response 5 of 25:

Jun 6 21:31 UTC 2002

Geez, the Ramones are dropping like flies.

response 7 of 25:

Jun 7 07:02 UTC 2002

i love the ramones, they are my favorite tunes to sing in the shower.

response 9 of 25:

Jun 7 17:32 UTC 2002

        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.

response 11 of 25:

Jun 8 10:16 UTC 2002

the MC5?

response 13 of 25:

Jun 10 03:15 UTC 2002

    re #11:  influential pre-punk group from the Detroit area.

response 15 of 25:

Jun 11 21:19 UTC 2002

  That too, in many ways..  But isn't that also true of a lot of the music 
  they influenced?  

response 17 of 25:

Jun 12 12:13 UTC 2002

Yeah, Joey Ramone (Jeff Hyman) died of lymphoma last year. he was the singer.

response 19 of 25:

Jun 17 12:01 UTC 2002

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). 

response 21 of 25:

Jun 20 20:40 UTC 2002

Damnit, I can never remember what horse is slang for.

response 23 of 25:

Jun 21 02:56 UTC 2002

Nice