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TODAY'S LECTURE: BAD BRAIN ANSWERS THE QUESTION, "WHAT DO THE RAMONES MEAN TO ME?" |
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by Charles Carreon
At one time, there was no punk rock. In 1983, the airwaves were filled with noxious sounds of bands such as Earth, Wind & Fire, and Lynyrd Skynyrd was making smart remarks about Southern Man not wantin' Neil Young around, anyhow. I had been listening to the same old hippie era records for so long that I felt like I was married to the Grateful Dead. The years went by and my boredom and unease grew deeper. Something in my heart was questing for a harder, more raucous sound that would jar me out of my lost condition, but there was little I, personally, could do. I was living in a tiny town in Oregon, finishing up an English degree after years of hiding out in the woods. I had no time to explore new music. For young people, the college radio station was a pathetic desert dominated by jazz, folk and classical zombies who allowed one four-hour alternative rock show every week. Through that four-hour window, I saw a new world, a way out of the tedious rhythm of tired contemporary music. One night, the college boys played the whole Talking Heads album, "Stop Making Sense." I heard David Byrne singing Psycho Killer, stuttering over the f-word and warning us to RUN RUN AWAY, I knew that my prayers for release from boredom had ended. I fortunately taped the whole album, and blissfully began to live in knew dissonant realms previously unknown to my musical senses.
Soon thereafter, I moved
from Oregon to LA to go to UCLA law school. I rode a shitty beatup Vespa
scooter to class that was so ugly the Westwood posers would jeer at me as
I went by, like I was making their plastic paradise look crappy. On the
music front, the world started opening up. I was on top of the world. I
discovered KXLU radio from Loyola Marymount, and started listening to
great DJs like Agent Eva, who once did a n on-the -air strip-a-thon that
raised $2,000 from a bunch of beach scum in a couple of hours. While
washing the dishes after school, I could listen to Tex & The Horseheads,
REM, X, offbeat characters like John Cale, Lou Reed, etcetera. But still I
did not discover the Ramones. The Ramones shattered my prison, burst my chains, and invited me to march down the streets of the metropolis with them, the lords of everything we had thought lost. My dignity restored, a new vision of liberty dawning in my mind, I seized the rude implements of modern life and plunged forward. Into the smog, into the traffic, into the core of the monster, my mind blazing, my stereo cranking, the world cleansed by radiocative sounds. The Ramones accelerated the rhythm of my being until I caught up with the adversary, then ratcheted me into to hyperdrive and blasted me far beyond the distant horizon. The song, "I'm Not Afraid of Life" was a great anthem that every city dweller could appreciate.
I'm Not Afraid Of Life Well certainly the madness that afflicts the world, as described in this beautiful song, has not diminished. The Ramones touched on all of the issues that were driving us crazy then, and are still driving us crazy today. Is it a crime to be old? Is life a drag? Is there hope for the world today? Will some maniac blow us up? Are we almost out of luck? Too Tough To Die, I understand, was deemed to be the first Ramones album that was distinctly politically correct. The Ramones before then had been considered somewhat risky. I mean, how do you really explain "You're A Loudmouth" in a way that is politically correct? It's an extremely rude song. "You Don't Come Close" is so catty. And "Beat on the Brat" is really not all that funny when you think about it. Especially not with a baseball bat, though they make it pretty clear who's fucked up with the catchy hook -- "With a brat like that, what can ya' lose?" But somehow we have got to laugh, got to stay on top of all the craziness, a step ahead of the ratrace, or we'll Go Mental! Still, that's not a good argument for a politically correct culture prude with a hard-on for upstarts from the lower classes. For me, Too Tough To Die was like a blast of some dark substance that without warning catapulted me down an alleyway, riding in the original Durango 95 that Alex stole in Clockwork Orange, sliding through the darkness between tall buildings, drifting like mercury into the steel arteries of the metropolis, merging into the streaming miles of red tail-lights winding through the hills of LA. I could feel too tough to die, "in real good shape, I have no fear." I was immediately hooked on the sardonic pose, the irony that works best with the flattest, most deadpan delivery. I've often said you can't be honest with those who aren't honest with you. Somebody bullshits you, you have the right to respond honestly, by telling them they're full of shit. But that generates immediate flak, so we often respond ironically, in a way that means more than either of you will admit. Our society is not honest with us. It puts on a Pepsi face while we are left to deal with flattening social realities -- streets, subways, skyscrapers, buses, parking lots, traffic jams, parks as grimy ashtrays, no day care for moms, no medicine for old people, and plenty of guns for every opressor with the brutality to use them. So the Ramones gave us a way of speaking ironically to society. Beat on the Brat sort of says, "Here, try being a nasty brute, a cruel, self-justifying child abuser, and see how that feels." We can try all kinds of social roles through Ramones songs. In "Time Bomb," from Subterranean Jungle, the singer is gonna kill his mom and dad, and he won't be sad about it, 'cause they treated him so bad. He's a time bomb, baby. This is a sweet way of saying, hey, how likely is it that someone who's life isn't all fucked up already would be a time bomb, wanna kill his mom and dad? So you could see the left-wing sentiment in these old songs, but you had to listen to the song first, which I think a lot of politically correct people were not doing. To see how sweet Time Bomb really is, compare it with Danny Elfman's "Only A Lad," with its parody of bleeding heart criminal-coddling sentiment, and its nasty aside, "Hey there Johnny boy, I hope you fry!" I soon discovered that, under the influence of Ramones, I found life bearable, and myself capable of answering its demands. The high lasted beyond the listening. A Ramones enlightenment began coming on. Jammin' down the freeway on my motorcycle, breathing vile exhaust, borne along in a river of gleaming metal, chrome and glass, I could feel the same power, seeing poetry in the grime, a miracle in full flower. What more could I ask of a rock and roll band? I learned when I got my second Ramones album at Tower Records, on sale, Pleasant Dreams. Oh wow, that was a trip! I could hardly believe it was the same band, though of course Joey's voice was unmistakeable, but the Buddy Holly type lyrics and syrupy emotions knocked me for a loop. I had always loved tragic love ballads, like One Last Kiss, and was swept away by the lyrics and the tune to "7-11." The crescendo, complete with crashing thunder and falling rain, was a heart-twister made sweeter by the innocence of Joey's delivery, and the omnipresent ironic, self-mocking note.
I kissed and hugged her Listening to Pleasant Dreams was like having the high school life I never had. A lot of people have likened the Ramones harmonies to the Beach Boys, but I really hate doing that, because the Ramones always used that wa-ooh sound in a way that was ironic, whereas the Beach Boys really meant it, and laid it on double thick. But the Ramones came close to being sincere about the syrupy sound in Pleasant Dreams, and as far as I know, most everyone loves the album. The two songs I got into most intensely though, were "This Business Is Killing Me" and "It's Not My Place (In the Nine-to-five World)." That was because at that time I was beginning the terrifying transition from long years of hippie-hood and educational responsibility-avoidance into being a prisoner in the stainless-steel and glass towers of the legal profession. I found myself in the nine-to-five world during my summer at a big LA law firm, "Irell & Manella," which I see made its way into the top ten of lawfirm political donors this year, according to the National Law Journal, that covers those things. Dizzying heights. Never seen such big lobster claws. As big as a catcher's mitt. Well, I'm exaggerating a little. But too damn big to be moral, or ethical, or in good taste, or anything but tasting good to eat. I wrote a poem about that, too, and I'm not saying it's a good one, but you can read it if you like. During that summer at I&M, I rode my motorcycle around a lot. It was a Yamaha SR500, really cool one-cylinder kickstart machine that was a little difficult to start but never precisely left you either stranded or short of exercise. I could get quite a workout before the engine caught. But once it did, we were underway. When the summer was over, I had to start commuting to downtown LA to a job working for a judge. It was a school thing, but a full-time job, that I got law-school credit for. There, I learned about grungy. Man, this is right downtown on Spring Street, just down the hill from the LA Criminal Courts building, across the freeway from Chinatown and Olvera Street. You can actually get this thing called a Kosher Burrito, which is corned beef, canned Texas-style chili, fresh onions and cheese all wrapped up in a tortilla. Shamefully good, but will give you enough gas to teach you to eat different. In the evenings, I liked to take the surface streets back to West LA, where we lived in student housing. It's a long ride, through Wilshire district, then Beverly Hills, Century City, Westwood, then south to the Palms district, where I was finally at home. It might have all been too much for me, but knowing clearly that it is not my place in the nine-to-five world kept me from getting too confused. The city, I began to realize, was something I had to use to survive, but it was not my creation, or my home, and I was going to escape. The next stage in my development as a Ramones fan occurred when I was studying for the California bar exam in the summer of 1986. Of course a bar exam is what is known as a "qualifying examination." You don't get a high or a low score, it's strictly pass-fail. You pass, you're a lawyer. You fail, you remain a law school graduate, a Juris Doctor, which sounds quite nice, but doesn't give you the right to practice law and charge for the service. This is much stiffer than a college or grad school exam, that you assume you'll pass. The statistics for the California bar, that draws thousands of candidates to "sit" for the examination, a three-day 18 hour gruel-a-thon held in numerous auditoriums filled with narrow convention hall chairs pulled up to flat folding tables. The exam is given three times a year, and the pass rate is always less than fifty percent. So it's the sort of thing that makes grown men and women freeze up inside about. Studying seems like the last thing you'd want to do. You study all these years and then you have to fucking jump the intellectual Grand Canyon on your mental motorbike as a last (hahahaha) gang-initiation trip. I graduated from law school in June 1986, and did everything before I finally got down to studying. I bought a new motorcycle on credit. I prepared my study area and prepared all of study materials with great care, even making special book-covers for the case outlines with humorous photographs. For example, the Family Law outline had pictures of famous horror couples, Frankenstein and his bride, Mr. & Mrs. Mummy, and the Property outline had a photo of sort of goofy samurai hacking down goofy peasants. You know, ways of humanizing your study materials so they scare you less. All that stuff to learn. My study-buddy Robin Kaufer used to ride motorcycles together. She had one of the first Honda Rebel 250 cc "econo-choppers" and I noticed it in the bike parking lot outside the school. We hung together through 2nd and 3rd year at UCLA, and I remember she took our friend John Hays to the gay pride parade on Melrose one year, ridin' him around on the Rebel. He said it was a blast. She said it was difficult. Musta been a workout, 'cause she is a tiny person, and the business of balancing the extra weight, especially someone as looped as I heard John was, with crowds and stop and start, musta been a pain. She was part of the Lawpoets scene, as was John and Tom Brill. Robin and I studied hard once we got going. We made flash cards and quizzed each other on legal rules. Then we'd fire up and kick it into high gear, doing four one hour essay exams in one hour, giving us 15 minutes on each exam. Then we'd trade each other exams, and do it again. We'd do eight essay exams in two hours, and read each other our answers, comparing them with the model answers in the practice book. We mostly studied in her living room in Venice Beach, a cool little place where her roommate never seemed to be. Robin had a saltwater aquarium, too, which was soothing to have around while studying. By the end of a long day of this kind of mental workout, which we would try and vary by taking rides down to the beach, out for coffee, or over to McGinty's Pub on Santa Monica Boulevard, our brains were fried. My head felt like a drum that had lost its stretch. One evening we decided to get a movie at the Wherehouse, and we found Rock 'n' Roll High School. We started watching it, not knowing what to expect. I mean, I liked the Ramones and all, but Rock 'n' Roll High School! I mean what could that be like? And of course immediately it's apparent that it's an incredible movie, totally fuckin' cool, with some of the finest acting by Mary Woronow that she has ever done, a role without which her career would hardly have been complete. Of course PJ Soles, who had no further roles of note in feature films, was a delightful creature -- Riff Randall, the Ramones' Number One Fan. Robin and I were quickly converted. I immediately rented the movie and watched it with my family. The only other movie of note that I saw that summer was Labyrinth, with David Bowie and Jennifer Connolly, which also became a Carreon family favorite. Just because Robin and I were studying didn't mean that everything was okay. We were terrified of the exam, and experienced tremendous tension and worry. The harder we studied, the more aware we became of how much was left to learn. And we had to have it down cold. Like on no other occasion in your life, we would be required to know the answers to a large number of questions on a very extensive and varied field of information. We prepared, and prepared, and prepared. Flipping flashcards, answering questions, writing essays, comparing answers. Fortunately there was also riding up PCH on our bikes, through the sunshine and the beach breeze, past the big parking lots that face the sea, under the pedestrian overpasses with their spiral concrete stairwells, past the fish place on Sunset, and the Feed Store on Topanga, sailing, sailing up toward Malibu, Zuma, maybe even Leo Carrillo, pushing past all of it with the steady pressure of my twisting wrist. And the Ramones were with me then, giving me the power, backing up my nerve, telling me every hour that I was not born to serve. Not my place in the nine-to-five world. Yet every day, I woke up in our tiny bedroom at UCLA student housing, and the exam was one day closer than the day before. More real and more threatening, because everyday there was one less day until I would have to walk into that examination hall and sit down for three days to live or die as a lawyer. Until then, I was preparing. A friend told me that a good way to steel your nerves but not sap your energy was to have a large glass of milk with a heavy hit of Kahlua every morning. That the tryptophans, coffee and alcohol together were a stress reliever that didn't cause energy loss. I found that this was absolutely correct. I was on the Kahlua breakfast diet. Like troops training for an attack, Robin and I became increasingly militant in our energy. We started getting all the Ramones albums we could find. I got Rock 'n' Roll High School and Rocket To Russia, and made tapes for her, then she got Subterranean Jungle and cut me a tape. Subterranean Jungle was a delightful discovery. I remain entranced by Johnny's guitar playing on "Highest Trail's Above," and the real-ness of Joey's voice working through the regular-guy lyrics of "Somebody Like Me" made me feel so much better about being a hedonistic fool:
Somebody Like Me
I am just a guy who likes to
rock and roll
Tired of complaints I am
ready for fun
I am just a guy who likes to
rock and roll
Don't go to school don't
make me laugh Now you don't have to be a Nobel laureate in psychology to realize that someone who loves this song and is getting ready to take the California bar exam, has three kids, $70K in educational debt, and a wife who just put him through three years of law school by the sweat of her lovely brow, is one heavily conflicted person. Who is this shadow self? This guy who likes to rock and roll, dress punk, get drunk, etcetera ad infinitum. How did he get roped into this deal of becoming a lawyer? Oh, that's a long story and we're not going to get into it. But just take it as a given that he exists, and is in fact a considerable feature of my personality. And the Ramones helped keep him alive, like a paramedic crew with an oxygen mask, they whisked him away from the scene of the accident called civilization, and took him to the heaven of rock and roll. Leaving this lawyer behind to cover for him. My client pleads innocent of all charges. Have you ever understood whether it was good or bad to be a cretin, anyway? Is it bad to be living on a Chinese Rock? Are cretins fortunate because they have a happy family? Is mommy on pills because daddy likes men? Is it all okay because we're makin' a fortune sellin' daddy's dope?
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