New York City Really Has It All: Remembering "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker"

Hey, bonus post today! This is from the archives, and although it was previously posted here as part of a slightly larger piece, I think it should be preserved as its own independent entry.  

(In 2000, a friend named Eric Strattman was soliciting contributions for a fanzine called Angst & Daisies. Like most writers, I'm always eager to write without actually getting paid for it, so I wrote the following in answer to the question posed to us: What was the album that changed your life?)

The album that changed my life? Oh, no--we'll have none of that in this corner! While this is certainly a popular question for this sort of exercise--a CD buyer's guide to which I contributed a few years back peppered its regular listings with sidebars consisting of the replies given by various Famous People to that very same question--I personally reject it with the specific intent of setting it afire and going wee-wee all over its smoldering embers.

It's not that I don't believe a record album can change one's life; I do believe it, and anyway, I've read too many testimonials of such conversions to ever dismiss 'em all out of hand. And besides, a record did change my life. It just wasn't an album that did the deed. It was a single, a 45 rpm single, the building block of rock 'n' roll.  One sublime song on a 7-inch slab o' vinyl was all it took.  Lemme tell ya 'bout it….

As a child growing up in the '60s and '70s, my musical preferences were largely shaped by AM Top 40 radio. The Beatles, of course, were inescapable; when I was four years old, I saw A Hard Day's Night at the local drive-in, so I'm all set whenever someone gets around to asking me about The Movie That Changed My Life. A couple of years later, we had The Monkees on TV every week. We had that great, transcendent TV commercial for Radio Free Europe, wherein an Eastern European DJ used the Drifters' "On Broadway" as the living, thriving embodiment of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, baby.

And we had the radio, pumping out an endless supply of rockin' pop, from the Rolling Stones to the Archies, Herman's Hermits, the American Breed, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, the Castaways, the Surfaris, the Jefferson Airplane. We had "I Fought The Law" by the Bobby Fuller Four and "I Like It Like That" by the Dave Clark Five, two songs that I only ever seemed to hear in my brother's red convertible, thus convincing me that his was the only radio that played those songs. And that's just the stuff that I specifically remember being aware of as a grade school kid.

I continued to listen faithfully to AM radio right through my freshman and sophomore years in high school, rushing on a steady barrage of short, sharp songs that just had to be played over and over again. I had favorite albums, too--if you'd asked me today's question in 1976 or '77, I'd have dutifully answered Sgt. Pepper or Abbey Road, with an honorable mention for maybe the White Album, plus the Sweet's Desolation Boulevard, the Monkees' Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd., even--believe it or not!--Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. But these were all merely records that I liked to play, alongside my regular diet of 45s and compilation LPs. There was nothing here to really change my life. Yet.

The seeds of the revolution were planted by a music tabloid called Phonograph Record Magazine. As a senior in high school, I picked up a couple of issues of PRM, which were sponsored as giveaways by WOUR-FM, the Utica, NY album-rock station that had stolen my loyalty away from the now-disco AM stations. (WOUR also played the Kinks, a band I'd recently discovered thanks to sage advice from my sister, so AM radio really couldn't compete like it used to.) 

PRM seemed to me like a communiqué from another world, especially with its coverage of something called punk rock, which intrigued me endlessly. To this day, I can't explain the instant fascination I felt with this sound I'd never actually heard, and with groups I'd never heard of: Eddie and the Hot Rods. Blondie.  The Sex Pistols. And, most importantly, the Ramones.

The descriptions of the Ramones captivated me. They seemed like they must be horrible, degenerate, almost criminal. They also seemed like they might be the most exciting rock 'n' roll band imaginable. I was scared of them, and I was hooked on 'em body and soul before I ever heard a note of their music.

In the summer of '77, the year I graduated from high school, I heard punk rock for the first time when WOUR played the Sex Pistols' new single, "God Save The Queen." It didn't quite change my life, but the seeds were taking root. During a vacation in Cleveland, I saw some of the records I'd been reading about, but couldn't quite make the commitment to actually buy them yet. That fall, I started college in Brockport, and the college radio finally allowed me to hear Blondie, Television, and the Ramones. I didn't immediately fall as hard for the Ramones as I thought I might, but I was still hooked.  And I finally gave in and bought my first two punk rock singles. One was the import single of the Sex Pistols' "God Save The Queen," which I remembered from its spin on WOUR. The other was a Ramones record that I hadn't yet heard: "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker."

I didn't even own a stereo at the time. So I had to wait until Thanksgiving break to actually hear my new acquisitions. Back home for the holidays, I played "God Save The Queen," and it was good. And then I played "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" for the first time.

It played. And I stared at the record, watching it spin as it played. The record ended.

And I got up and played it again. And again. And again. And several more agains after that.

I swear to God, I suddenly felt taller. Colors seemed brighter. The confusing world of a seventeen-year-old all at once…well, nothing can make sense of a seventeen-year-old's world, but clarity seemed within reach. I had never heard anything like this record! I played it again. And I played it again.

It sounded like the Beach Boys, like the AM pop music that I always loved, and continued to love. But it was faster, fuller, innately louder even at low volume. Everything was different. Nothing was the same. My life, like Lou Reed (almost) said, was changed by rock 'n' roll. 

About a month after first hearing "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker," I wrote my first essay on rock 'n' roll music, extolling the virtues of punk rock in general and the Ramones in particular. It was published as an emeritus contribution in my high school newspaper (a far cooler publication than the inept, illiterate rag at my college, which reviewed the Sex Pistols' album by saying something to the effect that, "Put simply, this record sucks."). My essay became the focal point for the nascent punk scene at my alma mater. A few months later, Bomp! magazine published a special issue devoted to power pop, a label that seemed to perfectly describe the type of music I loved the most; Bomp! even listed "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" as one of power pop's definitive records.

In between, in January of 1978, I saw a local punk/power pop group called the Flashcubes, and my fate was sealed. I'd found my music, and I would preach its virtues forevermore.  Many factors led to this point, from the British Invasion and its aftermath in the '60s, to my vicarious fascination with punk via Phonograph Record Magazine. But it was "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" that accomplished the change. And, right now, it's high time I played that record again. And again. And again.

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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.

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