Gordonzola watches old, dead punk rockers (part 2)

Last night, continuing the series of punk-bands-with-dead-singers-who-were-crucial-to-my-formative-years, I saw "The Clash, Westway to the World" . I’m adding this as a post script because it made me feel a little more tender towards the rock documentary genre. I am trying to fight that tenderness.

As if there was any debate, let’s say for the record that The Clash didn’t just have a better editor but were much smarter individuals than The Ramones. They appeared thoughtful, appreciative of each other and not obsessed by their careers. Sure Mick Jones provided a "Spinal Tap" moment with his thought that "Sandinista’ would be good for people who "worked on oil rigs or in the Arctic and couldn’t get to record shops very often", but that was an exception. Joe Strummer saying, in a loving way, that Mick Jones wasn’t good with punctuality and that in the last months when he did finally show up he was "like Liz Taylor in a crap mood" was genuinely funny.

Sure Topper looked like a corpse and Mick Jones looked like (a living) Gene Siskel, but thankfully there were no "facts" that I didn’t want to learn. For example, we did not find out that say, "London Calling" was written about some girl that Joe Strummer was seeing who lived up in Manchester and Joe kept having to make long distance calls to her or some shit like that. It’s actually touching when asked about some mistake, Joe Strummer says, "well, you have to have some regrets." The best part of "Westway" was that they didn’t even mention "Cut the Crap".

And man, they were all so cute back in the mid ‘70s.

Still, just like "Rock and Roll High School" is much better than "End of the Century" as a movie document of The Ramones, The Clash’s best document to their talent and power already exists. Just cut out all the horrible "plot" in "Rude Boy" and splice together the live scenes. The after the fact explaining does nothing to illuminate why they were important that those live scenes doesn’t do better.

Gordonzola watches old, dead punk rockers (part 1)

How can you possibly make a rock band documentary after Spinal Tap? If there was justice that movie would have killed the genre. Would-be rockumentarians and the record companies that fund them should be too embarrassed to even discuss taking a rock band seriously enough devote the time and money necessary to produce these self-serving "histories" and "behind the scenes stories". At least it should have been driven underground. Record geeks and shut-in fan nerds could share their 5th generation VHS copies or cassette tapes of rare concerts and radio station interviews, but keep it to their dreary fan mags and off the public streets.

Instead of killing the genre however, Spinal Tap seems in retrospect to have just inoculated it. Thanks to VH1 there are now documentaries on every useless band ever played on the radio. And because they play on the fact that we’ve all heard about "turning it up to 11" and coming up with pretentious justification for writing simple minded pop songs, they all perform that part while wink-winking about it at the same time.

I’m not arguing that rock documentaries shouldn’t exist. Just that they should be viewed with more shame for both the director and the movie-goer.

All of this leads me up to the fact that I went to see "End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones" with bornbent last Thursday at The Roxie. That’s right, finally a Ramones documentary to answer all those nagging questions about one of the world’s most complicated bands.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed almost every minute of it. The early live scenes (1975?) are priceless as is, in a sad way, an incredibly fucked-up Dee Dee admitting that he sucked as a rapper . But in retrospect, it’s depressing that the movie trying to tell their "unique" story ends up just making them seem like every other band. Well, just like every other band but possibly dumber.

I mean, you got your drugs, your infighting, your desire to break big, your bad concept albums, your under-appreciated artistic side of a member or two, your disintegration and bitterness. Blah blah.

The Ramones were a very important band to me, which is a fact that’s slightly embarrassing. My brother gave me a Ramones shirt and button from a show he went to when I was in 6th grade. I proudly wore it to school and confirmed my outcast status for the next three years. But I also met a friend who also had an older brother into punk that way and he’s the only person from that era I’m still in touch with. I also managed to see "Rock and Roll High School" in the theater when it came out by bribing a friend of my brother’s to take me since I needed someone who could drive and was over 18. My tape of "It’s Alive" didn’t leave my tape player very often between 1979-1981.

But if there was ever a band who’s music spoke for itself, it was the Ramones. I mean, that shit just wasn’t deep. As my record mogul friend put it after viewing "End of the Century", "I was shocked to find out that they wrote their songs about actual events."

While not presented in the ridiculous extent that say, Hugh Cornwell took it in the most self-serving rock autobiography ever written, I don’t really need to know the thought process behind "Teen-age Lobotomy" or "She’s a Sensation" I’d argue that it actually undermines these songs, making them less poppy, and less interesting.

Well, ok. Hearing about Joey’s struggles with OCD was interesting. And Learning that Joey wrote "The KKK took my Baby Away" about proto-fascist Johnny stealing his girlfriend did add to my enjoyment of that song. But that’s just the exception that proves the rule. Because otherwise that song is incredibly lame. Was it a way-too-late civil rights anthem? A pro-miscegenation anthem? A call to arms warning of the rise of white-supremacists? Now we finally know the truth.

But otherwise, ugh. We know the Phil Spector-produced album "End of the Century" sucked. We bought it and tried to like it when it came out.* It proved impossible. Spector is a bad man and a gun nut. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Ramones acting in "Rock and Roll high School" was lousy. Uh, duh. That’s what made it funny.

The defensiveness started grating on my nerves after awhile too especially with the Ramones-were-the-real-founders-of-punk proclamations that we all knew were coming. It was actually laugh out loud bad when it finally did. Here’s the argument: Ok, the Ramones come back from England after inspiring all the famous punks-to-be. And it’s so unfair because they were a hit there, but couldn’t get any gigs at home. And then six months later English punk comes out and rips them off. Totally copying them. Except they added politics into it which scared Americans. And because the Ramones were lumped into it, they couldn’t get any shows!

Then we had to hear official punk revisionist moron Legs Mcneil **say something to the effect of "politics is much more dangerous when it’s undefined." Wait, I thought they were apolitical?

Not to mention the underlying assumption that punk would have even mattered at all if there hadn’t been the melding of musical style and politics. Do they really think that anyone would be wearing spikes, studs, and Ramones shirts today if that hadn’t happened?. The Ramones want the credit for "punk" but only by denying what made it become a world-wide scene and then a popular music.

The problem with all these music documentaries, besides the self-serving revisionist history and ego-stroking, soft-ball interview questions of course, is the problem of interviewing individuals about their personal views, goals, desires, and meanings when, most often, the reason we’re even watching these record company revenue enhancers is because of the band’s collective accomplishments. Sadly, they rarely seem to realize that they’re more famous because they didn’t get their own way all the time, not in spite of it.

I mean, I don’t care that Johnny and Joey hated each other for 15 years and that Johnny didn’t even go to his funeral. I don’t care that they treated drummers like toilet paper. I don’t care that so-and-so felt that such-and-such song shouldn’t have been on the blah-blah album. It’s just sad watching people argue over such petty things when they’ve really already produced their history, good or bad, through their art.




*This was an old crowd, no question about it.

**Here’s a Legs Mcneil quote for those who don’t check links:

"We only used the term "nigger" in front of Lester (Bangs), like he would start going on about John Coltrane, and I would say "John Coltrane is a nigger," just cause I knew it would piss him off, and suddenly we got labeled racist. You can't have a conversation about race in this country."

Oh, those "sudden" and unfair allegations of racism really sting, don’t they? Especially when you’re just trying to start an intelligent dialogue.

***I can’t believe the interviewers didn’t ask Richie Ramone why he was wearing a tie.

****Sorry spoonfeeding, I’ll try and cut down.

audblog audio post

audblog audio post