I Was a Teenage Ramone: A True-ish Story

Part One: "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend"

"If we weren't Ramones

we wouldn't have girlfriends."
Joey Ramone

I'm not Joey Ramone but I've tried.

You see, back in mid-80's, in the middle of nowhere, I suffered from that teenage affliction, attention deficit disorder: a deficit of her attention which left me, well, disordered.

I can't give too much of her identity away but let us pause to gaze upon her, filling up that black Ramones t-shirt, her hair, spiky and unyielding and her green-eyed gaze fixed on the next victim of her teeth. (She had a biting thing but not in an Anne-Rice-Vampire-Porn kinda way just in the manner that young creatures will cut their teeth on anything left vulnerable).

The lucky victim (a rival who played bass-synth and had a whole lotta hair gel goin' on), had his foppish leather gloves gnawed to shreds.

Watching this strange game, musical schemes of my own danced in my head. However, my vocal failings were soon laid bare in my audition for the school play, Grease. "It's a Bob Dylan kinda voice", said the casting director, "Next!". My rival got to be a Burger Palace Boy.

No matter what faux-teen narrators may claim, attention-grabbing spectacles aren't so much planned, as stumbled upon in the midst of the pursuit to embody and yet surpass what passes for normal in any given milieu.

Such was the case when that smudgy photocopy appeared on the school's main bulletin board, "Air Band Contest - apply now!".

Now, perhaps all that lip-syncing to "It's Alive" in front of my long-suffering mirror might pay off.

Ramones-dom was within my callow grasp. All I needed was to find three brothers.

*

Next: Gathering of the Pinheads



Speaking of aping the Ramones, check out Amp Records' Life's s a Gas: A Tribute to Joey Ramone (2001) On this comp Joey brings out the pop in thirty-one reasonably obscure pop-punk bands from around the world who play catchy originals in tribute to da tallest bruddha.

As a sample, here's Kelly and the Manges' "Joey's Song"

P.S. Amp Records' web site is gone and their MySpace (from which music cannot be ordered) has not been updated in over two years. As usual, if anyone knows if this CD is still available leave a comment and it will be deleted immediately.

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