Word: punk
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More than anyone else in the band, Joey was the fan, the one most like his audience. He was always approachable, always nice, always showing up at odd times around the East Village. My wife (a punk rocker herself) recalls seeing him at 4 a.m. one night at St. Marks' Pizza, a woman under each arm propping him up, his eyes hidden behind red lenses. He didn't like drugs; he drank, finally hitting rehab along with the second Ramones drummer, Marky...
...know, I just loved it. It was pure sensation, a two-and-a-half-minute kick-ass blowout with hooks and a catchy melody, too! (Did I mention how utterly melodic the Ramones were? How the tunes stay with you for years? How "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker," one of the great car-radio anthems, ranks with "Don't Worry Baby" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Hound...
When Joey passed, I made a few phone calls and talked to some friends and saw some of the same raw emotion I hadn't felt since John Lennon got shot in 1980. Joey was a good guy, a hero to punks and fans of punk; he was like Mickey Mantle or Orson Welles, a man both loved and respected. And punk mattered, it changed lives like jazz did or the '60s did. It was only stupid when it wanted to be; if you couldn't hear that, you would never break on through to the sheer sensual pleasure...
...official CBGB web site for pictures and Hilly Kristal's own serialized testimony. Link from there to an online edition of Mojo Magazine from the U.K. for the most coherent and well-written history of early punk that I've seen anywhere...
Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones by Dee Dee Ramone with Veronica Kofman Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, edited by Legs MacNeil and Gillian McCain...