366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 206

The Date: April 23

The Movie: Rock and Roll High School (1979)

What Is It?: Unlike yesterday’s film, today’s movie limits the apocalypse to a single high school—Vince Lombardi High School to be precise. Naturally, a fatal cocktail of Ramones, truancy, and Clint Howard bring about the destruction. But PJ Soles brings it about with the charismatic warmth of a million suns. She’s great, and so is Mary Woronov as Principal Togar (Booo! Hisss!), but it is Marky Ramone who should have gotten the best supporting actor Oscar for his work in this film. Hand it over, Melvyn Douglas!

Why Today?: On this day in 1976, Ramones is released, triggering the spontaneous combustion of thousands of phonographs.

Review: 'Ramones at 40'

So much about the Ramones Story was flat-out, bug-eyed, pinhead crazy. The inter-band animosity. The mental problems. The drugs. The violence. Dee Dee. However, I contend that the craziest thing about the band that broke through the wall of the punk era like the Kool-Aid guy busting through a wall was the fact that they never considered themselves successful. The thing is The Ramones didn’t want to be a punk band. They wanted to be The Bay City Rollers, with all the hits and record sales that group enjoyed. But what is The Bay City Rollers’ legacy? Sure, “Saturday Night” was a terrific pop song, but the Rollers did not pioneer one of pop’s key genres. They are not instantly recognizable by their faces, their clothing, or the symbols associated with them. The Bay City Rollers are not icons. The Ramones are.

Sadly, none of the four original Ramones are with us anymore. If they were, they might take a great deal of pleasure in knowing that their legacy is still mighty and enduring…so much so that there is a new coffee table book devoted to them. Ramones at 40 is basically what you’d expect from a book of this sort. It tells its subject’s essential biography in a mere 200 pages busting with a multitude of big, color photos that also require especially tight storytelling. Martin Popoff’s book does not replace previous Ramones bios, although the writer’s new interviews with the likes of band members Marky Ramone, the boastful Richie Ramone, and the particularly insightful CJ Ramone (who also handles the foreword), photographer Roberta Bayley, and producers Graham Gouldman and Andy Shernoff add some new colors and details to a story told enough times to dispel the misconception that The Ramones weren’t successful.

Popoff also supplements the main story, which deals with the band’s records more than anything personal, with side-road inserts on topics essential (CBGBs, Ramones house artist and beloved cohort Arturo Vega, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School), interestingly off-the-main-road (a Ramones museum in Berlin, Ramones schwag, the political clashes between Joey and Johnny…with a funny summation of the situation by Marky), and frankly, inessential (I’m not sure what a feature on what a bunch of musicians from metal bands think of The Ramones adds to the story). Certain topics barely get a mention. For example, Ramones roadie Monte Melnick, who also wrote one of the best books on the band, gets little more than a fleeting mention. Dee Dee’s infamously toxic relationship with Connie Gripp doesn’t even get that. But the complete story is not what we expect from a coffee table book. We expect the basic story briskly told, a shitload of great pictures, and a lot of commemorative reverence. The Ramones at 40 delivers all of that. I like to think Joey would have dug it.

Farewell, Tommy Ramone

 Sad news from the punk world. Last Friday, Tommy Erdélyi, better known as Tommy Ramone, died in hospice after a bout with bile duct cancer. Tommy was not supposed to be a member of America's greatest punk group, but the band's manager was drafted behind the drum kit when they recorded their landmark debut LP. Amazing to think Tommy was not always intended to beat the beat for the band considering how incredibly he maintained their super-charged tempos. That cat had stamina. 

Tommy also co-produced the group's first four--and all-time best-- albums, drumming on the first three before Marky Ramone replaced him.

Sadly, Tommy was the last original Ramone. Joey died of lymphoma in 2001, we lost Dee Dee to an overdose the following year, and Johnny died of prostate cancer in 2004.

Review: 'Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses—Roger Corman: King of the B Movie'

Cult, horror, and schlock freaks will always think of Roger Corman primarily as the producer of some of their favorite cheap-o’s, whether they be Little Shop of Horrors, Attack of the Crab Monsters, or Grand Theft Auto. Serious cinephiles feel no guilt in praising the artistry of the best Poe pictures he directed, particularly House of Usher and The Masque of the Red Death, or his even less celebrated venture into message films, the remarkable anti-segregation The Intruder. They also appreciate how he distributed works by European artists such as Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, and Ingmar Bergman (who loved the dubbed version of Cries and Whispers Corman put in drive-ins!) in the U.S. Many of our most respected filmmakers—Scorsese, Coppola, Bogdanovich, Demme, Nicholson— revere Corman as the guy who gave them their real starts in Hollywood. Feminists who know more about him than his insistence on stuffing gratuitous nudity into his movies appreciate the opportunities he afforded women directors, producers, writers, and crew people in an industry infamous for its sexism. Indie filmmakers of every stripe should bow down to Roger Corman for his pioneering the frugal business practices that made thousands of low-budget pictures possible.