SHEENA IS A NEO-CON

Who knew the late, great Johnny Ramone was a Republican?

Man, these guys are too young to be dropping off like this. I though The Ramones-- The Beatles of the post-Boomer generation --would live forever. I though they would never die. Now there's only Tommy left, and he probably extended his life by being the first original member to leave the band, opting to help engineer and produce their albums instead.

Finding out that Johnny Ramone was a conservative is a strangely delightful discovery, because it nails on the head what I feel about punk rock, and why I always felt drawn to its primitive power.

Being a punk was not about having a 'hawk and wearing Doc Martens. Being a punk was not about studded leather jackets and a speed addiction. No, punk rock and being a punk was all about being yourself.

The Ramones had long hair, a no-no in many punk circles... didn't matter, they invented it for all intents and purposes. All of their idols wore their hair long, though: Iggy Pop, Roky Erikson, The Velvet Underground, The Sonics, The Beach Boys, and of course Phil Spector all had massive hairdos.

The Ramones were a bunch of leather-jacket-jeans-wearing longhairs from Queens... they definitely didn't come off as hippies, even if some of their musical tastes went along that line. They didn't care about politics, except for "Bonzo Goes To Bitburg", and obviously Johnny was a good enough sport to let Joey pull that tune off.

All that matters, though, is the fact that Johnny Ramone made it cool to not play jack-off guitar solos ever again. Johnny Ramone made it cool to care intensely about being in a band. Johnny Ramone made it cool to play nothing but downstrokes on the guitar, in rapid-fire motion.

I remember watching Rock and Roll High School for the first time on TV, when I was 16, and I remember how deadly serious Johnny seemed. He hammered away at that axe, and he gave me hope. I saw what he was doing on the guitar-- it was the same thing I was doing, just playing some barre chords and strumming wildly as pockets of distortion blasted through squealing amplifiers.

I played guitar on a five-string piece-of-shit no-name electric that I bought for $50 when I was a teen. I used a 50 cent piece as a pick, and I scraped the fake metal off of the cheesy pick-ups within weeks of my purchase. I didn't know any chords-- I would run my index finger along the neck and simulate a barre chord, the missing high E string helping me complete the auditory illusion. My fingers weren't strong yet, I couldn't hold more than one note at a time.

But it didn't matter, because punk changed the game. You didn't have to be a Guitar Institute grad to learn how to play "Blitzkrieg Bop".

The Ramones were so cool, because they changed the world without having to bitch and moan about it. They just did what they wanted to do, and three decades later people are still trying to catch up to it. They seemed to love every minute of their careers, and their music has made me smile, laugh, cry, and pogo with reckless abandon countless times. Their music gave me the courage to go out and play music on my own, despite being about as good as a carton of year-old milk.

It wasn't about who you voted for or what kind of pedal effects you used-- it was about making music that didn't suck. Rock had become excessively fat, and The Ramones cut out all of the lard, made rock music into a lean and wiry beast that needed to be caged up lest it decimate everything in its path.

I wonder how the guys got along-- was it a hassle, or was it fun? A little of both, I suspect... and underlying everything was a love for music that moved you rather than merely entertaining you.

The Ramones didn't have to sell out or make a record to reach today's crop of kids. They did it their way, and that's what you'll hear in obituaries all over the world in the next week or so. Too bad that half the people who like punk msic now didn't like it when it first came out-- maybe if they'd been more accepting, then it only would've taken 15 years for punk music to win the battle.

And let's face it-- it was a battle. If you opted to "be yourself" then it meant opening yourself up to ther hostilities of less-understanding folk. Dyed hair, black attire and ripped jeans marked you as a weirdo, someone who needed to be dealt with in redneck quarters. To be punk meant knowing that you were a sitting duck, and that no one-- not even other punks --would help you out or take it easy on you.

Thank God I was never a punk-- I was weird in my own way. I wore homemade T-shirts that depicted a peace sign underscored by the word WAR; I had hair down to my shoulders but I didn't listen to hair metal; I listened to The Doors, N.W.A., and Dead Kennedys and liked them all equally. I was a punk in the sense that I didn;t give a fuck what you thought about me. I didn't wear Sid Vicious T-shirts, and I sneered at anyone who did.

Oh shit-- this post smacks of nostalgia...

No, never mind-- it's not nostalgic to recount how things used to be, especially if you like how things are now.

I mean, I've always known that The Ramones couldn't live forever, but it was fun pretending they could for as long as they lasted.