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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