Attack of the Ramones Clones

It's always been easy to ape the Ramones. That handful of chords, those two or three tempos, those simple tunes, that leather n' denim uniform and the so dumb-its-smart attitude. But it's deceptive, trust me I've tried (more on that later) and so have a 378,00o other bands. None of those bands ever wrote a string of classics that can overcome the boundaries between good and bad taste. The Ramones songbook will outlive the few remaining members - with the entire frontline being dead and all their drummers alive the Ramones ended up as the anti-Spinal Tap.

The band is cited as an influence by groups like Sonic Youth and U2 who sound, charitably, nothing like the Ramones. Then, there are the thousands of pop-punk bands who use the Ramones as their entire blueprint. Many of these bands (the Richies anyone?) are only of interest to Ramones Fanatics ("no comment, your honour"). However, starting in the late eighties a raft of American bands from the mid-west and Southern California built impressive discographies on the foundation that the Ramones bashed together. Many of these bands recorded entire Ramones albums in tribute and while, inevitably, none surpass the masters, you could at least say that each of those cover albums are more intriguing and more rewarding than Gus Van Sant's shot-by-shot re-make of Psycho. Not a flattering comparison, I grant you but I only mean to praise with such faint damning.

Chicago's Screeching Weasel (by Ben's own admission) stole more from the Ramones as they progressed through their first few incarnations. When one of those incarnations was at a low point in 1993 the band recorded the entire Ramones debut album in its entirety. While, unfortunately, they don't mess with the arrangements much they do jack up the tempos and add a mid-western snarl. If you like either band, it's worth the listen especially since the re-issue adds a great late-period Screeching Weasel single which proves that Ben's catchy originals have a prickly intelligence that the Ramones never pursued. Available from littletype

Obsessiveness loves company, so in 1994 fellow Chicagoans the Vindictives recorded The Ramones second album, Leave Home. Re-arranging the track order ("You Should Never Have Opened That Door" moves from near the end to being the second song) is the first indication that will be the least conservative of the series. The nerdy-whiny of Joey Vindictive gives a new desperation to the songs and little twists (odd samples, new guitar lines, strange backing vocals and twisted endings) make this the freshest of the series. Available from Interpunk

The Queers entire catalog is a tribute to the Ramones, so surprisingly their 1994 tribute to the strongest Ramones album, Rocket to Russia, is nice but uneventful. Available from Interpunk

Thus far I've refrained from expounding on the twisted lyrical vision of the Mr. T Experience's Dr. Frank (a.k.a. Y.A. author Frank Portman) since almost all of the good Doctor's work remains in print via Lookout Records. While it may be the slightest of this Berkley band's mighty works, MTX's 1998 Road to Ruin takes an inherently limited opportunity and makes a fist of it, especially when they dig into the bleaker tracks such as "I Wanted Everything" and their acoustic take on "I've Gone Mental". Currently unavailable...


Download Road to Ruin

Perhaps God May Not Have Made Dee Dee So Funky After All

Next, no obsessive's musical experience is complete without hearing the jaw-dropping oddity that is Dee Dee's rap album, Standing In The Spotlight. The album, (which, like all his solo work, doesn't even rate a mention in the discography at the back of Poison Heart) is a wreck. However, the awfulness of it all (check out those rhymes; "Snap, crackle, pop/I'm the master of hip-hop") fascinates, in that grisly accident sort of way. I got my copy, on cassette, from the dollar bin at the first records store I ever worked at and sold it within twenty-four hours. Dee Dee throws a lot at the wall here - B-5s's-ish rockabilly ("Mashed Potato"), nerdy Kool Moe Dee hip-hop ("2 Much 2 Drink"et al), schmaltzy pop ("Baby Doll") and a few punkers ("Poor Little Rich Girl" and "The Crusher") - and not much of it sticks. However, there is a poignancy to failure, especially the failure to break free of one's own shortcomings. So listen to learn, obsessives, about Dee Dee's failures and maybe our own.


Download Standing In The Spotlight

Next: Ramones Clones

Poisoned Heart

"I lived your life for so many years

all I got was self-pity and tears"

Whatever the credits on Brain Drain say, that's a classic Dee Dee couplet: blunt, hostile and dripping with self-loathing. If you expanded that line into 289 pages you'd have Dee Dee's autobiography, Poison Heart: Surviving the Ramones.*

In this, the first of Dee Dee's three books, he rails against those who tried to control his life (Mom, Connie, Johnny Ramone) while he stumbles from one intoxicant to the next. When not detailing his narcotic abuse, Dee Dee mainlines self-pity. That woe-is-me sentiment stalks the narrator, whether he's walking into an AA meeting (after crashing his Camaro) and declaring. "I felt they were all against me" or wrapping it all up in the epilogue by saying, "I feel vulnerable, out of place and unwelcome everywhere I go". It's not just disillusioning (even if you have few illusions about the Ramones), it's actually a bit embarrassing.

The actual music he was such a crucial component of only comes up in drips and drabs, such as when Dee Dee confesses, "To this day I still have no idea how they made the album End of the Century..." The scattershot narrative reminds me of Winston Smith's interview with the prole in 1984, when he discovers that the man's memories are too fractured to be instructive.

It's a sad read: the self-inflicted pain, the repetitive prose, the cheap snapshots of Dee Dee drinking with his dog and his teenage Argentinian bride. The saddest part of all is the cruel irony that, despite the few victories our narrator ekes out, within a few years of publication he'd die of a heroin overdose. I kept expecting a third person epilogue, (like for All Quiet on the Western Front) that would explain that Dee Dee died before the end of his particular war.

If you can survive this book, savour Dee Dee's defence of the two Ramones songs he seems proudest of: "Warthog" and "Poison Heart". Odd choices perhaps, but intriguing. "Warthog" risks being thrash-by-numbers but here Dee Dee explains it's warp-speed belligerence as pure rehab catharsis. On the opposite pole, "Poison Heart" flirts with singer-songwriter mushy-mindedness but instead it's Dee Dee's true autobiography - with a verse and a chorus that, together, show his defiance in the face of his own misanthropy.

"There's danger on every corner but I'm okay
Walking down the street trying to forget yesterday

Well I just wanna walk right out of this world
'Cause everybody's got a poison heart"

Remember the music - it's all that's left us.
Here's a bootleg of studio odds n' ends called Unreleased Tracks


Download Unreleased Tracks V. 1

* Re-titling the Second Edition "Lobotomy" was just cruel to Dee Dee.


Next: God Made Dee Dee Funky

Re-Upped VIII

How do you top excellence? Shake Some Action died after this, perhaps recognizing that by number eight, even nigh-on perfect volumes were going to seem merely like treading water. If they feared running out of what they call "aural artifacts" there's no evidence here; it's mostly highlights,with just a few fun throwaways to fake you out. The Keys, "Just a Camera" is singalong whose lyrics seem to be a wistful narrative about drugs and pornography.The Elevator's "Your I's are Too Close Together" has a kinetic chorus that juxtaposes an art-punk intro with a pure-pop finish. DJ and bandleader Mike Read gets two bubble-punk songs, "Are You Ready" as a solo act and "High Rise Living"as the lead singer of the excellently-named Trainspotters. B.T.P Folders (their singer, Neil Shaw, left a comment on this post that the initials stand for Blue Transparent Polyurethane) rip through "All of a Sudden" - and it's only the the b-side (!) of their hyper-pop single. The Valves say goodbye to the series with their surf-punk masterstroke, "Ain't No Surf in Portobello.
Say a prayer (or a curse) for Alan Fleagle or whoever the hell it was that strung all these addictive hits together.

Download Vol. 8

In case the first link fails, the entire BTP Folders single is now HERE

Re-Upped VII

Shake Some Action Vol. 7 offers another American assortment. While no stone-classic, like "Teenline", "Let Me Take Your Photo' or "A.M." emerges, it's still an excellent approximation of what American radio might have been in 1979 in a revised and better past. So we have more wussy-pop (like Quincy and the Leopards), Some Beatles business (the Boys) and some bands that had their ear turned to the NME (Tweeds, Dirty Looks and Cris Moffa and the Competition). Of course there's the band who tries to combine these different threads and call themselves the Beatles Costello but, unfortunately, it sounds as graceful as it reads. Finally, a strain of garage rock pops up in the Nightmares and the Blackjacks that shows the key American source of the British New Wave.

Download Vol. 7