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May 2001 R.I.P. JOEY RAMONE 1951-2001 The Ramones, Joey
especially, gave hope to those who had no place to go, who were weird,
tall, geeky and funny-looking and didn't want to play the way the other
kids played. For me, whenever I felt nervous about getting up on the stage,
the Ramones were an inspiration to get me up there. Tall Joey and his
short, short songs. My best friend in Grade 6 was the son of the minister
at the Presbyterian Church. I'm not making this up: His name was Reverend
Sermon. During service we'd be in the basement getting wired on communion
crystals - it was a Presbyterian church, okay? We didn't get red wine.
We got grape punch Tang crystals - and we'd listen to his older brother's
beaten-up cassettes of Animal Boy and Rocket to Russia. Ramones licks
would rise through the floorboards into the service, but nobody would
ask us to turn the music off. I don't know if it's because Dan was the
minister's son or because, deep down inside, they knew that punk-rock
is better music to worship to than most of the songs in the hymn book.
Thanks Joey. I went to see Pet
Sematary in grade 9. There was some music on the soundtrack that sounded
really cool, so I stuck around to the very end of the closing credits
to find out who it was. It was the Ramones. That night when I came home,
in an incredible feat of synchronicity, my brother had rented Rock'n'Roll
High School and was just watching the Ramones concert sequence. And that
was it for me. All my previous musical knowledge (mainly consisting of
Rush, Pink Floyd and the Dr. Demento show) was now rendered bunk. I wanted
only to play like Johnny, write like Dee Dee and sing like Joey. The Ramones
retarded my musical development forever - any more than three chords,
or two verses, seems extraneous to this day. I love you Joey - rest in
peace. Ramones = short, fast
songs that rock but you can still sing along to. I think they set the
precedent and any band that has tried to work with that formula is doing
a variation on that theme. They never changed their look and didn't really
change their sound much because I guess they just instictively knew, right
from the beginning, that they were doing what should be done i.e. make
fun, cool music that makes a statement about what it feels like to be
a kid. Somehow it doesn't seem right that they got old and that Joey died.
I remember at parties, pogoing to the Ramones in Winnipeg in 1977, and
when I think back to being a kid and first hearing them it just seemed
like what they were doing made a lot of sense to me and still does. I'm not taking my
fucking sunglasses off until they put a fucking statue of Joey in every
fucking city, where everybody can see it. Why couldn't Frampton have died?
In closing, lemme say this unto they all: "Anxiety, anxiety, keeps me
happy. Anxiety, anxiety, keeps me happy." Thank you, Joey Ramone. Joey Ramone is dead
meat? Noooo. I hope he doesn't get buried in a Pet Sematary. One time
me and Bass drove to Lulu's in my Grandma's car to see the Ramones. It
was extra-super-wicked rock'n'roll, I can tell you. Thanks to you Joey,
for being the man in the greatest rock'n'roll band I ever saw. What can I say? The
first thing I ever stole was a tight black t-shirt with the cover of their
first album on it. (The second thing was an Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits
tape, but I got caught...) Then I stopped buying/stealing tapes and returned
to vinyl. The first one I bought was Ramones Mania. And my high school
chum Will Lugsdin used to pick me up every morning at 8:00 am, with pot
smoke coming out of the tailpipe and "I Wanna Be Well" blasting out the
windows, (which became "I Wanna Be Will"). There is not a doubt in my
mind that Joey is being greeted by the angels singing : "Gabba gabba we
accept you/ We accept you one of us..." Apart from being responsible
for music that I always want to hear (no matter how many times I've heard
the songs, no matter what my mercurial temper dictates), Joey Ramone gave
me hope as a little kid living in a backward town where men were dicks
and the women were beaten. Up late one night, the wonder of CITY-TV presented
me with my first taste of Rock'n'Roll High School. The image of lanky,
black-haired, bespectacled Joey crooning "I Want You Around" to Riff Randall
was all it took to convince me that I didn't want to be a pinhead no more.
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