The Ramone Family

The three Ramones we've lost so far — Joey, Dee Dee and now Johnny — are remembered as the progenitors of punk rock, and some of the most influential performers who've ever graced a rock stage. All of which is true, but it's also worth remembering how brilliant — and how eccentric — they were as songwriters. Given that the early British and American punks fixated on the Ramones as their ideal (the first couple of issues of the first British punk 'zine Sniffin' Glue are almost exclusively about the Ramones), it's surprising that they didn't sound much like them. It took almost a decade for the Ramones' songwriting style to turn into a little genre of its own, and their early songs to become actual punk standards.

By the mid '80s, the Ramones were starting to repeat themselves pretty seriously, and the Bay Area's Gilman St. scene was cracking their formulas. The Mr. T Experience's "End of the Ramones" is a dead-on parody, with a lyric about how predictable their heroes' set lists had gotten: "They're gonna start with the 'Blitzkrieg Bop'/ And we'll be havin' fun/ And when they get to the 'Cretin Hop'/ We'll know they're almost done." But MTX had also picked up on the musical tricks that the Ramones made their own: the opening "1-2-3-4," the six-beat-long riff between verses that gives the impression that it's got someplace to go in a big hurry, the I-IV-V major-barre-chord progression that was the backbone of the entire Ramones catalogue, the bubblegum-style key change near the end, the ultra-simple beat that was Tommy Ramone's gift to punk rock.

Around the same time, though, playing an occasional Ramones song became a way for punk-inspired bands to honor their roots, in much the same way that almost every late-'60s band could pull out the occasional Beatles cover. Sonic Youth's low-fi live album Hold That Tiger concludes with a four-song rampage through songs from the first Ramones record; Yo La Tengo play "Blitzkrieg Bop" as a surf instrumental on Genius + Love = Yo La Tengo, while Billy Childish's band Thee Mighty Caesars reclaim the same song as the garage classic it might've been on Surely They Were the Sons of God; Face to Face focus on the lunging riff at the center of "The KKK Took My Baby Away" with their wall-of-guitar version. And other bands wrote about the Ramones: the Dutch band De Heideroosjes' "Ode to the Ramones" and the Mansfields' "I Like the Ramones" are both awkward but heartfelt homages. (Then there's Japanese garage kings Guitar Wolf's habit of writing songs about the "Kung Fu Ramone" — see, for instance, the Link Wray-inspired instrumental "Kung Fu Ramone Culmination Tactic" on Missile Me!)

Eventually, a subgenre arose: bands that tried to write and play in precisely the Ramones' idiom. The Screeching Weasel side project the Riverdales was an attempt to copy the Ramone brudders' vibe as closely as possible; the Queers, from New Hampshire, had initially formed in 1982 to "play Ramones-type punk music," but only hit their stride when they re-formed in 1990. (Two of the Queers albums available on eMusic are Move Back Home and Pleasant Screams, whose titles' resemblance to the Ramones' Leave Home and Pleasant Dreams is purely intentional.)

A lot of those bands ultimately paid the Ramones a remarkable act of obeisance: covering entire albums, a couple of which are on eMusic. The Vindictives were a natural for the series (their singer called himself Joey Vindictive); their take on Ramones Leave Home is dizzy, adenoidal and occasionally pretty silly, but you can hear how comfortable they are with every word and twist of the songs. A few years later, the brilliantly named Jon Cougar Concentration Camp took on the metalloid, mid-period Ramones album Too Tough to Die. The material they've got to work with isn't the Ramones' strongest, but JCCC's version has a grit and momentum that the original sometimes lacks.

The smartest imitation to date of the Ramones as songwriters — and as personae — is the Donnas. Originally known as Ragady Anne, and then as the Electrocutes, they were a straightforward riot grrrl band (the title of the Electrocutes' album, Steal Yer Lunch Money is the most Ramones-y thing about it). In 1995, though, they created their alter egos, Donna A., Donna C., Donna F. and Donna R. — essentially the Ramones as the meanest girls in high school, and equally cartoony. Their self-titled debut follows the Ramones' musical formula as closely as they could get away with: "Get Rid of That Girl" is more or less "California Sun," and "Friday Fun" is practically "Glad to See You Go." That first album's lyrics, full of "I wanna" and "let's go," made no secret of what they were ripped off from. On later records, they branched out a bit (try the glam-metal kiss-off "I Didn't Like You Anyway," from Get Skintight), but their stroke of genius was finding a voice for girls in the language of the toughest boys in rock.

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