GABBA GABBA HEY! Boxes of books arrive....

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

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider supporting this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon, or by visiting CC's Tip Jar. Additional products and projects are listed here.

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

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.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

GABBA GABBA HEY! Ramones book hype starts to click into place

As we careen closer and closer to the early May publication date of my new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones, some specific elements of the book's DIY hype machine are beginning to click into place.

First: the book has been printed. Wait, that requires all caps 'n' bold: THE BOOK HAS BEEN PRINTED! The preorders are being shipped to me so's I can autograph them and return them to my mighty publisher Rare Bird Books, who will then send those deface...signed books to the lovely people who ordered them. HuzZAH!

On Monday May 8th, I will appear on Bridge Street, the popular and long-running morning TV talk show on Syracuse's ABC affiliate WSYR NewsChannel 9. Channel 9 is a big, big supporter of everything good that happens in Central New York, and I can't thank them enough for agreeing to have me on to hawk my li'l Ramones book. Bridge Street airs weekday mornings from 10:00 to 11:00 Eastern time.

The following Saturday, May 13th, The 443 Social Club And Lounge on Burnet Avenue in Syracuse will host a GABBA GABBA HEY! BOOK RELEASE PARTY, with live music from 1.4.5. (featuring Paul Armstrong of SAMMYS [Syracuse Area Music Awards] Hall of Famers the Flashcubes) and Perilous. It may be the loudest book release party in recent memory, and I hope to see my local rockin' pop fans in attendance.

There are a few more things in early stages of arrested development. We'll update those as they solidify. Meanwhile: THE BOOK EXISTS! In print and everything. I'll see your Gabba and raise ya one more. HEY!!

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider supporting this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon, or by visiting CC's Tip Jar. Additional products and projects are listed here.

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!!

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.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

Gabba Gabba...GO!!!

I'm informed by my friends at Rare Bird Books that they expect copies of my new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones to arrive at their office this week. When they receive the books, they will send me a couple of boxes' worth to autograph and return to Rare Bird for distribution to the discerning folks who preordered. Everything seems on track for the announced release date in early May.

Am I giddy? Gabba Gabba yeah.

You can preorder your own personal copy of my new book directly from Rare Bird right here. Meanwhile, I'm limberin' up my writing hand. I'm gonna have some books to sign.

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider supporting this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon, or by visiting CC's Tip Jar. Additional products and projects are listed here.

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!!

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.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

Ramones Stuff (ALL the stuff. And more!)

 

2023 is my year of the Ramones. It's time to start kickin' that year into gear.

As we get closer to the May 2023 publication of my book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones, I'm going to be revvin' up for some Ramones-related posts and activities. But before we get to those, let's have another look at the cover for my book:

Yeah, that's spiffy! To promote the book, I will be appearing on Syracuse's long-running morning TV show Bridge Street, which airs on our ABC affiliate WSYR Channel 9. I'm looking into doing in-stores at a couple of Syracuse area bookshops, and I'm in the midst of organizing a book release party with live music at a local nightclub. I'll tell you more about all of these events as details become available. 

(I would also really like to do an in-store at The Lift Bridge, the book store in my former college town of Brockport, NY. When I was a freshman at Brockport in the fall of 1977, I bought my first Ramones record--the record that changed my life--at a vinyl emporium then located across the street and kitty-corner from The Lift Bridge. It would mean a lot to me to return to the scene of the crime, but I have not heard back from the Lift Bridge folks, and I suspect this ain't gonna happen.)

A podcast and radio host has contacted me about doing an interview on behalf of Gabba Gabba Hey! I don't know if he wants me to say anything about that yet, so I'll wait on announcing until the host gives me the proper hey-ho, let's GO! That said, I am certainly available to speak with any pundits, journalists, DJs, or other antisocial influencers who are open to the idea of having me pounce upon their soapboxes to spread my Gospel according to the Ramones.

Throughout April on This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl, I'll be selecting my # 1 favorite individual tracks from each of the Ramones' fourteen studio albums. We'll be playing those back, four songs per week, from April 2 through April 23, with two bonus tracks filling out the bill on our April 23rd show, and selections from each of four live Ramones albums on April 30.  We'll continue to spotlight the Ramones into the month of May, and during Memorial Day Weekend we'll have a special show dedicated in its entirety to the Ramones. That's on May 28, with music from the Ramones themselves, solo Ramones efforts, cool covers of Ramones songs, songs about the Ramones, songs that inspired the Ramones, and other related 1-2-3-4! treats. This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, at Syracuse's WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/, and via the Radio Garden and TuneIn Radio apps as WESTCOTT RADIO. The weekend stops HERE!

And right here at Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), we'll have a few Ramones posts for your glue-sniffin', cretin-hoppin', Blitzkrieg-Boppin' reading pleasure. I will likely go back and finish writing an album-by-album annotated Ramones discography, something I considered but decided against including in the pages of Gabba Gabba Hey! I'm nearly halfway through writing Chewin' Out A Rhythm On My Bubblegum, a long post about my 25 favorite Ramones tracks. I betcha we'll have still more Ramones content huffin' the ol' Carbona in this spot in the very near future.

Of course, if you'd like to read about the Ramones, I have a new book I wanna recommend. Operators are standing by. My year of the Ramones is stationed and ready. The few. The proud. Gabba Gabba.

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider supporting this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon, or by visiting CC's Tip Jar. Additional products and projects are listed here.

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!!

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.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

GABBA GABBA HEY! A CONVERSATION WITH THE RAMONES: I Believe In Miracles [acknowledgements]

My book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation with the Ramones will be published by Rare Bird Books in early May. A book doesn't just happen by itself, so here are the contents of my book's acknowledgements pages, tippin' the top of the ol' glue tube to some of the many folks who helped me along the way. (And if my other completed book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) eventually manages to will itself into being, that book's acknowledgements page will be waaaaay longer....)

I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES: Acknowledgements

Aw, where to start? Big thanks to my former editor Jeff Tamarkin and my former managing editor Bonni Miller for the sheer magic they performed in presenting the original piece in 1994. Thanks to the Ramones' then-publicist Ida Langsam for arranging the interviews. And thanks, of course, to Joey Ramone, Johnny Ramone, Marky Ramone, and C. J. Ramone for being so generous in sharing their time and recollections with me.

Thanks also to my former colleagues John M. Borack, Greg Loescher, Ken Sharp, and Maggie Thompson for their advice and encouragement. Thanks to Steve Coulter for introducing me to Tyson Cornell and Rare Bird Books, and thanks to Tyson and his entire Rare Bird team (including Alexandra Watts, Haile Johnson, and Kellie Kreiss) for making this dream come true.

When I did these interviews in 1994, there weren't a lot of Ramones reference books available. I made enthusiastic use of Jim Bessman's book Ramones: An American Band (St. Martin's Press, 1993). As the importance of the Ramones has become more widely recognized, Bessman's book has been supplemented by Monte A. Melnick and Frank Meyer's On the Road With the Ramones (Sanctuary Publishing, 2003), Mickey Leigh and Legs McNeil's I Slept With Joey Ramone: A Family Memoir (Touchstone, 2009), Everett True's Hey Ho Let's Go: The Story of the Ramones (Omnibus Press, 2002), and autobiographies by Johnny Ramone (Commando: The Autobiography of Johnny Ramone, Harry N. Abrams, 2012), Marky Ramone (Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life as a Ramone with Rich Herschlag, Atria Books, 2015), Richie Ramone (I Know Better Now: My Life Before, During, and after the Ramones with Peter Aaron, Backbeat, 2018), and Dee Dee Ramone (Poison Heart: Surviving the Ramones with Veronica Kofman, Helter Skelter Publishing, 1998, subsequently reissued as Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones). There are more, and I'm delighted that Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation with the Ramones can join all of them on the book shelf.

Thanks also to my This is Rock 'n' Roll Radio cohost Dana Bonn and my friend Dave Murray. Thanks to my mom and dad, and my uncle Carl, all passed from this world, but their belief in me sustains me still. Thanks also to my brothers, Art and Rob, and to my sister, Denise. Special thanks to my daughter Meghan Jean Cafarelli for sharing her publishing expertise, and to my wife Brenda Nuremberg-Cafarelli for helping me transcribe the interviews, and for believing in me. Something to believe in? I believe in miracles, 'cause I'm one.

The dedication page from Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation with the Ramones

My 1-2-3-4! miracle is at hand. Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation with the Ramones is due out May 9th. BYO Carbona.

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider supporting this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon, or by visiting CC's Tip Jar. Additional products and projects are listed here.

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!!

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.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

Prerelease praise for my new book GABBA GABBA HEY! A CONVERSATION WITH THE RAMONES

As we blaze ahead with Blitzkrieg Boppin' speed toward the May 9th publication date of my new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones, I want to share the prerelease blurbs Rare Bird Books received from pundits who've already had an opportunity to read the book.

Hey-Ho...!

"When I first heard the Ramones’ debut album sometime in late 1976, I thought it was the worst music I’d ever heard. I made a point of playing it for all my friends so they too could hear the worst band ever. But each time I played it, I found that I liked it a little more. I was starting to get it. And then I loved it, so much so that I went on to see the Ramones live at least 25 times. They totally rearranged my ideas about music. Reading Carl Cafarelli’s Gabba Gabba Hey, I’m reminded of the excitement and uniqueness of this band that saved rock ’n’ roll. There was never anyone else like them, and all of the joy and bedlam and fire and dedication that fueled the Ramones can be found in these pages. All that’s missing is a Dee Dee-shouted '1-2-3-4' intro."


—Jeff Tamarkin, Editor, BestClassicBands.com 

"Ramones books? I've just about read them all. If there's one I've been waiting for, it's Carl Cafarelli's ode to the band he calls 'the American Beatles.' These four 1994 interviews with Joey, Johnny, Marky and C.J. were conducted separately, but Cafarelli pieces them together as only a lifelong fan could to create an intimate oral history of the legendary Queens quartet up to that point. Gabba Gabba Hey!  is as short and sharp as any of the band's best songs. A must read for Ramones fans."

—S.W. Lauden, Forbidden Beat: Perspectives on Punk Drumming

"A veritable treasure trove of valuable information and first-person reminiscences from America's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band, Carl Cafarelli's Gabba Gabba Hey is an engaging, fascinating and often humorous look at what made the Ramones tick, as recalled by the ones who made the magic happen."

 —John M. Borack, Contributing Editor, Goldmine Magazine

"Gabba Gabba Hey and tell Tchaikovsky the news, Carl Cafarelli’s new book on The Ramones is an insightful, intelligent and most of all rip roaring fun read as it beautifully chronicles the exploits of one of music’s most groundbreaking bands through an exhaustive series of candid conversations. Don’t be a cretin, give it a read. You’d have to have had a lobotomy not to love it!"

—Ken Sharp

"A comprehensive and insightful look at one of the most important bands ever - from the Ramones themselves. Gabba Gabba Hey feels like sitting down with old friends. Comfortable, engaging, and hard to forget."

—Alex Segura, bestselling author of Archie Meets Ramones

Thank you all! This particular road to ruin is looking better all the time. May 9th can't come quickly enough to sedate this boy.

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider supporting this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon, or by visiting CC's Tip Jar. Additional products and projects are listed here.

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!!

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.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

GABBA GABBA HEY! A Conversation With The Ramones: what material should supplement the book's interviews?

My book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is due out May 9th from Rare Bird Books, and available to preorder right here right now. The book presents the never-before-seen expanded text of my 1994 interviews with Joey, Johnny, Marky, and C.J., and the interviews are the book's reason for being. Obviously.

Still, if this thing was going to be a real book, I felt strongly that the interviews needed to be supplemented by...something. I didn't want any add-ons to detract from the interviews that are the heart of the book. But I knew it needed a little bit more than just the interviews.

I wanted everything? No. Just something to believe in.

When I first began kicking around the notion of a Ramones book, I had a vague plan in mind. The book's layout would be a foreword (including my reminiscence of how the "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" 45 changed my life), an introduction, the interviews, some additional comments from Joey Ramone, my 2001 obituary of Joey, obituaries of Dee Dee and Johnny Ramone, an overview of the Ramones' album discography, a few more essays, and an afterword.

My first pickings at the process of turning this into a book occurred in 2013, when I began the long process of transcribing the interviews. I wound up putting the project aside, and returning to it in 2021. I finished it before the end of that year. By that time, Rare Bird had already agreed to publish the book.

The book sold to Rare Bird based on the unedited interview transcripts. Rare Bird's Tyson Cornell left it up to me to determine if and how to supplement the interviews. As I worked on the manuscript, trying to squeeze in too much extra stuff felt increasingly...wrong. The book was short, but it felt like I was at risk of padding it, detracting from the core appeal of the interviews themselves. Given the Ramones' well-known dedication to 1-2-3-4! efficiency, it would have been inappropriate to bloat the book with the literary equivalents of extraneous guitar solos and extended dance mixes.

Eyes on the prize. I streamlined the blueprint, scuttling my album-by-album analysis and removing some personal essays, all material that seemed to devalue the importance of the interviews themselves. I added a brief and (I think) relevant dream sequence about the Ramones, a Greatest Record Ever Made! entry about the Ramones' version of "I Don't Want To Grow Up," retained the Joey Ramone obit, and included a summary of the Ramones' career and fate post-'94, which notes the passings of Dee Dee, Johnny, and Tommy. With that, I had a book. 

I never completed the album-by-album commentary; I may go back and finish that as a blog post one of these days. The other excised essays were posted here previously:

The Ramones: The Power Pop Hall of Fame

Virtual Ticket Stub Gallery: The Ramones, the Runaways, and the Flashcubes

Love At First Spin: Rocket To Russia

Archie Meets Ramones

I like each of these pieces just fine, thanks. But they would have been redundant in context, and none of 'em would have been right for Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones. I hope the decisions I made have resulted in a better book, honoring the Ramones' legacy and giving fans the precise Blitzkrieg Bop we crave. Proper sedation awaits. Hey-ho...ya know?

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider supporting this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon, or by visiting CC's Tip Jar. Additional products and projects are listed here.

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!!

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.

GABBA GABBA HEY! A Conversation With The Ramones [earlier draft of hype]

This is the original pre-edit hype for my new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones. The official blurb is a little bit shorter, but we're preserving this one here for posterity.

THE RAMONES! The American Beatles! Except for, y'know, popularity and record sales. If someone tried to create a Ramones counterpart to the Beatles' mega-selling hits compilation 1, they'd have to use a negative number.

But the Ramones were arguably the single most influential rock 'n' roll act to emerge from that curious muddle of magic and mediocrity called the 1970s. Two of the group's founding members--singer Joey Ramone and bassist Dee Dee Ramone--didn't live to see the Ramones become icons of popular culture, to hear their music in TV commercials, to experience the unlikely adoption of "Blitzkrieg Bop" as a sports anthem. Guitarist Johnny Ramone barely lived long enough to see it, and drummer Tommy Ramone's death in 2014 wrote finis to the mortal part of the Ramones' story. The legend endured. We can't even imagine how bland the sound of rock 'n' roll would have become if the Ramones hadn't saved it at the end of the '70s, the end of the century, when we needed change and we needed it fast. 1-2-3-4!

In 1994, as the Ramones celebrated their 20th anniversary, then-current members Joey, Johnny, drummer Marky, and bassist C. J. knew the group's Road To Ruin would soon approach its end. Given an opportunity to assess where they'd been and what was left to do, they agreed to a series of interviews discussing the entirety of the Ramones' story. 

This is that story: a career-spanning discussion of the Ramones' career, an intimate glimpse at how the Ramones viewed their work, their experiences, their impact, their legacy, their fans, and each other. It's a unique and fascinating peek into what it was like to be one of the few, the proud, the Ramones.

The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame cited the original, truncated magazine appearance of these interviews as "essential reading." Now, for the first time, you can read the Ramones' published comments about their own history, and much, much more than ever could have fit into a single magazine issue.

The Ramones. Joey, Johnny, Marky, and C.J., in their own words. The American Beatles? Your sedation may vary. 

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon, or by visiting CC's Tip Jar. Additional products and projects are listed here.

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.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

Announcing My New Book: GABBA GABBA HEY! A CONVERSATION WITH THE RAMONES

I am pleased to announce that Rare Bird Books will be the publisher of my forthcoming book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones. The book is scheduled for publication on May 9th. The contracts are signed, the proof has been edited and approved, and the book is on its way. Hey-ho, let's GO!

Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones collects my 1994 interviews with Joey, Johnny, Marky, and C. J. Ramone, expanded to include a wealth of unpublished comments that couldn't fit into the interviews' original magazine appearance in '94. After the Ramones were inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2002, the Hall of Fame's website listed these original interviews among its recommended Ramones reading, along with Jim Bessman's book Ramones: An American Band and a 1979 Rolling Stone article by Timothy White. I was honored to be in such exclusive company. 

The interviews have been out of print for more than twenty-eight years. It's time to fix that, and to let you read more of what the Ramones had to say to me in 1994. The result is a career-spanning discussion of the Ramones' career, an intimate glimpse at how the Ramones viewed their work, their experiences, their impact, their legacy, their fans, and each other.

Rare Bird Books has published far too many cool things to attempt even a cursory listing here. Some Rare Bird books of recent note are John M. Borack's The Beatles 100: 100 Pivotal Moments In Beatles History and S. W. Lauden's Forbidden Beat: Perspectives On Punk Rock Drumming, plus the two collections of power pop essays edited by Lauden and Paul Myers, Go All The Way and Go Further. I am proud to see my own work join these ranks.

This is my first book. Preorders are available NOW!! More information will follow soon. Meanwhile, I thank Rare Bird's Tyson Cornell for his interest in this book, Rare Bird's Alexandra Watt, Halie Johnson, and Kellie Kreiss for their hard work on behalf of the book, and the above-mentioned S. W. Lauden for introducing me to Tyson in the first place. 

Beyond that? Gabba Gabba Hey. Kinda says it all, doesn't it?

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon, or by visiting CC's Tip Jar. Additional products and projects are listed here.

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.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl