The other day, it occurred to me that my proposed book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) needed--NEEDED, I tell you!--an opening and a closing track in addition to the 125 songs otherwise covered in the book. And they both needed--NEEDED, I tell you!--to be Ramones tracks. Now, a discussion of "Blitzkrieg Bop" serves as the book's Inner Groove, occupying the sweet spot between Last Call! and Coda. This piece we see today is designated Needle To Groove, situated right after the Overture, setting the stage for the 125 songs that follow (each one The Greatest Record Ever Made!).
An infinite number of songs can each be THE greatest record ever mde, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!
THE RAMONES: Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?
Do you remember?
Radio was a dream. Sometimes it was a dream come true. The list of songs and the list of artists introduced by radio to my eager ears are like twin honor rolls stretching from here to Liverpool, here to Motown, here to there to everywhere. If it sometimes seemed as if the radio was my only friend, I was never radio's only friend. Radio had a lot of friends.
Friends like, for example, The Ramones.
The Ramones knew radio's dream: turn on your transistor, and magic happens. Elvis. Chuck Berry. Little Richard. Del Shannon. Lesley Gore. James Brown. Jan and Dean. The Ventures. The Shangri-Las. The Dixie Cups. Rock 'n' roll radio. Let's go.
To the quartet of Forest Hills, NY square pegs who became The Ramones, radio in the '70s fell short of the dream. Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, and Tommy wanted to be John, Paul, George, and Ringo, and they wanted to make loud, fast pop music that could restore that imagined glory of rock 'n' roll radio. They made records that lived up to the potential of their dreams.
Radio did not play them.
The Ramones released three brilliant, catchy, mutant albums from 1976-1977, each accompanied by brilliant, catchy, mutant singles. They found an audience, but that audience wasn't as large as dreams demanded. Drummer Tommy left, replaced by Brooklyn-bred Marky Ramone. Another great album, 1978's Road To Ruin, did little to improve The Ramones' commercial status, nor did their appearance in the fabulous 1979 B-movie (and proud of it!) Rock 'n' Roll High School.
By this point, legendary record producer Phil Spector viewed himself as The Ramones' anointed savior, and he wanted the chance to prove it. "Do you want to make a good record," he asked them, "or do you wanna make a great one?" His resumé of 45 rpm success was impressive, his early '60s Wall of Sound production responsible for the Ronettes and Crystals hits that were integral parts of the AM pop world during the formative years of the young Ramones-to-be. A perfect match?
No. It was not a perfect match.
Sure, the Spector-produced End Of The Century would be The Ramones' highest-charting album (albeit still with no radio hits), but his painstaking, glossy technique diluted The Ramones' power rather than enhancing it. Joey and Phil got along well--it's been said that Spector really wanted to produce a Joey Ramone solo LP--while Johnny despised Spector, and Spector pulled a gun on Dee Dee during the making of the album. End Of The Century has its moments, but it is nowhere near the equal of the four Ramones albums that preceded it. Spector delivered the opposite of what he'd promised: with Spector at the helm, The Ramones had made a good album rather than a great one.
And with all that said, we must still acknowledge the singular greatness of the album's opening track: "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?"
Where much of End Of The Century finds the Ramones sound clashing with Spector's Wall of Sound like Jets battling Sharks, "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?" combines the seemingly disparate forces for maximum punch. A cacophony of warring radio signals cedes turf to a louder-than-God martial drum beat (nicked from The Routers' "Let's Go"), a boss jock (played by Sean Donahue) proclaiming, This is rock 'n' roll radio, c'mon let's rock 'n' roll with THE RAMONES!, Joey calls out a chant, and he and his de facto brudders suddenly, majestically make radio's dream real again.
Do you remember lyin' in bed
With the covers pulled up over your head
Radio playin' so no one can see?
We need change, and we need it fast
Before rock's just part of the past
'Cause lately it all sounds the same to me
I heard this song first on the radio. Not on American radio, I fear, but on a Toronto station, playing the track in rotation prior to the album's release. In the absence of new music from The Beatles, The Ramones had already become my favorite group. And here they were with a new song embracing and embodying the radio dream, the radio ideal. It was new, but it was just as I remembered it.
The dream of radio.
Do you remember?
Do you?
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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.
The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:
Volume 1: download
Volume 3: download
Hey, Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 127 essays about 127 tracks, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1).
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