THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE: Dancing With Joey Ramone

From my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1).

An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!

AMY RIGBY: Dancing With Joey Ramone
Written by Amy Rigby
Produced by Jon Graboff and Amy Rigby
Single from the album Little Fugitive, Signature Sounds, 2005

Does Amy Rigby dream about the Ramones? We have a song here that says she does, and her autobiography Girl To City suggests it as well. Rigby was an active and avid fan of the scenes at CBGB's and Max's Kansas City in the '70s and '80s, and if the folkier and janglier aspects of her music seem to separate her muse from the grunge of Bowery and Bleecker, rest assured that muse wears a leather jacket, chain-smokes, and swears like a muthuh. Seriously: do not cross Amy Rigby's muse. That damned muse will cut you as soon as look at you.

But "Dancing With Joey Ramone" does not concern itself with the perceived seamier aspects of punk or underground pop. It is a bittersweet (mostly sweet) celebration of the joy within the Ramones' music. It borders on the giddy, in a good way, delighting in the thrill of dancing with the departed Joey, trying to copy every move he makes, swaying to the sounds of the Temptations, the Crystals, the Dave Clark Five, the Searchers, the Ronettes, the Coasters, the Shadows of Knight, the Brooklyn Bridge, and "Hanging On The Telephone," by Blondie or the Nerves, or both. It is engaging and happy, human, a fond and fanciful remembrance of a unique singer taken from this mortal world before the world ever quite got around to showing its appreciation for his work. Well, we closed our eyes for a minute, and then he was gone.

But it is as Amy says: the music kept playing, on and on and on and on. It plays still. Amy Rigby understands. The dream of the dance. You know how dreams are. 

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Carl's new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is now available for preorder, courtesy of the good folks at Rare Bird Books. Gabba Gabba YAY!!

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