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

Re-Upped VI

Shake Some Action Vol. 6 takes on the whole wide world and, of course, comes up short. Lots of Northern Europe, a bit of Australia/New Zealand, a touch of Spain and France plus an entry each from Japan and Brazil pretty much covers it. No Canada - no Bureaucrats, no Pointed Sticks, no the Fuse, no Young Canadians. Well, maybe that was gonna be volume nine! It's still a great sampler of what the liner notes call "world music" - check out the sterling "Gotta Have Pop" by the Moderns, the erroneous pop-prophecy of "Ice Age" by Babijar and the head-bopping "Manen" by the Mops. It maybe the least appreciated album of the series but it proves that "la-la-la" and "whoa-oh-oh" are part of some universal language.

Download Vol. 6

Re-Upped V

Shake Some Action 5 returns to the UK and it swings like a pendulum do. This volume, quite feasibly the series' highlight, just has no weak tracks, though a few do suffer in comparison - bicker amongst yourselves about which ones. This set sounds like of those "Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Hits" compilations might have, if, instead of being bogged down with gimmicky synth-pop, each track had bristled with jagged guitars, pounding rhythm sections and killer verse-chorus-verse structures. While, overall, power-pop dominates, this album has depth. "Audio, Audio" by the Classics is a Blondie-like update of the Spector Sound, Andy Arthurs gives a hell of a pop kick to the New Wave quirk of "I Can Detect You For 1.00.0o0 Miles", "Love Letter" by the the Step goes for a Northern Soul groove, the Jolt attack "I Can't Wait" like a '77 take on the Small Faces and White Heat's "Nervous Breakdown" explodes like a fully-executed punk anthem should.

Someone once claimed that, "no one hums albums"; but you will now.


Download V. 5