After a sound effects introduction goes a little too long and ends in a DJ calling the next track for the Ramones over what sounds like the opening drums to Blitzkrieg Bop we kick into a full stereo mix of it with a chant borrowed from that song but re-purposed. Actually sound pretty good so far but then the massed saxophones of Greater Brooklyn kick in and you think, hmmm. And then in the verse the Archies' organist comes in. Yes, it's meant to evoke the auld times but the Ramones were already doing that (find out what Chris Bailey said about the supposed closeness in sounds between The Ramones and The Saints). What this actually sounds more like is the stuck-in-rut arrangement that Spector was plastering anything he worked on in the 70s. He'd already turned ex-Beatle records into muddy messes with great farting saxophone choirs and kicked them adrift on the sea of embarrassment. He's doing the same thing here. Then again, he's not cheesing up The Ramones as much as exposing what was already there (save some of the sharper lyrics of the first records that we're going to miss here). Oh, if you think I'm blaming saxophones for this compare this loud jacket approach with the aerodynamic gale that The Saints used on Know Your Product two years earlier. No bloody comparison.
Affected crashes in with steroidal tom toms under buzzsaw guitars and a sax drone. We're in a minor key and Joey is trying for some more dynamics in his vocals. He gets them but it also starts sounding like the J. Geils Band. A slide solo followed by a picked one prevent this track from sounding like anything but the standard U.S. radio fodder from the time. Well, there really were people out there turning music into gold and it's happening right here, as long as you don't mind changing your definition of gold.
Danny Says: A Beach Boys figure on acoustic guitars and dulcimers arpeggiate a chord bright and Joey comes out with more lyrics of nostalgia. The song builds pleasantly. Do I want The Ramones pleasant, though? Just enough '60s kitsch with a slight bed of more contemporary overdriven guitar. Yeah, pleasant. See, when Blondie did stuff like this (and they did a lot of it) it always had an intentionally uneasy blend of sincerity and archness that worked because you could either turn one of those understandings off and enjoy it for that or just have both course in through your ears. This gets neither of them and goes instead for the kind of Huey Lewis middle ground that would grow and facially wrinkle into yacht rock by the mid '80s.
Chinese Rock at least sounds like The Ramones but by now even that has a nostalgic feel to it. So we've got drug addiction and power chords but the sheen of the production continues to steer the band into AM radio friendliness. I think I'm missing the humour.
Same for Let's Go.
There's some humour here but it's sounding locker room rather than us-and-them, the way it used to. Ouch, does that mean I'm consumed by my own nostalgia? I guess so. Alright, why's that, then? Sigh.
Look, I'm not going to go through, track by track, and crap on the rest of this record as I think it deserves to be. I turned away from the band when I heard it and am not surprised on a re-listen to agree with my seventeen year old self.
This is something that affects all art. Keep going with your established style and your risk stagnation. Try something new and you risk your fan base. Experiment wildly you could lose everything. In each case if your brand isn't cast in iron from the hobs of hell you will lose. David Bowie got away with all of those . Closer to the street, The Clash did, too, but they had to make it a novelty (double and even triple albums sold for single LP prices). The Ramones had delivered a batch of burning singles and decent albums for over four years before this one and were better known than bought. Who knows why that was?
They looked right for their market with a lingering '70s look that was out of sorts with the spikier fashions of their UK counterparts but this worked for them. It worked because they looked normal but sounded tough and brash with a cartoony humour that could bear real fangs. Maybe that just takes too much nuance on the part of fans in the age of Eye of The Tiger. What happened here was that they went for the next level of working band with bigger gigs and wide airplay. It's easy to judge, then and now, but, really, if you want to keep the band going because anything's better than wages and maybe even have a mass audience dig your sounds then maybe you should take the king's shilling and join the others.
But here's where I think I might be wrong. I turned back to the '60s for inspiration until punk came by and delivered it by the truckload. Before that I gorged myself on bands like The Beatles who changed significantly with every release. If that becomes a value then not only would I dislike Rod Stewart or Bruce Springsteen for always sounding the same but I'd expect significant change from punk and post punk, too. I didn't know then that bands like U2 or Garbage would happily make the same album for their whole career and only get bigger. Bollocks was the final real Sex Pistols album which I had to admit a few years later was a good thing because it allowed PiL out of the cage. What did I expect of The Ramones? Well, listen to the first three Saints albums, maybe that. But maybe that was beyond them. If so, why not admit it and quit? Well, this record was a real hit. That's why.
The Ramones did bounce back and worked hard for deserved success. While I was never a massive fan I enjoyed them being there and crunching out dark jokes. Maybe the point where this was not enough was the same one for the band: joke's over, we got bills to pay. Can't argue with that but when I hear the big drunk-uncle version of an old Ronettes song with the string arrangement kept over from that one by the same arranger it doesn't sound like a joke anymore: it sounds popular. Bowie would do the same for me with Let's Dance, a few years later and (not that he noticed) we parted company until the very end.
In these days when Good Charlotte look like tough guys with studs and pancreatic studs but sound like a Vegas show who cares? Well, I think we all should. It's not obsessive fan-projection to expect the artists that inspire you to at least try to continue to be themselves. A few awkward growth spurts here and there are fine as long as we know they're ok. We should treasure a little naivete with this. If we don't then everyone does everything and just looks and sounds like everyone else. I hate this record now as I did then and see so reason to forgive it. Naive? Yes. Did it feel good to write? You bet.
No comments:
Post a Comment