We all have to make a living which means we all have to decide on our own what makes sense for us. In my youth I was no different than any other know-it-all morally superior punk rock fan but these days I'm far less inclined to judge musicians for doing whatever they need to in order to earn a living. Whether it's Coca-Cola commericals or the soundtrack for American Pie 5: The Key Lime Cooter, I don't care.
What bugs me about stuff like the Hall of Fame and the Grammys is that nobody needs to do it. It doesn't sell one extra record for anybody. It's all about ego. These awards and honors are nothing more than grotesque orgies of self-gratification set up for people who have already sold millions of records and made millions of dollars yet are still so insecure that they need something to make them feel just a little more terrific about themselves. Just once, I used to think, I'd like one of these yahoos to show a little backbone and integrity and tell the awards people to go fuck themselves. Like the Sex Pistols just did.
Playing in a band is itself nothing more than a convoluted way to stroke your own ego. How much is enough? What does it take for a multi-millionaire rock star to say to himself, gee, maybe it's a bit silly for me to accept the award for the best album of the year considering that I'm the beneficiary of a rigged system that isn't even vaguely interested in the existence of the hundreds and hundreds of amazing albums that were released in the same year just because they committed the sin of existing outside the magic circle of the Big 4?
Think about the unmitigated hubris it takes to stand up on national television and shake your own hand for ostensibly having made a better record than everybody else that year (according to the people who need to sell the idea that your record is brilliant in order to make more money). Now consider that most of the great records released that year never got a chance to be heard solely because the people who made them weren't as good at being businessmen as the guys mugging for the cameras at the podium. Doesn't it kind of make you want to puke?
As for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, imagine the same scenario as above, only instead of being honored for a record, you're getting a lifetime achievement award for having done well at your job and having always played by the rules.
Where is the Hall of Fame for construction workers, or airline pilots, or grocery store clerks? They don't get one. They just get to come home from work and turn on the TV and watch some overpaid, overfed, over-adored dingbat get showered with more attention because the musician's fragile ego can't stand going more than a few minutes without somebody telling him how fantastic he is.
Rock musicians really are a pathetic lot.
This was originally posted on the old weblog on 9/16/2004.
Nobody played guitar like Johnny Ramone. Nobody.
Joey’s death seemed like a sick joke; Dee Dee’s was the cruel punchline. Learning of their deaths reminded me of my own age and mortality: life is transitory, and death is final, and when it comes, there’s little warning and no quarter. Hearing about Joey and Dee knocked the wind out of me. No more Joey Ramone, draped on a microphone looking and sounding like something that had just landed from another planet. No more absurd, hilarious novels and stories from Dee Dee. And no more brilliant songs from either of them. The Ramones had always been there, and I guess I’d figured they always would be.
But reading about Johnny Ramone’s death this morning didn’t knock the wind out of me; it hit me in the face like a two-by-four.
Johnny was rock and roll - real rock and roll - personified, and rock and roll doesn’t die. Johnny was the one who had retired with grace and dignity and sold his guitars, no longer having any use for the tools of the trade. Johnny was supposed to get old with his wife and go to ball games and play in his roto league and collect old movie posters and track down rare, bizarre horror films from third world countries. He was supposed to live out his life in relative comfort after having traveled the world so many times over, inspiring so many of us to pick up guitars and make our own music, even though we couldn’t play “Stairway To Heaven” and thought Eddie Van Halen was an annoying wanker.
Johnny Ramone was never recognized as a revolutionary guitarist. Chuck Berry gave us rock and roll guitar playing. Hendrix showed us what the instrument was capable of in the hands of somebody with the ambition, vision and tenacity to bend it to his will. But what Johnny Ramone contributed to rock and roll guitar playing was just as important – maybe even more important – because he took the instrument away from the rock gods and handed it back to the rest of us. Johnny turned the guitar back into a brutal, primal, stunningly effective tool. He proved that you didn’t need to be a virtuoso to be a great guitarist. He reminded the world that rock and roll was supposed to be fun.
Johnny never played flashy leads, and he was never taken seriously by mainstream rock guitarists, and in fact he was only taken seriously by a handful of critics years after he’d changed rock and roll; after he’d brought back the immediacy and urgency and passion of rock and roll guitar playing. Rock and roll had been voluntarily neutered when Johnny first plugged his Mosrite guitar into his Marshall amp. He used the spare parts that had been discarded by the rock gods in favor of pretentious, opera-length solos to create a new monster; a huge, ugly, primitive beast with fangs and claws. He didn’t eschew convention – he spit in its face. He attacked the strings like a crazed soldier pumping rounds into the enemy. He didn’t just play for a crowd; he assaulted them.
You’ve got to understand – I wanted to be Johnny Ramone.
His attitude reflected his musical style. My brief conversations with Johnny when I interviewed him in 1994 were a blast not only because I was able to talk with my hero, but because he embodied everything that I’d always loved about punk rock. He was brutally honest, wickedly funny and by far the most down-to-earth rock star I’d ever encountered. By 1994, he’d resigned himself to the fact that the Ramones would never sell a million records. But if he seemed to be tiring of fighting a never-ending uphill battle to get his music heard, he didn’t express any bitterness. He knew even then that in spite of never getting the spoils, the Ramones had been victorious.
“At times I feel like maybe we deserved a little better,” he said at the time. “These bands all talk about how much they were influenced by the Ramones but when they get big, we try to get on a tour with them and it just doesn’t happen. But I guess it ain’t no big deal. I’m thankful every day when I get up that I can do this for a living.”
Johnny Ramone was supposed to be too tough to die.
Much has been written about Johnny’s role as the leader of the Ramones – his high performance standards, his business acumen and his tendency to rule with an iron fist. Little has been written about the fact that he was trying to work with a group of addicts and alcoholics, nor is it often suggested that the band might well have imploded long before it did if Johnny Ramone hadn’t been around to run the show. For better or worse, Johnny never claimed to be anything he wasn’t, and if some in the Ramones camp didn’t appreciate that his leadership skills too often resembled his aggressive style of guitar playing, they were still always there to write the songs and play the gigs. If Joey and Dee Dee were the heart and soul of the Ramones, it can’t be denied the Johnny was the blood and guts.
Johnny Ramone was a guitarist years ahead of his time, and while he never got his due, I still hold out hope that future generations of rock critics will finally begin to understand the importance of what he did, and how crucial it was to keeping rock and roll alive, not only when the Ramones started – a time when rock and roll seemed to be in serious danger of choking to death on its own excess and self-indulgence - but to this day.
Nobody played guitar like Johnny Ramone. Nobody ever will.
R.I.P.
UPDATE: The offical Ramones site has put up some great photos of Johnny, along with a few essays.
Most mornings I'm awake before Pixie, but on those occasions when I manage to catch a few extra winks I'm invariably woken by the alarm on her clock radio, which, for reasons I don't care to investigate, is set to the local public station. She's pretty quick on the draw so I usually only hear a second or two on a given morning. But it's always some priceless bit of earnest commentary that seems as though it might form the basis of a good comedy sketch. This morning it was, "...but the Hopis have a complicated relationship with the corn." Then click, the alarm's off and I'm left to ponder the comedic possibilities.
I don't think it would be half as entertaining if all the NPR on-air personalities didn't sound like they'd been given voice lessons by HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
You know how all this new recording technology is supposed to save all kinds of time and money? How we're supposed to be so much better off now that we're not dicking around with fickle tape machines and jittery fingers on wonky faders?
Well how come every time I make a record it takes even longer than the last one?
Part of it has got to be that I have a better ear than I once did and that I'm a bit more picky than I used to be, but trust me, I'm trying to get in and out as quickly as possible with as little financial damage done as feasible. I hate spending a lot of time recording and I'm always extremely conscious of the clock and the calculator. The problem isn't with me.
I swear, every time somebody tells me about some new piece of technology that's going to save me so much time, I've learned to automatically plan on double the time to do the task in question.
Frank linked to a brilliant, hilarious video featuring David Hasselhoff's version of "Hooked On A Feeling," which I'm linking to directly, via YouTube. The original link features commentary written by somebody who takes a lot of obvious shots at the video, perhaps not realizing that Mr. Hasselhoff is having fun at his own expense for our amusement. Of course, those of us who enjoyed his performance in The Spongebob Squarepants Movie already knew he doesn't take himself too seriously.
Speaking of YouTube, here's a weird clip of the Barracudas playing their great song "Summer Fun" on Top Of The Pops in 1980. Singer Jeremy Gluck goes a few zillion miles out of his way to make it abundantly clear that he's lip-synching. It comes off really well, like some kind of smart-ass kid plot to comment on the lameness of the show while retaining the credibility to plead innocent if confronted. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.
(Link via Lindsay at N.B.T.)
I'm a little embarrassed at having laughed my ass off at this, but what the hell.
(Link via Althouse)
