Pop Culture Awareness #2: The Ramones

Welcome to Part Two in my adventure of becoming a cooler teenager through deliberate exposure to popular culture and media. If you missed out on the first instalment and want to know what Pop Culture Awareness is all about, please click here.

After educating myself about a much-loved and influential teen movie last time, I thought I would switch it up and become culturally aware about a much-loved and influential band for teens. A Brief Illustrated Summary of the band, THE RAMONES:

The first time I heard about The Ramones was during Avril Lavigne's 2006-8 comeback, in which she went for the pink and platinum blonde look (devastating for me, as the old Avril's song Sk8er Boi was something of a Hymn for my tomboy, 7 year old self). She released the song Girlfriend and was promptly sued by the Rubinoos, who claimed she stole their song 'I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend' and I think Avril said that they were stupid and The Ramones had made a similar song as well and they weren't suing. The report, which was on the radio, closed with excerpts from the three songs, one after the other.

I forgot all about the Ramones until the end of last year when Rookie started and then I found 8tracks through that, and started listening to a few mixes that people made. In many of the mixes I listened to, The Ramones were almost always featured. I wasn't that interested, though. I was heavily into The Velvet Underground (I still am pretty into them), who I had also learned about through 8tracks.

On Monday, however,  I went shopping with my little sister and we spent about an hour in JB Hi-Fi (best store ever) trying to decide on some DVDs  to buy. It was there that  I came across a Best-Of Ramones CD for $8.99 in the letter 'R' section. I bought it because it was cheap and because I knew they were somewhat cool and thought I should see what all the fuss was about.

I imported it into my iTunes when I got home but decided not to listen to them until I had some time to listen to all 30 songs in one go, completely focussed and see what impact it had on me. I thought today might be a good day to do it. I sat down with a paper and pen to take some notes and these are the results.

That was the most fun I have ever had making notes. These were my favourite songs from the compilation:

1. Teenage Lobotomy

2. Sheena is a Punk Rocker

3. Rockaway Beach

4. I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend

5. Mama's Boy

6. We're A Happy Family

7. Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment

8. Needles and Pins

9. Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?

10. Beat on the Brat

But I thought that before I started telling you what I thought about their music, I should learn a little about the actual band. I didn't do too much intensive research, just Wikipedia and the MTV website. What I found the most engaging was a documentary on youtube called The End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones (2003). It's pretty long (with 11 ten minute parts) but I really recommend you watch it when you are super bored and have some time on your hands, instead of eating peanut butter out of a jar, which is what I usually do. It's really nice to learn about all the members of the Ramones especially, and finding out what sort of people they were. 

I am going to list now where I think the band's appeal to teenagers (coolness) comes from:

1. They were the first ever Punk band - These guys redefined Rock and Roll! When the band first came about, in the mid-seventies, all the other bands were being totally weird and were being very self-indulgent. Lots of abstract stuff and super long guitar solos. The Ramones were original and did stuff that was completely different. Teenagers today are obsessed with being original and different. Unless they are doing an homage to the Ramones, derrr. (silent H, french pronunciation everybody)

2. They made up their pseudonyms with the same last names, like a family. I really want to do that with my friends. So hardcore.

3. The band had a lot of imagery going on. They had a neat logo which fans tattooed onto their upper arms, or if they weren't down for that, wore the cool band T-shirts instead. The Ramones also had their own particular dress-style (leather jackets, T-shirts, jeans etc) which is a bit of a classic look now. 

4. The band was totally rebel (see #1). Any Ramones song is like an anthem for Teenage Rebellion. 

5. They were one of the most influential bands ever. It might be cool to listen to punk, punk rock and post-punk bands today like Green Day and Nirvana and Bleeding Knees Club (listen to this one from them, I think they sound super Ramone-ish but a little cuter and surfier). BUT it is much cooler to listen to the band that THEY thought was cool (the Ramones, man). 

7. The band isn't around anymore, which makes listening to them nostalgic, and we all know how much teenagers like to be nostalgic from before they were born. 

Rating of The Ramones as a Pop Culture Reference:

The thing with movies is that they are pretending to be life. So it's much easier to compare and relate movies to life. Music is about life, but it doesn't pretend to be life. What music does pretend to be is maybe what your feelings sound like. I'm just letting you know this so you don't try and pop culture reference the Ramones like you might pop culture reference the movie Clueless. 

Referencing the Ramones is actually very tricky and my respect goes out to those people who can successfully reference them. Non-pretentious Ramones-T Shirt-wearers, Ramones-influenced bands, and music buffs who can tell you if a band was influenced by the Ramones or not fall into the successful category. Unsuccessful referencers of the Ramones include pretentious music snobs, pretentious music snobs who start arguments on youtube about how the Ramones are the be-all and end-all, and people who wear Ramones T-shirts but actually think that the Ramones  are a hipster clothing brand. But DESPITE the difficulty to give justice to the Ramones when trying to reference them, the band's influence in music and Pop Culture in general, the rating of the Ramones as a Pop Culture Reference has evened out to a solid 11/15.

Is anyone here a Ramones fan? If so, please let us know in the comments how you came across the band, whether you can pull off the Ramones T shirt with out looking pretentious and any fun facts about the band that you would like to put out there! After doing this post I feel that I am well on the way to the beginning of a Ramones phase. 

I was also wondering if anyone had any requests for Pop Culture Awareness. If you keep hearing about a certain movie/band/person on the cool teenage haunts of the internet, please let me know about it in the comments and I might do it for PCA #3! Then you can decide for yourself whether the movie/CD/entire collected works is worth spending your pocket money on.