Heidi used to dream about Joey every night and me and my sister taped Rock-n-Roll High School and watched it over + over + over...A Ramones T Shirt for every day of the week...and you know for some reason I stopped listening to them...but this year I realized their new records are incredible! And now that Marky's back...of course Dee Dee may be gone for awhile..it's kind of tragic.
Top ten of today: I Want You Around/I'm Affected/ Gimmee Gimmee Shock Treatment/I Just Wanna Have Something To Do/I Wanna Live/Danny Says/She Belongs To Me/She's The One/ Ape Man Hop/Outsider/
Does anyone have Joey's address?!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEAH!
we're a happy family we're a happy family we're a happy family me mom and maggie! so, not sure this nostalgic testimonial to the power of the ramones really captures what they meant to me as a kid--but writing this i was looking back to hearing them for the first time in 1979. we lived in a logging town in the middle of the woods, somehow my parents discovered punk and new wave. i remember seeing elvis costello on tv and then DEVO...they went to portland to go record shopping....i'll have to ask them about this and they brought home ROAD TO RUIN and really this was it. within a year we had moved back to Olympia and my dad was in a band, they were going to SF and Seattle to see shows, my mom was waking us up in the middle of the night to teach us how to POGO! true story, in 1981 after they came home from seeing the Specials at the Show Box. well we understood this group. it was joyous, it was primal "1 2 3 4" and apocalyptic. my parents were back in school in the early 80s and sort of on the sidelines of the post-punk scene here in olympia. by the time high school started in 1983 i was ready to break out on my own and check out the local hardcore skate scene. i was a dork, but i had the ramones on my side. they were my group and they led me to the life i wanted to live --i remember one night summer 1984 at a Swamp House party all the punx pogoing to sheena is a punk rocker and PINHEAD and i was like, YES, this is IT!!!!!! so really the Ramones were kind of sacred to me, the aethiest's holy water...this is not even to mention that Rock N Roll High School is a film centered on anti-authoritarinism and female desire that goes unpunished and is rewarded, the 'good girl' has sex and likes it and the 'bad girl' is an artist who get the Ramone's to cover her song!
ReplyDeleteso what was I thinking in 1990? well I had just been convinced by Robert Christie that the later Ramone's records were actually good and I think I wrote this shortly after his interview in Snipe Hunt came out. I'll have to look for this. I think I was trying to give them credit for making me "cool" and saving me from a life of dreary small town boredom but I don't know if this piece does much more than scream I LOVE YOU JOEY I LOVE YOU JOHNNY I LOVE YOU MARKY I LOVE YOU DEE DEE and maybe that's all that needs to be said.
elvis costello-radio radio live on SNL
ReplyDeletehttp://vimeo.com/2875978
it's dated 12/17/77, which makes sense--third grade--we were living in Naselle, WA a logging town in the middle of the woods. within two years we moved back to olympia.
i remember when we got the record and listened to the lyrics having a conversation with my mom about media consolidation and democracy and realizing what an amazing thing it was that we had witnessed
when KYYX went off the air jean fenske and I stayed up all night listening and this was the last song they played. when the Tropicana got closed down, i listened to this song again and again and again and again.