I've always thought that bands have a lot of similarities with small businesses/startups/new ventures. A new band is a group of people with complementary skills coming together trying to make something new or special or worthwhile or even profitable.
Another similarity: Conflicts between founders. I was not surprised to learn that there was tension in the band. However, The Ramones were extreme with Johnny and Joey barely talking for many years. I find it remarkable that they were able to keep it together as long as they did (The Beatles, if the stories about Lennon/McCartney are true, did not last half as long).
About 15 years ago Michael Azzerad wrote a great book called Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991. It has some very good interviews with the founding members of various bands who came after The Ramones, covering the bands' formation, songwriting/recording approaches, success, and failure. The stories of Minor Threat/Fugazi/Dischord are particularly interesting. Reading it I was reminded a lot of Founders at Work.
This interview from AV Club (1) is helpful to understanding the parallels. A sample:
AVC: What is the connective tissue that binds all of these bands together?
MA: The epigram for Our Band Could Be Your Life comes from William Blake: “I must create my own system, lest I be enslaved by another man’s.” All of the bands in the book were creating their own system. That’s one thing. The other is that they were part of a close-knit, interconnected, interdependent community. You’ll notice how other bands in the book pop up in every chapter, frequently. That’s no coincidence—it really was that tightly knit. People shared everything: information, equipment, their floors, whatever. There was strength in unity.
Even two decades ago, the idea of a "solopreneur" was fantastical. You needed people to run a business.
Today, you have bloggers, information entrepreneurs and affiliate marketers making enough money to rival small businesses. And they often run without any employees.
Similarly, you have the idea of the solo artist today who writes his own songs, makes his own music, and even shoots his own music videos, then releases them on his own channel and does his own marketing (Todd Terje comes to mind).
This is possible because of the tools made available to solo artists today, which are, surprisingly, similar to the tools used by solopreneurs (social media marketing tools, access to freelancers, etc.)
There's actually an exhibit about the Ramones at the Queens Museum, less than a mile from Forest Hills, where each of the Ramones grew up. I went on Saturday. There's a decent mix of art, reviews, and equipment. http://www.queensmuseum.org/2016/01/hey-ho-lets-go-2
I've told a variation of this story to a ton of people, to specifically address the confinement of success.
They had the choice of sticking with the same colleagues they'd worked with (and increasingly hated) for 20 years, or being record store employees. Imagine if your livelihood was tied to working only with a few other people, and one of them had a tendency to beat you up, one was a heroin addict, and the other was an OCD acid-casualty. Imagine you had to live in a bus with them for years on end.
Not really, Tommy left early on as the article mentions and had a decent career as an engineer doing studio work, Dee Dee left in the mid-80s and pursued a solo career. The only constants were Johnny and Joey. There were other Ramones that article doesn't mention Elvis, CJ and Richie.
Dee Dee pursued a solo career and failed. He had to keep writing Ramones songs, only without collecting any of the touring revenue.
IIRC, he was often somewhat in "debt" to the band, as they'd bail him out of jail with the requirement that he would provide songs for the next album, even though he was no longer a full member.
Career-wise, CBGB was a ticket to nothing. I've never bought a solo album by anyone who was in Blondie, Talking Heads, or the Ramones, but I do remember seeing that stuff in the used discount bins, unwanted.
We'll he collected publishing money,and a flat fee. He didn't do it for free. David Byrne had an amazing and wonderful career and he came out of CBGB. Blondie as well. I'm sure Blondie lives off of the publishing from songs on Parallel Lines. A lifetime of passive income? I'm not sure I would call that a ticket to nowhere.
I don't know -- after a year or two with regular gigs at CBGB they could all have very likely easily found work with (or started) other bands. They (at least Johnny and Joey) chose to stay together because the band was more important to them than their personal feelings towards one another, not because they had no other viable options.
This article was terrible, I guess proof reading and spell checking aren't important to Rolling Stone. I'm not sure what the point in the article is. It would be nice if they focused on how influential and original the band was, they wrote great pop songs, an American treasure. Punk wouldn't have happened without these guys. Their tour of the UK in '76 launched a thousand punk bands. If anyone is interested theres a doc called "Hey! Is Dee Dee home?" Which is a candid hour'ish long interview of Dee Dee dishing all the stories. Sadly he died not long after.
The documentary "End of the Century" covers the same territory (and a lot more). It's a good documentary, but oh so sad. It has wonderful clips of Joe Strummer talking about how great the Ramones were.
To whomever designed that website: thanks a ton. It consumed 100% cpu, caused janky scrolling, and crashed Safari on my iPhone, repeatedly. The rest of the time that stupid top bar got in the way and covered 1/3 of the screen, ruining what could have been a delightful wake up read.
I sincerely hope Phil Spector pays you a visit once he gets out of jail and consumes 100% of your miserable existence.
Sorry for ranting, but dear lord there should be laws against that.
I never click on a rollingstone link since about 2 years ago when opening the site on my android handset in the UK resulted in a malware popup that managed to charge something to my phone bill via payforit.
There's no particular reason you can't blame all involved parties:
* android for allowing payforit to be invoked without user interaction
* payforit for allowing fraudulent transactions
* rolling stones for not vetting their advertising partners and taking money from scammers.
It's not like every party in the transaction couldn't do anything to prevent the problem.
While on the one hand, we have the "Medium-ification" of websites where some remove the sidebar completely, increase the font size and make text easy to read, the other sites are doing crap like this.
Sure, they were never huge and perhaps never that good, despite the fact Johnny Ramone makes many top N guitarists lists and the band is consistently ranked top N for both music and influence.
The 100 people who bought their albums created 100 bands. The influence of the Ramones can't be overstated.
It wasn't really about whether they were good; it was about attitude. It had a very significant impact on music throughout the world; not just what people played, but also how they performed it (on stage).
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[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 90.8 ms ] threadAnother similarity: Conflicts between founders. I was not surprised to learn that there was tension in the band. However, The Ramones were extreme with Johnny and Joey barely talking for many years. I find it remarkable that they were able to keep it together as long as they did (The Beatles, if the stories about Lennon/McCartney are true, did not last half as long).
About 15 years ago Michael Azzerad wrote a great book called Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991. It has some very good interviews with the founding members of various bands who came after The Ramones, covering the bands' formation, songwriting/recording approaches, success, and failure. The stories of Minor Threat/Fugazi/Dischord are particularly interesting. Reading it I was reminded a lot of Founders at Work.
This interview from AV Club (1) is helpful to understanding the parallels. A sample:
AVC: What is the connective tissue that binds all of these bands together?
MA: The epigram for Our Band Could Be Your Life comes from William Blake: “I must create my own system, lest I be enslaved by another man’s.” All of the bands in the book were creating their own system. That’s one thing. The other is that they were part of a close-knit, interconnected, interdependent community. You’ll notice how other bands in the book pop up in every chapter, frequently. That’s no coincidence—it really was that tightly knit. People shared everything: information, equipment, their floors, whatever. There was strength in unity.
1. http://www.avclub.com/article/revisiting-book-immortalized-8...
Even two decades ago, the idea of a "solopreneur" was fantastical. You needed people to run a business.
Today, you have bloggers, information entrepreneurs and affiliate marketers making enough money to rival small businesses. And they often run without any employees.
Similarly, you have the idea of the solo artist today who writes his own songs, makes his own music, and even shoots his own music videos, then releases them on his own channel and does his own marketing (Todd Terje comes to mind).
This is possible because of the tools made available to solo artists today, which are, surprisingly, similar to the tools used by solopreneurs (social media marketing tools, access to freelancers, etc.)
Why did they keep playing? They were only in it for the shekels.
The Ramones were terrible.
They had the choice of sticking with the same colleagues they'd worked with (and increasingly hated) for 20 years, or being record store employees. Imagine if your livelihood was tied to working only with a few other people, and one of them had a tendency to beat you up, one was a heroin addict, and the other was an OCD acid-casualty. Imagine you had to live in a bus with them for years on end.
Great guy. Fun to talk to.
IIRC, he was often somewhat in "debt" to the band, as they'd bail him out of jail with the requirement that he would provide songs for the next album, even though he was no longer a full member.
Career-wise, CBGB was a ticket to nothing. I've never bought a solo album by anyone who was in Blondie, Talking Heads, or the Ramones, but I do remember seeing that stuff in the used discount bins, unwanted.
Byrne has done OK, but couldn't have bankrolled his label without his 80s Heads income.
I suspect that is one reason personal feuds in academia can be so bitter and last so many decades.
I sincerely hope Phil Spector pays you a visit once he gets out of jail and consumes 100% of your miserable existence.
Sorry for ranting, but dear lord there should be laws against that.
This thing is cancer for user experience.
While on the one hand, we have the "Medium-ification" of websites where some remove the sidebar completely, increase the font size and make text easy to read, the other sites are doing crap like this.
They are a 'meme' band.
Some sideshow 'hipster' movement found them cool.
They are a brand.
One or two albums, great. Interesting. Maybe.
They don't make any more decent music so it's natural to break up if there is no reason to exist.
Unless they can milk their fans for a generation and let them relive a few moments ...
Sure, they were never huge and perhaps never that good, despite the fact Johnny Ramone makes many top N guitarists lists and the band is consistently ranked top N for both music and influence.
The 100 people who bought their albums created 100 bands. The influence of the Ramones can't be overstated.
Then I had to toggle off "block comments" to see what was posted here. :)