How the Ramones redefined punk rock |
Is popular music truly an art form? This question has never met a straightforward answer, either from the musicians themselves or the public, and it hangs over the exhibitions currently commemorating the 50th anniversary of punk rock. Among others, there’s the Outsiders, Outcasts, Rebels Weirdos show on at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles, while the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland is hosting its own celebration under the name Hey! Ho! Let’s Go! Punk at 50.
Somehow I’m put in mind of the quote attributed to Jean Cocteau about “Ameri-cans being a funny people – first you shock them, then they put you in a museum.” Up here in Seattle, the Museum of Pop Culture (MOPOP) has gotten in on the act with its artfully arranged display of smashed guitars and ripped T-shirts to salute both punk and its generational heir, grunge. With all its rollercoaster contortions and polished steel lumps, the MOPOP building itself perhaps offers the strongest argument for a distinctive rock-music art form.
The big-bang name that lies at the heart of these various tributes is that of the sadly defunct New York quartet the Ramones. If you were to distill the Ramones’ music into a sentence, you could say that it was very loud, very fast and very simple. They also made a striking visual impact with their pudding-bowl haircuts and group ensemble of torn jeans, leather jackets and shades. None of the original band members – Joey (vocals), Johnny (guitar), Tommy (drums) and Dee Dee (bass) – were related, and none of them were actually called Ramone. They adopted the last name in honor of Paul McCartney, who occasionally used the alias Paul Ramon when his own band was still calling itself the Silver Beetles.
In May 1976, the Ramones released their debut album, Ramones. It was a 29-minute song cycle of yelped vocals and buzzsaw guitars that seemed to get ever faster and more furious as it progressed. Titles such as “Blitzkrieg Bop,” “Judy Is a Punk” and “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” gave further evidence that the record might be something other than traditional family entertainment. Even so, there was something endearingly old-fashioned about the Ramones’ core message. Their devotees saw them less as the shock troops of a cultural revolution than as four good-time boys out for some fun – “a combination of everything we were into: television reruns, drinking beer, getting laid, cheeseburgers, and B-grade movies,” as Punk magazine’s Legs McNeil put it.
‘Punk rock is down........