The Ramones mattered the most.
I’m talking about bands I heard in high school during the punk/postpunk/new wave eras, 1977-1982.
It’s hard to write that. What about Patti Smith? OK, maybe it’s a tie. But it’s just that when I first heard “Blitzkrieg Bop,” “Beat on the Brat,” and “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue,” I knew I had what I needed. I knew that this was the real thing, this was going to get me through day, and maybe even high school.
I bought all their albums. I loved them all. I made lame excuses to myself for End of the Century but, in fact, I still kind of like it.
Thanks to the Garys, who booked the Ramones more than any other promoters did (so we had more shows in Toronto than any other city did), I saw a pile of gigs. I’m showing a bunch of ticket stubs, though I was at only one (the Music Hall) of these particular gigs. There were three gigs at the Concert Hall, one at the Kingsway (I think the same place that became the Kingsway film theatre?), and one or two others I might be forgetting.
In 2010, in my Facebook blog/group, I wrote the following about “Beat on the Brat” (orginal is here https://www.facebook.com/notes/1000-songs/song-417-beat-on-the-brat/10150209795826451/):
Few days have been as exciting as the first time I heard “Beat on the Brat,” by the Ramones. It was 1978 and probably around the time I first heard the late (last night) Captain Beefheart, who has nothing in common with the Ramones on the surface, but for me, growing up in Scarborough, they both meant being alive, creative and social possibility, and differentiation. A lot of that was naive, adolescent stuff, and certainly many other artists represented those things for me back then, but most of them don’t matter so much to me today. And, while I don’t listen to The Ramones or Captain Beefheart much these days, when I do I am definitely brought back to the moment when I fell in love with them musically, and I’m reminded of all the positive energy that they gave me, even while it was all caught up, at the time, in equally strong, or more powerful, negative forces: fear, loathing, isolation, self-destruction.
I guess I’ll never know for sure what music was really most dominant in my life back in those days. I misremember things, so I often tell people it was Elvis Costello, or Elvis and Dylan. It was probably more accurate to say a mix of The Doors, Patti Smith, Dylan, the Velvet Underground, Elvis. I think from 1978 to 1980 it was probably The Ramones, on the one hand, and Bruce Springsteen on the other. In every case it was single songs, not necessarily their best nor even my favorites today, that sealed the deal. “Born to Run.” “Because the Night.” “Riders on the Storm.” “I Want You.” “Radio, Radio.” “I’m Waiting for the Man.”
And, for the Ramones, it was definitely “Beat on the Brat,” the first song I ever heard by them, followed immediately by “Blitzkrieg Bop,” “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue,” and “Chainsaw”, “53rd and 3rd.” These songs, and that entire 1976 Ramones debut album epitomize punk for me. I judged all other punk according to it. There were punk albums prior to it, but they definitely feel “proto-punk”, like “Punk B.B.B.” (Punk Before Blitzkrieg Bop), and everything that follows, including every other Ramones album might be interesting, but it was never quite purely punk the way these songs are.
This isn’t actually a critical observation, by the way, just an account of how I perceived things.
Punk was: loud, fast, sloppy, bass-guitar-drums only, built on two chords, simply produced with no overdubs, funny, witty, pissed-off, Levis, sneakers, leather jackets, sunglasses, New York. Strangely, it was artful and pop. I liked a lot of UK bands, of course, but my heart was in New York, my image of this scene having been painted by Lisa Robinson, Lester Bangs and others in the pages of Hit Parader, Creem and Circus.
At first I thought that punk was all about reviving some rock and roll spirit of the 50s that had been lost, and that’s certainly how everyone was talking back then. It quickly became clear, though, that punks like the Ramones derived more of their energy from the 1960s. Earlier I wrote on a few of their covers, “Needles and Pins” and “Surfin’ Bird,” and it’s these songs - along with other definitive covers of theirs like and “California Sun” and “Do You Wanna Dance” - that demonstrate their deep love of girl groups, surf, garage, psych, Spector, The Beatles, and bubblegum.
It’s been said, maybe by me here one day, that the Ramones are somewhat of a bubblegum band. I won’t be so perverse as to argue that “Beat on the Brat” is a bubblegum song but...
I didn’t care about that then. I just loved them. I saw every show they did in Toronto from 1978-1981 (1982?), had all their albums, t-shirts, buttons, etc. I played this song and a this album in the mornings to get going, to wake up and get an aggressive attitude on, sort or a cross between happy and angry, which is what I hear in their songs.
The album was produced for $6400 in four days, during the days when people were taking years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to make records. We could hear it and that intelligence wore off on us. It was the beginning of D.I.Y., something many of us took up and which, I have to say, still keeps me going today.
In the Nicholas Rombes 33 1/3 book on this album, he argues that though the album sounds like "the ultimate do-it-yourself, amateur, reckless ethic that is associated with punk," but that the band approached the whole process with a "high degree of preparedness and professionalism.” It’s punk, but it’s thoughtfully executed and, oddly, precise.
Rombes quotes Joey Ramone on the origins of the song: “When I lived in Birchwood Towers in Forest Hills with my mom and brother. It was a middle-class neighborhood, with a lot of rich, snotty women who had horrible spoiled brat kids. There was a playground with women sitting around and a kid screaming, a spoiled, horrible kid just running around rampant with no discipline whatsoever. The kind of kid you just want to kill. You know, 'beat on the brat with a baseball bat' just came out. I just wanted to kill him.”
Not nice, but let’s face it, we’ve all felt it. I could relate, in a way that I couldn’t to “London’s Burning” and “White Riot.”
The bottom line: I’m blown away that this song and album still sound so bloody great.
PS: When I was in New York recently I swung by 53rd and 3rd, as I’ve done a number of times since my first trip there in the mid-1980s. I just can’t imagine anyone trying to turn tricks on the corner. I always stop when I’m there, though, to see if I can’t see what the Ramones did back in the mid-1970s.
