Lock The Door & Cover Me – The Ramones

Let’s face it; The Ramones are a national treasure.  Well,  I guess it is technically correct to say they were a national treasure.   I grew up in New Jersey, as I have volunteered many times, but have called Boston my home for over 30 years.   My New York Metropolitan roots had me exposed to The Ramones at 16 or so.  They formed in 1974, but it took them until 1976 to release their first self titled LP.  The first song on side one was “Blitzkrieg Bop.”  It was two minutes and twelve seconds of sheer fun.  I love several Ramones tracks, but “Blitzkrieg Bop” might still be my all time favorite.   The next track?  “Beat On The Brat.”  Classic Punk Rock if such a thing exists.

Generally credited with being the first Punk Rock band in the States, that first record scored a “33″ on the famous 2003 Rolling Stone Top 500 Records of All Time list.   In 2002 Spin Magazine even went so far as to name them the number two band of all time behind The Beatles.   I can’t go along with that assertion, but I’m amazed at my affinity for The Ramones as the years have gone on.   I’ve become quite the fan and I find myself reaching for standard 80′s fare like “We Want The Airwaves” or “It’s Not My Place (in The 9 To 5 World).”    I never get tired of hearing “Sheena is a Punk Rocker” either for some reason.   Heck I even find myself humming along with “Pet Sematary” at times.   In the mid 70′s we all had no problem with “Rockaway Beach” or “I Wanna Be Sedated,” but I didn’t feel like anyone was holding The Ramones up as the world’s greatest band.  I mean, every song was two minutes it seemed.  I’m a big Guided By Voices (a band notorious for short songs) fan, but sometimes you need some meat on the bone.  Give me a five minute number I can sink my teeth into.  They might have had a couple of songs over four minutes, but there weren’t many.

According to our friends at Wikipedia, Paul McCartney, ironically enough, used to use the pseudonym Paul Ramon in his Silver Beatles days so he could avoid detection.   Douglas Colvin, later known as Dee Dee Ramone, convinced the others to call their new band The Ramones and each one of them took a similar pseudonym.  Hilarious.  Their whole shtick was hilarious if you ask me.   Pogoing fans, short bursts of teenage angst and really catchy Punk Rock.  I saw them in concert in the 90′s and a fifteen song warmup concert was over in 40 minutes flat I swear.   It wasn’t like they were the warmup act either, they were involved in one of those Alternative Rock three headliner concerts they used to do back then.  Everyone rotated from night to night.  My point is that I had never seen them and it was over so fast I could barely catch my breath and enjoy them.

The Ramones did a handful of covers over the years, but relative to their catalogue they had plenty of original material to work with.  One of their most famous covers was The Searchers’ “Needles & Pins.”   I was always intrigued by some of their other choices too.  I love “Time Has Come Today” by The Chambers Brothers so I didn’t mind it when they covered that song either.   My favorite cover by The Ramones was a cover of a Bubblegum act called The 1910 Fruitgum Company.   The song was called “Indian Giver” and it appeared on their 1983 album Subterranean Jungle.  I have mentioned many times that I started collecting 45 RPM records beginning in 1967.   The 1910 Fruitgum company was all over the AM dial and was specifically played by WABC-AM in New York City.   Mixed in with The Monkees, The Stones, The Ohio Express, Steppenwolf, The Grass Roots, Three Dog Night, The Beatles, The Rascals, The Partridge Family, The Turtles and another dozen are they real or are they fabricated AM bands of the day.  If you feel like the fabricated bands were The Monkees, The Partridge Family, The Ohio Express and The 1910 Fruitgum Company you just might have a point.   At least they weren’t The Pipkins (“Gimme Dat Ding”) right?  It could have been worse.

Pop trash has always been in the eye of the beholder, but the late 60′s and early 70′s had a boatload of great singles by the so called Bubblegum set.  The Lemon Pipers had “Green Tambourine.”   The Music Explosion has “Little Bit of Soul.”  The Jaggerz had “The Rapper.”  These are great songs by bands you never heard from again.   The 1910 Fruitgum Company was famous for songs like “Simon Says, 1,2,3 Red Light, Goody Goody Gumdrops and Special Delivery.”  Yikes.  Pass the sugar.   But Indian Giver, a song that would probably never fly in today’s politically correct world, was kind of a rocker.  It had the obligatory Tom Tom’s, but it didn’t sound anything like Paul Revere & The Raiders 1971 hit “Indian Reservation.”  It was kind of a grinder.  I have to admit I had the 45 RPM and played the living bleep out of it.  The song is long forgotten, just like The 1910 Fruitgum Company, but The Ramones, one of the greatest Punk bands ever, chose to recognize this tune.  I think that is wicked cool as they say.

The Ramones – Indian Giver.mp3

The 1910 Fruitgum Company – Indian Giver.mp3

The 1910 Fruitgum Company – Indian Giver.mp3 YSI

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