Ramones.

One of the most affecting things I've ever heard was an appearance by Paul Westerberg on one of the late night talk shows. He played a song called "Let the Bad Times Roll," which was a song that I'd already grasped and added to my own personal collection of adored songs.

On this appearance, Westerberg added the line, "Joey and Dee Dee home..." During a break.

I was affected. There was a passion and pain in his voice that I could understand.

The Ramones are one of the greatest rock bands that the world will ever see. Their first three albums are perfect examples of what was wrong with rock music in the latter part of the seventies, as well as a plan for correcting it. They took the sounds that the loved, and the sounds that made sense, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Dion, Buddy Holly, Carl Vincent, the Beach Boys, it was all there.

Ramones made the sounds their own. While Rock Star Dreams might have existed, my sense is that all they wanted to do was make the music that they wanted to hear.

It's what I want to hear, as well.

My brother gave me the "Weird Tales of the Ramones" box set for my birthday, and while I already have all the music, the gift itself was special. It was a reminder of what the Ramones have always meant to me. They were comic book figures whose weirdness would always ensure that I was okay; as strange as I might have felt at any time during my life, I'd always be at home within their Cretin Family. It was a lovely gift, that of remembrance of times when I walked through high school in a Ramones t-shirt, and was hassled for it.

It's a far better time than now, where the corpse-fuckers have churned out t-shirts, lunch boxes, and the like now that Joey, Dee Dee, and Johnny have died. I walk through town seeing folks in Ramones shirts who would have tried to kick my ass ten years ago for wearing the same. And, now I can walk down the streets and see 14 year old girls in Ramones gear. Hot Topic makes a killing on the dead, and the kids just don't know any better. They like to be different, which ends up meaning that they want to be just the same as every other "punk" out there. They want their own identity, so they'll throw their lot in with the Dead Ramones.

It's great, and it's too bad. It's great that folks will continue to appreciate Ramones, and it's too bad that they'll appreciate them for the wrong reasons. So, it goes. Play "She's a Sensation" for a 15 year old in a Ramones tank top, and the best you can expect is a blank stare.

Meh.

Joey, Dee Dee, and Johnny- God bless. My apologies for the fashinistas who fuck your skulls.