Rise and Fall and Rise

Someone was getting Dee Dee Ramones leather jacket appraised on The Antiques Roadshow and after I got over the shock, I realized that what is labeled passe is right behind us. Maybe the Ramones are a bad example. They are, after all, stilll popular and were, after all, really made by the Seventies which is now ancient history in a way that made them time specific. Their long hair that started to look dated in the Eighties along with the Fifties inspired song structures wrapped up in a heavy guitar taken from early Heavy Metal all had a shelf life. So they go through their 4 or 5 album heyday but keep trudging on. Like many bands the best work comes first. The decline is inevitable for creative reasons of the moment, because of age and opportunity. How things slowly date is a matter of chance. But this is only the short term, because both the music of the Ramones and their attitudes have lived on to influence others and, in retrospect, once you get beyond that constant short term trendiness of everything, the time period, you can appreciate things without the benifits of being Twenty when new things are much more important. Luckily, The Ramones were never overplayed like a lot of earlier and later bands. Perhaps what makes they still sound fresh is the honesty. They certainly stand out in dull alt-country music sets on the radio today. Another thing; I would kill to have Dee Dee's or Joey's hair now.

- James Rosenthal