I got into The Ramones when I was 15 years old. This wasn't something I could broadcast in my little home town. This was something I did in secret. We would all grow into new music and broader ideas as the school year progressed and the changes of adolescence seemed to accelerate in speed. By time we had driver's licenses a year later we would almost be completely different creatures and even more different by time we turned 17. But at 15, The Ramones had to be a secret kept in my bedroom.
Later there would be that moment of truth, admitting to a friend that I had a Ramones album and I really thought they would like it too. A tape would be made, another wandering soul could be saved, another link in the secret chain we were a part of.
These friends had to be like minded, and those were in short supply, but they were there no matter how small the town. When I later joined the Navy I was fortunate to meet and become friends with another kindred spirit and he would introduce me to Black Flag, The Dead Kennedys and other forbidden musical fruits.
Years of loud shows and albums passed, we went our separate ways to start new lives but oddly enough I found no new kindred spirits for the music when I moved on. I learned to put up a screen where new people saw whatever it took to keep them from running away. Inside was where the other music was playing and no one to share it with.
Yes, there were the clubs and the shows and the record stores, places I could co-mingle with the other freaks. But you're really only relating to people on that superficial "public" face level at those places, unless you are going with that friend, the one who gets "it".
The one who got why you hunched your shoulders and made that weird face when playing Tin Machine.
The one who got what D. Boone was doing with that Telecaster and had his poster hanging on her closet door, like a huge guardian keeping an eye on her while she slept. Maybe she felt comfortable enough to show you because you got "it" too. You got D. Boone jumping around the stage like a wild bear in cutoff jean shorts, all treble and polemic. Maybe that was vulnerability? An 80's college girl showing a guy she was into The Minutemen.
The one who got why you felt disgust with any fellow wearing guy-liner and a blouse-y shirt with black jeans and Cuban heeled boots; while he nursed whiskey sours chatting up the girls by prattling in detail about some band who's music you could only get through mail order, as if he were Jarrell and the band were Frost.
Am I prattling right now? Well, I'm certainly not Jarrell and The Ramones were certainly not Frost.
It seems these days that folks under a certain age are less likely to be unsettled by music that has a structure different than what they are used to hearing. Maybe some of this is due to the ubiquitous nature of digital downloads for young people who's teenage and young adult years have been spent with iPods and iPhones and downloading torrents? They've been exposed to everything and it's still rock and roll to them, and I can't believe I stole a Billy Joel lyric, but it just happened. Maybe some of it can be traced back to an after effect of the Grunge breakthrough? Maybe 1991 through 1993/4 was some kind of a booster vaccination for noise tolerance? Maybe everything older than 10 years is simply quaint now?
There was a time when The Ramones were just a loud and simple mess to so many ears. Just 3 chords, inane lyrics and "they look so weird." They were a distillation of one flavor of rock and roll. It was comic books and leather jackets and crazy hair and really, really intense passion. They made music that could make you bounce along like a bouncing ball on a twisted version of Mitch Miller.
If I could have one rock and roll wish it would be that some kids cook up one more crazy distillation of rock and culture, boil off the useless medium, render the essence, and passionately throw the results back into the face of the world, saying, "See what you made us do? It's all your fault!"
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