Any of dozens of Ramones songs heard most recently could constitute my one favorite and that's the truth. So let's just call this heard most recently, even as I go ahead and say it is my favorite Ramones song. From their fourth album, Road to Ruin, it has several of my favorite Ramones features: it's about grim mental illness in a light-hearted way (cf., "Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment," "Teenage Lobotomy"), it's pro-drug in an anti-drug way (or maybe make that vice versa, viz., "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue," "Carbona Not Glue," and in general all mentions of glue, plus also "We're a Happy Family," which rhymes Queens, refried beans, magazines, and thorazines), and, more broadly, it rocks up the place in an unmistakable way—"1-2-3-4 clunk-LOUD," etc. Is there anyone anywhere who still denies that this groove is, as intended, a lot of F-U-N? No doubt. I recently heard that some now consider the Stooges and the Ramones as polar era choices, two sides of a coin but you have to pick one (you know, the way people pit the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Donovan, or the Sex Pistols and the Clash). That's one to think about! I still think "I Wanna Be Sedated" is about what top 40 radio should have sounded like, at least partly, from approximately 1976 to 1984: blasts of squalling attack out of which emerge lovely Brill Building verse-chorus-verse gestures, all lurching forward in a cosmic upside-down cake of Archie comics and teenage werewolf movies. The stovepipe jean legs, black leather, and hair in the eyes, that's just style. The most salient line here goes like this, approximately: "Bamp bamp, buh bamp, buh bamp bamp, buh bamp, I wanna be sedated." Sing with. You can do it.
First of all the Stooges are not of the same era as the Ramones. Second, there's no reason they need to be poles.
ReplyDeleteThe Ramones completed and perfected something the Stooges only sketched. This redounds to the credit of both bands.
I'm inclined to agree with you.
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