Jewy Ramone

by David Gordon


RIP Jeff Hyman

Believe it or not, it wasn’t always cool to be a skinny, nerdy Jewish kid from Queens. Williamsburg was where my mom took me to buy cheap school clothes from the Hasidic shopkeepers. Long Island City was a wasteland where we went to wreck shit as kids or later on, as young artsy types, to make Super 8 films of ourselves wrecking shit. Those were the days when cool downtown people loathed Brooklyn and one could, literally, go for weeks without crossing above Fourteenth Street or going west of Broadway. In that Old World atmosphere, I had Manhattanite friends who had barely ever set foot in Brooklyn, (a trip to BAM maybe or the Botanical Gardens) but who never, ever touched Queens. Nowadays, just being a native makes me one of the last Mohicans, but back then I was definitely second-class. I was also 125 pounds, allergic and bronchial, sniffly and pasty, bookish and and pathologically shy. I hung in the back of jazz clubs, haunted used record stores, kung-fu triple features, midnight gore films and dusty book and comic shops, but it never crossed my mind that anyone like me could actually do anything cool like that. All those heroes were from a different tribe: cooler, older, richer, poorer, blacker or whiter.

Then, one spring evening, I was sitting in the passenger seat of my parents’ car, parked on the Upper East Side, waiting for them to finish getting their hair cut and twirling the radio dial. I don’t know what year it was, but I was young enough that my family all still got our hair cut together. Somewhere in the air, I stumbled across a tune that changed my life, (for the second time –– the first was hearing what I learned was Bitch’s Brew). I didn’t know the name of the band or the song, but from the minimal lyrics it was easy to guess: "I Just Wanna Have Something To Do."

Coming into consciousness as I did around 1980, in the second wave of punk, or post punk or whatever, and having been drawn first to blues and jazz, and loving the old Stones and Who but finding their shows and recent albums appalling, I would not, at the time, have described myself as a rock fan at all, finding the whole concept embarrassing and overblown, commercial mush for the meathead masses. Nor did the loudness and speed of the Ramones shock me. But it made me re-connect to rock and roll as something that mattered, that was not made for waving a lighter in Giants Stadium, but for prowling the streets, riding the subway, sitting on the stoop waiting for something to come by, writing bad poems, stealing books and doing whippets. It was alive, in all the best and worst senses of the word.

Much of that incredible vitality came from anger, aggression and hopeless energy, the amazing power they unleashed. But there was something else, something that wasn’t there, for me, with The Sex Pistols or The Clash. A note of longing, of yearning, of loss. A bittersweet tone, a beauty, that I think came from Joey’s singing, from his voice. I recognized it immediately in that song, in the choked off last word to the line “I just want to be with you…” and the haunting sweep of the repeated “tonight,” that opens up to take in the world of everything we love and can’t touch. It shows up in many other places too, in “I Want to Live,” in “I Wanna Be Sedated,” even in the dark majesty of “Don’t Bust My Chops” or the strange sob in the immortal “Somebody Put Something in My Drink.”

I connect this note, this tone, both deep and soaring, to blues, to doo-wop, to Sinatra, to Iggy, to something ancient and poetic but also completely modern American urban: the heart in the beast in the jungle. That feeling always grabs me by the throat. I know it’s anathema to say this, but I love those songs as much as the Beatles. Maybe more. Once, when I was in the fashion business (another story) we recruited the cheerleaders from the local, mainly Hispanic high school to perform, and as they leapt and yelled and waved their pom-poms, and formed a pyramid, I had them blast, “I Just Wanna Have Something To Do.” It gave me chills. I think the DJ and I hugged.

In the recent Ramones documentaries, there were two bits I found especially moving: the map that showed where the Ramones played across the country and the world and which bands sprang up in those cities, as if, seeing the guys from Queens triumphant, kids everywhere suddenly realized they could do it too. And I love the footage from Latin America, where crowds of fanatical teens filled stadiums and chased the limo, chanting for Los Ramones.

CBGB is gone, my hearing is going, and Jeff Hyman, in the foreshortened perspective of time seems like what he always was: another great Jewish songwriter and New York pop-singer. But for the angry, lonely, hungry, horny, dorky and lame, for young people all over the world who know they are fucked, that they have nothing but their lives to bet, Joey Ramone will always be a hero. This, to me, is the message behind every Ramones tune: You are a star, and your life, today, is a song.

Download:

"I Just Want To Have Something To Do" mp3
by the Ramones,
available on Road to Ruin

"Listen To My Heart" mp3
by the Ramones, 1976.
available on Ramones

"Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World" mp3
by the Ramones, 1976.
available on Ramones

"It's A Long Way Back To Germany (U.K. B-Side)" mp3
by the Ramones, 1977.
available on Rocket to Russia

"Slug" mp3
by the Ramones, 1977.
available on Rocket to Russia

"Commando" mp3
by the Ramones, 1977.
available on Leave Home

"The KKK Took My Baby Away" mp3
by the Ramones, 1981.
available on Pleasant Dreams

"My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes To Bitburg)" mp3
by the Ramones, 1986.
available on Animal Boy

"We're A Happy Family" mp3
by the Ramones, 1977.
available on Rocket to Russia

"Rockaway Beach" mp3
by the Ramones, 1977.
available on Rocket to Russia

"I Want You Around (Original Version)" mp3
by the Ramones, 1977.
available on All The Stuff (And More), Vol. 2

"Questioningly" mp3
by the Ramones,
available on Road to Ruin

"Danny Says (demo)" mp3
by the Ramones, 1980.
available on End of the Century

"What A Wonderful World" mp3
by Joey Ramone, 2004
available on Don't Worry About Me

"Bye Bye Baby" mp3
by Ronnie Spector and Joey Ramone, 1999.
available on She Talks to Rainbows

top photo: © Roberta Bayley, 1977.

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This is the fourth of eight posts at the Boogie Woogie Flu, in which eight Jewish writers will discuss the works of other Jewish artists for eight consecutive days in celebration of Hanukkah.