Story time, boys and girls! I’m sorry I’ve been away for so long, but with a new roommate moving in and the loss of internet for a few days, I’m running a bit behind.
Last Monday was my mother’s birthday, and I’m going to tell you a story about her. When I was in the fifth grade, my mom called me downstairs from my room, saying that there was something I needed to do. I hoped I wasn’t in trouble, and I walked downstairs to the basement. She told me to sit down, and I climbed into my dad’s recliner. And then my mother – my wonderful, beloved mother whose only musical tastes I knew ran to 1970s acts like the Eagles, Jackson Browne, and Dan Fogelberg, my darling mother, friends and neighbors, put her copy of the Ramones‘ “Rocket to Russia” on the turntable.
The Ramones – Sheena Is A Punk Rocker
She then just sat and watched me as the whole album washed over me. It felt so raw, so intense, so funny, and unlike anything I had ever heard (which, at that point, was mainly classical music, the Beatles, and early REM).
Listening to it more than ten years later, I’m amazed at how unpretentious it was. I’m not a scholar of punk music or anything, so feel free to doubt my authority, but the biggest problem with punk music was that it was so bloody ANGRY all the time. It died a quick death because it was too busy posturing and being self-destructive instead of being what it should have been, what the Ramones achieved – just a couple of ugly guys who barely knew how to play their instruments (or sing) stand around and play together. It was messy, it was short, and their range occasionally stretched to four chords, but God it was awesome. They weren’t trying to make any kind of statement about the past (in fact, Joey Ramone’s love of Brill Building 1960s music really made it AWESOME again -witness their definitive cover of Sonny Bono’s “Needles and Pins”), they were just playing music that they loved, and really, what’s more punk than that?
