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September 16, 2004
And Now There Is One
like DeeDee and Joey before him, Johnny left us last night.
i saw the news article earlier today, but i wasn't planning on writing about his passing until i saw Miss Bliss's post about him this evening. i started to leave her a comment but found instead that i did have quite a bit to say myself as well.
MB said that the Ramones were the soundtrack to her high school years. well, more so then any other band, they were my soundtrack too. DeeDee and the Ramones were the reason i picked up the bass, just as Johnny was the reason my childhood friend Bill took up the guitar. they were the first band to show us that we didn't have to be good musicians, we just had to love what we were doing -- and that was the start we needed. Bill sewed together two guitar straps, so that he could have his guitar slung low enough to look like Johnny. we grew out our hair and got the bowl cuts, saved our money for the leather jackets. in our sophomore year we formed our first 'real' band and taught ourselves to play using Rocket To Russia as our roadmap. how my mom put up with us i'll never know, us holed up in my room, our amps turned to eleven, screaming out the words to Blitzkrieg Bop or Surfin Bird. we built a drum set out of plastic buckets and recruited any number of friends to beat on them for us. an awful lot of awful gin, Old English malt and cheap weed were consumed in the company of the vinyl versions of those guys. and a lot of good music and unforgettable memories were created too. later, our tastes moved on to The Damned, The Stranglers, The Pistols, and then when the L.A. scene started up, Black Flag, the Circle Jerks and X. but we never forgot our roots. i can still remember cutting school my senior year and driving into the city with Bill and another friend, Tom, as the Ramones were playing a free noon-time concert on the steps of city hall. 50,000 watts of I Wanna Be Sedated, blasted out from the steps of the center of San Francisco government. i doubt I’ll live to see another band do that. or the night they headlined The Warfield in SF -- a Warfield who still had theater seating at the time. i think that show more than any other was the reason they permanently removed all the main floor seats. hell, the crowd took out half the seats for them that night anyway...
RIP Johnny. you're going to be missed far more than you'll ever know. i'm missing you right now already.
Posted by P at September 16, 2004 09:01 PM
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» Johnny from By Beauty Damned
Johnny Ramone died the day after my birthday. I had so much going on that I wasn't posting, and didn't pay any attention to many things in the news. Just thought I'd take a minute to remember Johnny and... [Read More]
Tracked on September 25, 2004 01:58 PM
» Johnny from By Beauty Damned
Johnny Ramone died the day after my birthday. I had so much going on that I wasn't posting, and didn't pay any attention to many things in the news. Just thought I'd take a minute to remember Johnny and... [Read More]
Tracked on September 25, 2004 02:01 PM
» Johnny from By Beauty Damned
Johnny Ramone died the day after my birthday. I had so much going on that I wasn't posting, and didn't pay any attention to many things in the news. Just thought I'd take a minute to remember Johnny and... [Read More]
Tracked on September 25, 2004 02:19 PM
» Johnny from By Beauty Damned
Johnny Ramone died the day after my birthday. I had so much going on that I wasn't posting, and didn't pay any attention to many things in the news. Just thought I'd take a minute to remember Johnny and... [Read More]
Tracked on November 2, 2004 07:10 AM
» Johnny from By Beauty Damned
Johnny Ramone died the day after my birthday. I had so much going on that I wasn't posting, and didn't pay any attention to many things in the news. Just thought I'd take a minute to remember Johnny and... [Read More]
Tracked on November 2, 2004 07:11 AM
» Johnny from By Beauty Damned
Johnny Ramone died the day after my birthday. I had so much going on that I wasn't posting, and didn't pay any attention to many things in the news. Just thought I'd take a minute to remember Johnny and... [Read More]
Tracked on November 2, 2004 07:12 AM
Comments
Aw Pete ya almost made me cry...and that's SO UN-punk...but oh well. One of the many reasons that I fell in love with my husband was that he is a serious devotee of the Ramones and when we met he was playing bass in a punk band. He had a Billy Zoom stance and a Ramones playing style...what's not to love eh?
Posted by: Miss Bliss at September 17, 2004 08:39 AM
Being stuck here in Utah this is the first I have heard of Johnny's death. I'm happy to say I saw the Ramones live a couple of times. They were one of the greatest American bands of all time - period.
Steve Van Zandt said you have rock and roll covered if you count the bands that influenced the Ramones and the bands that the Ramones influenced.
Cancer is a horrible thing and I hope that a cure is discovered in the near future. One of the later Ramones albums has the band names and RIP on tombstones on the back cover. How sadly prophetic of a not so distant future.
Posted by: Erik at September 22, 2004 10:34 AM
I was raised in a home where the Ramones were revered above all else. I feel like they were a part of my family. Their music will live on forever. Angels. Saints. Rockstars. Idols. Those are just a few of the words that describe them.
It does bring tears to my eyes thinking about what they have meant in my own life and it's been sad to have had to acknowledge each of these men's deaths. I guess their work was done here. And what a phenomenal job they did, giving the world something it never had before.
Check out my dad's website: joeyramone.org
It's pretty bitchin.
Posted by: Maria at September 23, 2004 01:14 PM