Everyday (Everyday) I Read the Book

Too Fast To Think
(Ramones by Nicholas Rombes: Continuum Publishing)

No one ever accused The Ramones or their music as being brain surgery. That being said, I found it interesting that of all the titles I've read in Continuum Publishing's 33 1/3 series, the one covering The Ramones debut album has taken the most academic approach with its subject.

Nicholas Rombes, who is an associate professor of English, dissects the disc - as well as the culture in which it was created - with thesis-like precision (133 footnotes' worth). The first half of the book is subtitled "Ramones In Their Time" and focuses not on the record, but instead on the "birth" of the American punk movement. He even does the William Safire thing and combs through back issues of The Village Voice, New York Rocker, and (logically) Punk magazine (not to mention William Buroughs, The Maltese Falcon and others) to trace the appearances of the word "punk" and what it was used to represent.

A good deal of his time is spent discussing the differences between what punk would come to represent and how The Ramones actually behaved. He makes an interesting case about how, if The Ramones were to be truly considered the first American punk band, many of the punk ideals future musical acts would cite as dogma wouldn't apply to the founders. For example, The Ramones never released an "independent" record, signing with Sire just a bit more than 18 months after their first live show. Rombes addresses the concept of "selling out" head on declaring that, "If today we tend to think in terms of selling out versus not selling out, we need to be careful not to project these concerns backwards to the 1970s. For there was less worry about 'selling out' to the mainstream than there was desire to replace mainstream music with something better, something more alive, something unexpected. The Ramones, in particular, desired a hit; after all they believed in and were passionate about their music, and they wanted to share it with others beyond the cramped space of CBGB." He explains how the Ramones were aware of using press and publicity to move the band forward and shape their image.

Rombes closes this section with a discussion of, as he puts it, "the fascist iconography in the punk scene." While one generally thinks of the Ramones as apolitical - certainly in comparison to bands like The Clash or others - he says, "If liberal humanist rock critics and scholars today are wary of dwelling on the conservative, sometimes reactionary political dimensions of punk…it's at the risk of minimizing one of the many complexities of punk." Are the uses of the swastika or references to the KKK (as they took my baby away) ironic? Is it a call for not as much rebellion as dissolution? Do they just hate hippies? Rombes offers that the inability to find a definitive answer to that question is in itself proof of America's "crisis of confidence" in the mid-'70s. Beyond that, there isn't a solid answer and I suspect it's a subject the author wants to revisit down the road.

In the second half of the book, things pick up a bit as we get to actually discuss the album and the songs that caused us to pick up this book in the first place. Again, though, we learn of contradictions between what was expected and the reality of the record.

While the Ramones never claimed (or wanted) to be musical virtuosos, they did put a lot of consideration into the writing and recording of their songs. Producer Craig Leon said, "capturing the energy of the live show was quite important. But if you jump to the conclusion that he sound of the recording was just the sound of the band live you would be mistaken even though that was what I was trying to convey. The album is quite layered and structured and took full advantage of the studio technology of its time without being obvious." He goes on to say the band used the same mic placement techniques that would be used on an orchestra as well as lots of overdubbing and double-tracked vocals in an effort to emulate the sound of The Beatles' Hard Day's Night.

I'm not begrudging Rombes his theories and analysis. But there are times when he comes dangerously close to sucking the spirit out right out of the record. He talks about his passion for the record and even explains how he's convinced that "Blitzkreig Bop" is the best opening song to any rock album ever made. But then he expounds upon that by saying it succeeds because "the songs that follow live up to the speed, humor, menace, absurdity, and mystery of that first song, whose opening lines, "Hey ho, let's go," offer not so much a warning as an invitation to the listener."

That may be the case, but is he over-thinking it? Maybe, just maybe, one should consider that if you have a song that starts off with a cry of "Hey ho, let's go," you sorta gotta put that one first. And when the band was churning out its six-song / 13-minute sets at CBGB they didn't leave much time to overthink the situation.

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