Alright, here's a tribute

As an avowed and downright repetitive Ramones fan, it seemed like I should just say something on Johnny's passing, even though I knew it was coming, as he's been sick for a long time. But I didn't want to get into yet another syrupy attempt to be positive and try to actually explain the pure, heart-swelling joy their music brings me. So, I realized, it's best to just be contrary, as is my nature. Hell, if I weren't contrary, then I wouldn't be so attracted to punk.

To be nice-ish, I was touched by James Wolcott's blog post on Johnny today, despite a healthy suspicion of anyone's taste who's ever written for Vanity Fair or the Rolling Stone.

First Joey, then Dee Dee, and now Johnny Ramone, who wielded his guitar like a scythe, dead at the age of 55 from prostate cancer.

Sweet, but way too writerly. Listen to some Ramones when fixing to write about some Ramones and remember that Johnny treated his guitar like a fucking chainsaw, ripping the shit out of everything Leatherface-style. It's no coincidence they had a song called "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", named of course after the movie. (Did I mention that I've been to the house? I'm sure I did....) But this is small potatoes, and generally great since he imagined the Ramones annoying god, which is great (though, as usual, I would have been cruder).

But this obit is simply inexcusable. For fuck's sake, the man has been sick for five years and hospitalized for months! Could no one actually be bothered to find out why the Ramones mean so much to so many? When Dee Dee Ramone died, I remember nearly crashing when I heard his contribution summarized on the radio as influencing bands like Green Day and Offspring. But Dee Dee died of an overdose; while radio DJs should know better, perhaps they can be excused for lack of time to think of one of the thousands of other bands that they inspired. (Influenced is way too weak a word.) But this obit, well, there's no excuse for this.

The Ramones influenced scores of followers, including bands such as Green Day and Nirvana.

I know they're trying, but this is such an understatement it's a joke. The problem is that to be in a rock band past the late 70's and not to be influenced by the Ramones is to suck, pure and simple. Okay, okay, okay. You can consider the Stooges the cutting off line past which if you didn't get it you were utterly irrelevant.

On Norbizness, a mildly rowdy discussion of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was going on, everyone trying to be polite and shit. My idea of polite was to smear the entire RRHF as a Boomer conspiracy to convince everyone else that the music of their adolescence is the essence of rock and roll. The problem is that Boomers did everything in their power to destroy rock music. The posts over there are evidence of this sick and twisted conspiracy. Those in include James Taylor, The Loving Spoonful, and Billy Joel. Not in: the MC5, most great punk bands who totally reformed rock music, many great early rock musicians who invented the music but weren't on the radio anymore when the Boomers were losing their virginity, so they don't count somehow. In by the skin of their teeth: the Ramones (!), the Clash, the Sex Pistols. Artists like Ritchie Valens and Wanda Jackson are finally getting inducted after getting more important freaks like Lynard Skynard in.

Punk rock is deliberately ignored; it ruined the full-scale attack on rock music, rescued it from becoming utterly meaningless. The Ramones did even more. They remembered what the pretentious shit contigent wishes to forget--that rock music is pop music, that it's fun. Consider the fact that the Boomer snots actually think that James Taylor rocks harder than Martha and the Vandells. To uptight, small-minded people, their social/sexual/sexist/racial/class distinctions weigh so heavily that they have no imagination. Listening to the Ramones is like the first time you listen to someone's collection who likes music and doesn't worry about what other people think--to this day whenever I hear someone complain that they don't really get the heavy punk guitars paired with the sweet girl group singing, I write that person off. If you don't understand why Joey was in love with girl group singing, then you don't get pop music.

I know that the Ramones were all Boomers, of course. But of course you cannot rebel unless you belong. They were in so many ways a gift to those who came afterwards, a way to give the finger to the Boomers and their attempts to own everything, even claim ownership over the rebellion of rock music even as they began to vote Republican and buy minivans and give up every semblance of rebellion in themselves. Rock music will outlive the Boomers, but they don't want to admit it. They almost made it true, but punk broke the wall.

The Ramones get picked on by the haters because they play simple chords and poppy songs--no depth, at least in theory. But that's because people don't want to admit that they played like no one before and while everyone worth listening to since tries to capture it, they miss it. For all their legendary personal animosity, they are cohesive in a weird, hard to articulate, but beautiful way. No one before or since has held together noisiness the way they can; Dee Dee and Johnny could tease louder and crazier sounds out of each other without losing each other and hit highs that no one did before or since. They made shitty drumming sound good. They reimagined their instruments. To call either good or bad is to miss the point entirely. They didn't play to a standard, but they managed to get to so many of us. They didn't create a new standard, either. Everyone is inspired by them, but few if any actually try to be them.