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Fancy owning a guitar once owned by Johnny Ramone? One is coming up for auction:
In very good condition, with various nicks and dings to body, and several areas of duct tape residue from Johnny’s guitar strap.Mmm. Gotta love it when the duct-tape residue is in very good condition.
The last original Ramone, Tommy Ramone, has died at the age of 65.
Born in Budapest under the less t-shirt friendly name of Erdélyi Tamás, he was only meant to be the band's manager but had to become the drummer when he couldn't find anyone able to keep up with the band's pace. In fact, as he explained to Pitchfork in 2005, there probably wouldn't have been a band at all without him:
I had seen the New York Dolls, and the idea was just to get a charismatic, sort of quirky band together. But then when we got together, they were coming up with really great songs, which I hadn't even thought about. Once I saw that, I said, "Wow, they could be more, they could be a real band." Basically from what they were coming up with musically, once I became the drummer I harnessed it and arranged it, and we turned it into what became the Ramones sound.And, probably, there wouldn't have been any records without him, either:
I was pretty much on my own. They [the other Ramones] would come in and do the basic tracks, and Joey would do the vocals, and then I wouldn't see them for about a month or two. I was just left alone to work on the album.His last public appearance as a Ramone was in 2004, at the Ramones Beat Down On Cancer gig.
It's taken the best part of forty years, but The Ramones' debut, Ramones, has finally gone gold in America.
The differential in sales between Ramones albums and Ramones tshirts is, perhaps, a question for another day.
Marky Ramone, the Ramones drummer, is angry. He thought he'd done a deal five years ago to ensure that he got his fair share of the Ramones royalties. Now, though, he reckons he's been diddled. Ping! Off he fires a lawsuit, demanding the USD175,000 he reckons he's been stiffed.
Plus, of course, a million on top in punitive damages. Of course.
1974. While the UK was thrashing about trying to decide who was in charge - last time round - these bands were coming together:
The Nits - Dutch Beatle-influenced pop briefly intersecting with Golden Earring. Actually, given The Beatles had recently been having a go at everything they could think of, it must have been hard for anyone to launch a record without someone spotting some Beatles influence.
[Buy: In The Dutch Mountain]
Poised to somehow pass off pub-rock and strippers as being punk, The Stranglers had their first rehearsal while Wilson chewed his nails.
[Buy: Decades Apart]
Hey, ho, let's go... The Ramones came together at a school in Forest Hill. Which is odd, considering they're all related, right?
[Buy Anthology]
Across New York...
Working for the time being under the name Angel And The Snake, the band who would become Blondie were wrestling themselves out of The Stilettos.
[Buy: Parallel Lines]
But while punk was coalescing, something else was stirring - a band who wouldn't release a record for four years, but would be a leap forward:
Japan. They'd be along to save us during the early Thatcher years.
[Buy: The Collection]
Part of You Keep Me Hanging On: 1974 revisited]
Dee Dee Ramone's wife Vera Davie has hit a snag in getting her story of life with a Ramone published. The estate has objected, with executor Ira Herzog claiming Davie had reneged on a pledge to allow him to "review and revise" anything that she wrote about her ex-husband.
It's not entirely clear why Herzog would imagine that he has a right of veto over Davie's own life story - if Dee Dee was still alive, he might have an expectation of fair treatment, but that would come after publication. And he's not alive, otherwise he wouldn't have an executor. Well, I suppose he could be incredibly lazy and faked his own death in order to get someone to take day-to-day responsibility for his financers, but I'm pretty sure we would have heard. Or maybe not, as Herzog might have stopped publication of a book revealing that, too.
Let's assume Dee Dee is dead, for now, and just ponder what grounds Herzog will offer to stop the book.
Former manager and label executive Gary Kurfirst has died while holidaying in the Bahamas.
Kurfirst started out promoting gigs in Manhattan, and in 1969 created the New York Rock Festival, inadvertently providing one of the inspirations for Woodstock. He also ran his own record labels and publishing businesses, but it as a manager that he really secured his career. In his time, he represented The Ramones, The Talking Heads, Jane's Addicition, Mick Jones, Shirley Manson and The Eurythmics.
The cause of his death at the age of 61 is unknown; he is survived by his wife, his mother, two children and two grandchildren.
Marky Ramone, with the sort of eye for accuracy that would make the New Yorker proud, has flatly denied the old story that Phil Spector pulled a gun on the band while they were working together:
"There were no guns pointed at anybody," he said. "They [guns] were there but he had a license to carry.
"He never held us hostage. We could have left at any time. We had the keys."
I don't understand. I've tried to make sense of why anyone would bother to market a range of condoms under the name of Marky Ramone but... no, I don't understand. Not even Joey, mind. Marky.
I'm not sure I'd trust Marky Ramone to save me a seat on the bus, never mind saving me from syphilis and unwanted pregnancy, and I can't imagine that anyone who is sexually active would place a Ramones drummer above the London Rubber Company as a quality mark.
How did it come about? Did Marky always have a desire to see his name on a Johnny? Or was it someone at Ready 2 Go, the company responsible, getting back the testing reports think "the best way to target these new condoms at the market would be, um, getting a fifty something punk replacement drummer in to use as the brand champion"?
Police investigating the murder of Linda Stein have arrested her her personal assistant Natavia Lowery, reports say. Lowery is alleged to have made statements "implicating herself"; no formal charges have yet been laid.
The former Ramones manager Linda Stein has been murdered.
The former wife of Seymour Stein - they met on a blind date - Linda co-managed the Ramones during a period when she and her husband worked together on the Sire roster. After the pair divorced (they remained close friends) Linda reinvented herself as an estate agent, earning the sobriquet "realtor to the stars" after rehoming the likes of Sting and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
New York police say Stein was bludgeoned to death in her home on Fifth Avenue on Tuesday night.
There's a strong piece on Stereogum this evening, which not only dissects John Lydon's tiresome "aaah! what a quixotic type I am" Spin interview (neither The Clash nor The Ramones were punk, apparently) but also digs out this:
Yes, that's Lydon on Judge Judy. Let's use that as our calibration point as we measure his words on The Clash:
Richie Ramone - or Richard Reinhardt as he's known to the authorities - is pulling an Eminem, and testing the theory that record companies and download agencies have to get the permission of credited songwriters as well as recording owners before making downloads available. He's suing WalMart, Apple and Johnny Ramone for a slightly ridiculous sounding million bucks, claiming he never gave permission for six songs he co-wrote to be made available for download.
Of course, if these claims are successful in court, it's going to make legal downloads hideously complicated to organise, which ultimately would be brilliant news for Bittorrent advertisers.
