33 1 3 020 Ramones' Ramones Nicholas Rombes (retail) (pdf)

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over-the-top moment here: from beginning to end, I Wanna
Be Your Boyfriend maintains its innocence. Of all the songs
on the album, this one underwent some of the most dramatic
changes from its early demo version, although the overall
spirit and approach remain the same. While the album version
clocks in at 2:24, the demo version lasts only 1:39, and is the
least ornate-sounding version. The 1975 Marty
Thau-produced version, the most elaborate, extends the song
to 2:58, and sounds positively Phil Spectoresque. All in all,
the album version strikes a compromise between the
relatively simple and direct demo and Thau s magisterial
demo; in all three versions the basic sweetness remains intact.
There is a very nice symmetry to these opening tracks: in
many ways, the first four songs capture the full range of the
Ramones sound and stand as a sort of mini-album within the
album. Craig Leon notes that there was some discussion of
the ordering of the tracks, but not too much. The first four
tracks were pretty much always in place. We wanted to
duplicate the feeling of the live set.
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This sweetness is immediately dispelled in the next track,
Chain Saw, which literally opens not with a chain saw, but
with what sounds to be a circular saw. Framed by Joey s
bizarrely expressionistic vocalizing (pronouncing massacre
massacreee ), the song plugs into the narrative of Tobe
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Hooper s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, released in 1974. Like
the low-budget, do-it-yourself aesthetics of the film itself,
Chain Saw is among the fastest songs on the album, and the
most homemade sounding. Comparisons between the demo
version of Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue and the album
version demonstrate the ways in which the Ramones
tightened up their sound. The demo is considerably slower
(and, at 1:39, about five seconds longer) than the album
version. Much of the fuzztone has been eliminated on the
album, and what could pass as an almost funky, James
Bondish guitar solo in the demo has been transformed into a
droning, hypnotic moment. (This would be the perfect spot
for the album to develop a skip; an endless repetition of this
part of the song over and over again would be very nice.) This
is the second time on the album that a song refers to the
kids : All the kids wanna sniff some glue / All the kids want
somethin to do. If the song was perceived as being
dangerous (and indeed there were efforts to ban it in Scotland
in the fall of 1976), it should be recognized
that the song does, in fact, refrain from fully endorsing the
desire expressed in its title: for it is not us kids or we
kids it is the kids. In Punking Out, an interviewer asks
Dee Dee about the song. Well, that comes out of an
adolescent trauma that all us kids probably went through.. ..
It s really just a frustrating thing, cause there was nothing else
to do. We got something better to do now. What do you want
me to say, I want all the kids to go drink ammonia or
something? I don t want em to do that. In this sense,
Ramones like punk is not only a product of its time, but it
also hints at a commentary and even critique of its time, much
the same way that Nirvana s line from Smells Like Teen
Spirit, here we are now, entertain us reflects both a
desire and offers a scathing commentary on that desire.
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Side one closes out with the album s longest song, I Don t
Wanna Go Down to the Basement, which ends abruptly at
2:35, as if the power had been cut out. Again, the album
version is slightly faster and shorter than the demo. According
to Craig Leon, the first demo was fairly lackluster. In fact,
when I played it for Ritchie Gottehrer and Seymour Stein, my
bosses at Sire, it was one of the reasons they initially wanted
to pass on the group. They thought that the band couldn t
capture their live sound in the studio. Seymour, of course,
later gave them a shot.
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Perhaps, upon listening to the album for the first time, side
two was somehow a disappointment, a let down. You don t
even need to think about it to know why: the promise of the
band has been fulfilled on the first side. Side two is merely a
confirmation, and while there can be a thrill in confirmation,
it is never the same sort of thrill as the thrill of discovery,
which was side one.
The sun has crept across your bedroom floor in the roughly
fifteen minutes that it took to play the first side, and you
wonder: why does there even need to be a second side?
Loudmouth does little to convince you were wrong, and
somehow this comes as a tremendous relief, because it means
you are not, and you probably never will be, the worshipful
rock fan. You are glad to know this about yourself, but even
more glad that the Ramones have made it difficult for you to
become that sort of fan that you hate. The fade-out on
Loudmouth is maybe your least favorite part of the album,
but since it only lasts several seconds, what have you lost?
The practical side of you says that maybe the Ramones knew
this: if you don t like one of their songs, who cares, because it
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won t last more than a few minutes anyway (and then you
remember suffering through a few of the bad long songs from
David Bowie and you re absolutely sure that the Ramones
make short songs because they know there might be a few
you don t like). You sort of feel the same way about Havana
Affair, but that song
is saved by Spy vs Spy in Mad Magazine and the fact that
the strip was written by Antonio Prohias, who fled Cuba for
the United States because his cartoons that mocked Castro got
him into danger. The line sent to spy on a Cuban talent
show makes you think of the point-nosed spies, and when [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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