#376

Great things are simple. They don’t need too much, they can speak for themselves. Great things are simple but deep at the same time, they conclude everything, they are ground zero for things to come and sometimes even for things that have happened before them. There are many great things in this world and it’s a fact that the Ramones are one of them. Speaking about music, Ramones is the best band ever. It’s a fact. They are not my favorite band, they haven’t written my favorite song, their first album is not my favorite record although that is my favorite Ramones record.

Ramones is the best band ever not only because Tommy Ramone died today.

            We all hate to be alone. Even when you skip a drunk hike on a Saturday afternoon and rather sit alone in your shady room to write a column for a fanzine that might not be the same if the Ramones had never written their songs. We feel connected when we encounter things, tiny things we thought were our secrets. These things are simple thus we mostly never tell them to anyone else. We feel that would be foolish either because these are too obvious, or the others just wouldn’t get it. What Erdélyi Tamás and his friends did was synthesizing this simple great feeling. Another great mind said, to see what everyone sees, to think what no one thinks. The Ramones based their sound on the feelings of how it is to be a freak, to like getting high, to be obsessed with loud things, to fall in and out of love, to have no clue and the only sense you have in yourself is the sense of humor. To be a nerd for weird things, be it vaudeville-esque horror, political conspiracies, UFOs, the streets of New York. Their sound proved that talent is luck and the important thing in life is courage. To be brave enough to know that with so little you can achieve so much. With anything you have you have to do everything you want.

            I have experienced the power of the Ramones when with my then best friend we were hanging at his family’s weekend house. Two teenagers on a rainy summer night with no better idea than to get drunk on cheap wine and listen to the Ramones. As awkward a two-man party can be, it was super awkward for sure, but a magical moment happened when my friend started singing “Pet Cemetery” along with the actual song playing in the back at the top of his voice, crying out of joy and probably teenage sorrow. The Ramones was this. As Steve Albini said about them first, their songs sound funny, then you realize there is something more in them and you start to think they are people you would hang out with. They are melancholic, funny, nihilistic, thoughtful, ignorant. They are everything that has happened to punk ever since and everything that has happened to music before their time. Their music lives forever, even if now everyone from the original line up has passed away.

            It’s such a terrible curse that people have to die, but it’s such a gift that we are allowed to create something universal. Tommy Ramone passed away today but his music is still here, it’s still fresh and even though he hasn’t done anything memorable in the last few decades, his death has become a celebration of what he and his friends gave to us. They as human beings couldn’t out-live most of the people whose music made them stand out with standing up and inventing punk music. But their music already killed decades ago that dinosaur prog rock bullshit what was once occupying young minds. They showed us a way that when you embrace what you have and squeeze out the most of it, great things will happen. The simple fact that this could happen—when it happened—worked. And it worked out to be this loud and it has made a change in the world. It helped young minds connect with each other, helped them crawl out from their basements and jump around together to noisy music in awesome clothes.

            Have you ever tried to play a Ramones song? The power chords are super easy. To play it like them is almost impossible; because what they did is what I spend most of my words on here: they put themselves into their songs, among their pure, essential music. This is the ultimate example of how punk music is great; because it is played so you can hear people among the sounds. The Ramones will always live. To be honest, it doesn’t matter if Erdélyi Tamás died today or if he lived ten more years or passed decades ago. Ramones live forever.

Now I’m gonna sniff some glue. Nyugodj békében!