Greatest Songs #11

The Ramones - "Judy is a Punk" (1976, from Ramones)


"Oh, for God's sake," I hear you saying. "What, The Exploited, Minor Threat, Sonic Youth, etc., weren't enough to bottom out the punk stylings? You had to finish off the bottom ten with a Ramones song? You fanboy! Had to hop on the 'they're dead, they're great' bandwagon, didn't ya?"

Fair enough. Now shut up.

Anyone who likes the kind of music I do is going to eventually run into certain indispensable bands. These are the ones who kicked it off, who were playing against the grain when that wasn't something you got rewarded for. The Velvet Underground is number one on such a list. The Stooges are a close second. The Ramones were most definitely working off of a Stooges riff, and could therefore be considered the lesser band. The Stooges were certainly more creative.

Unfortunately, the last Stooges album came out in '73. I was born in '76. So, on with the Ramones.

I'm fully aware of the criticisms. This is a band that basically wrote the same song over and over and over again. You could take songs of the last album and put them on the first album, and vice versa, and only the geeks would know the difference. They made minimal effort to grow as songwriters, and barely any at all as musicians. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.

But what band today casts a longer shadow? The simple, monotonous, fasterlouder style will never go away. There'll always be someone along to sweep it up and take a couple of chords and roar their way through to people's eardrums. That reality is largely the creation of the Ramones, who got in ahead of any of their contemporaries, reached more kids worldwide over the course of their careers, and managed to last the longest even though they didn't really care much for each other. They earned their legacy, and the hard way.

What's more, they remain superior to the majority of their descendants in one key element: their songs are FUN. They could write a tune about sniffin' glue, going to the beach, President Reagan, or anything else under the sun, and make it sound like an absolute blast, simultaneously giving off the impression that they didn't much care about it. Name one "punk" band in the last two decades who've managed to pull that off. You can't, can you? The self-serious little twerps ruined it, turned themselves into a lot of ersatz barricade boys, completely ignoring the fact that the music is itself the getaway, the escape. Sure, it's a temporary escape, but what isn't? In the end, we all go to the same place.

"Okay, okay, windy, we get it. But why 'Judy is a Punk'? Shouldn't you go with something more epoch-defining? 'I Wanna Be Sedated'? That song from the cell phone ads?"

No, I shouldn't. Because "Judy is a Punk" is the first song they ever wrote.

I think we're done here.


#12