Dee Dee Ramone was found dead last night. Apparent drug overdose. :(25 responses total.
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Bassist for the Ramones. Member of a punk rock band. Douglas Colvin.
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No prob.
Geez, the Ramones are dropping like flies.
Extended vacaaaation. They are retiring of sorts, I think.
i love the ramones, they are my favorite tunes to sing in the shower.
re0: a 25 year long ambivalent suicide. whatever.
I met him about 10 years ago.
He had moved to Ann Arbor recently, temporarily . .
He was going to play with some Detroit musicians
in a benefit for Rob Tyner's family, IIRC. The bass
player knew I had a 3 car garage set up as rehearsal
space and asked if they could use it one evening
to rehearse. I said sure.
They gave me a couple hints, that 'Mr. Ramone' had
been convalescing, or had developed an illness,
was exhausted from too much touring, whatever.
I thought he seemed relatively lucid, and cheerful.
A tiny bit fumbly and mumbly, that's all. He dropped
his guitar twice. He didn't have a real case, it was
just cloth, and he'd lean his guitar and then
maybe bump it with his elbow and over it'd go.
He'd kind of chuckle in an embarrassed sort of way.
The Ann Arbor guys started calling him 'Squidgy'.
So, for one night only, in my garage, Dee Dee
Ramone, Gary Rassmussen, Scott Morgan, and Rasmussen's
favorite drummer, from the East side of Detroit,
I didn't catch his name. And they worked on
3 tunes Squidgy had written, and I played with my
tape recorder, shifting mikes to fine tune the mix.
I just use two mikes and a cassette machine, and
get a natural stereo effect. Like your ears.
Afterwords Squidge very matter-of-factly, cheerfully
and directly, asked me for the tape. I did hesitate
just for a second but then made a point of handing it
right over. He smiled. Cheerful guy.
Since I am so ignorant about the Ramones, I didn't want
the dude coming over and there I'd be totally clueless
of who he is, so I ran out and bought a best of
The Ramones cassette. I learned that Squidge wrote
about 2/3's of the tunes, that was interesting.
The only one I recognized was I Wanna Be Sedated.
I was no fan of Punk/New Wave. I felt the MC5 had
been there and done that, better, a decade earlier.
Squidge chatted a little about The Ramones, complaining
that the singer . . 'Joey Ramone' (?) . . ran it
like a teenage gang. Whatever that means.
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the MC5?
((( Agora item 242 now linked as Music item 102. )))
re #11: influential pre-punk group from the Detroit area.
MC5 = political yawn-fest
That too, in many ways.. But isn't that also true of a lot of the music they influenced?
Did not one of them recently die of cancer?
Yeah, Joey Ramone (Jeff Hyman) died of lymphoma last year. he was the singer.
Jeez . .. they're just dropping like flies, then. I wonder if Joey Ramone was the person propping Dee Dee up, and his death perhaps pulled the rug out from under him?
No, they hadn't spoken for several years from what I understood. Dee Dee, going by his autobiography, seemes to have had nothing good to say about his times with the Ramones (or anything else for that matter).
Horse can do that to a person I hear....
Damnit, I can never remember what horse is slang for.
Smack.
Nice
Heroin.
Okay, then. I was close.
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