Scratching a musical itch with the late, great Johnny Ramone

By Rachel Campbell

Thursday, September 16, 2004 11:48 AM CDT

This is why we need punk rock. Britney just won't cut it right frigging now.

My stupid computer just crashed, AGAIN, and my entire column about the death of Johnny Ramone is gone, gone, gone. I have to write the whole thing over again by memory, and I have an hour to do it. I feel like I'm having an aneurysm. I hate everything. I wanna be sedated.

So, yeah, Johnny Ramone met his band brothers Joey and DeeDee yesterday afternoon at the horribly young age of 55, after several years of struggle against prostate cancer. In case you are unfamiliar, the Ramones were the quintessential American punk rock band: They were to New York what the Sex Pistols were to Britain. You may have caught the "sedated" reference in the last paragraph even if you aren't a Ramones fan, but that song - the band's biggest mainstream hit - is only a very small part of their oeuvre, which spans 21 albums and countless punk and pop influences and imitations.

A great quote from Tommy Ramone, now the only surviving member of the original four Ramones, says, "Eliminate the unnecessary and focus on the substance." Although usually used to justify the band's uniform black-and-bedhead look, the quote has a lot more to do with the Ramones' strong sense of musical idealism: Despite the fact that the Ramones produced songs catchy enough to easily compete with today's Justin Timberlake and Usher tracks, the band refused to bow to the p.r. politics of hit record-making in favor of producing their music, their way. That's saying something, considering the band came of age in the disco-ball seventies - CBGB, the club the Ramones made a punk paradise along with Television and Blondie, was and is less than a 10-minute cab ride from Studio 54.

The Ramones had an undeniable pop sensibility: They could have been big. Instead, they were legendary.

Johnny Ramone's death comes at an interesting time. One would expect such a death to mark the demise of pure, meaningful rock-n-roll and the victory of the mindless pop machine (which has its own merits - if you don't believe me, keep in mind that Kurt Cobain kept his "ABBA Gold" CD on repeat while on tour). But rather, we are seeing a revival of significant rock: And by "significant," I mean rock that has a message beyond the whiny-if-lucrative "nobody understands me, especially my dad." The punk rock ideology - namely, three-chord rebellion - is returning with a prevalence unmatched since the early '90s, if not the '70s themselves. Consider Green Day, the most popular Ramones-influenced neopunk band of our time: Their latest CD, "American Idiot," is, according to Rolling Stone, "a 57-minute politically charged epic depicting ... the decline and fall of the American dream." (http://www.rollingstone.com) The title track and first single off "American Idiot" alone is an exercise in rage against George W. Bush. And, sonically speaking, it's pretty damn good.

Meanwhile, Little Steven, also known as Steven Van Zandt, also known as Bruce Springsteen's E Street guitarist, also known as "Sopranos" capo Silvio Dante, hosted a garage rock festival in New York on Aug. 14. The concert corresponds with his two-hour radio show, "Little Steven's Underground Garage," which the Renaissance Man had such a hard time getting off the ground two years ago that he finally produced it himself. As he told the New York Times, "They said, `Stevie, baby, we love you ... but we cannot get rock and roll on the radio anymore.'" (http://www.nytimes.com) Of course, that was two years ago, back before bands like the Strokes and the White Stripes burst into undeniable flames. "Little Steven's Underground Garage" is now internationally syndicated and broadcast 24 hours a day on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 25.

Johnny Ramone now rests in peace. But his music is coming back to angry life.

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