April 20, 2005

• WEDNESDAY MOVIE(S)

  End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones

  and

  DIG!

  It’s late and I don’t have much time to blog before I hit the rack, but I did want to say that I’ve become a stone fan of music documentaries lately, ever since I watched Metallica Some Kind of Monster. I wish I had time to really research a bit but I don’t so here’s my totally intuitive impression of both these films. I watched the Ramones movie first. In 2002 they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (well minus Joey, the 6’6” lead and only vocalist ever of the band) who died the year before of lymphoma at age 49. If I got it straight, none of the band was really a Ramone. They all just changed their last names to Ramone after the band got going. The original group is all gone now except for drummer Tommy. DeeDee died of a heroin overdose in 2002 and Johnny of prostate cancer last year. They only ever really played about three chords, but they played them LOUD. They loved loud. I was at the tail end of my rock and roll years when the Ramones erupted onto the music scene as one of the most influential punk rock bands ever and somehow I never connected. But all these years later, I was mesmerized at this squabbling, black leather jacketed, go for the jugular gang of music hoodlums. They never made it big in America somehow at the time, but today they are revered. Try them with the sound up. It’s the only way.

  As for DIG!, it’s even a bit more gritty than the Ramones’ story as a rockumentary but I had kind of heard of one of the bands in it – The Dandy Warhols – because they’re out of Portland, kind of a pop psychedelic bunch led by frontman Courtney Taylor. But this is about two bands – the other being the Brian Jonestown Massacre with the gifted, borderline-out-there-too-far lead singer Anton Newcombe. It’s about the love/hate relationship between Taylor and Newcombe and all the insanity that follows their interactions over a period of eight years. One band is able to stay in the relative mainstream and survive financially and the other is unable to befriend success. Watch and find out which is which and how it all turns out. So now that I have to listen to my grandchildren tell me to turn off the music I like to listen to in the car so they can listen to hip hop and rap, I’ve finally found some kinds of music none of us likes – and I love it.
  

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  Deep Thought: “The king threw back his head and laughed. He enjoyed a good laugh, and so did his wife, the queen. When she saw the king laughing she let out a big laugh too. In fact, she laughed so hard she broke her throne. This made them both laugh harder. Then they got serious when they remembered they had the plague. “The plague,” said the king, but the way he said it made them both burst out laughing again.”
  Today I am grateful for: Inroads
  Guess the Movie: “You don’t know much about tracking, do you?” “Hey, I’m a sloth. I see a tree, eat a leaf. That’s my tracking.” Answer: Ice Age, 2002. Winner: soobee72.
  Senate Panel Postpones Vote on U.N. Nominee
  by Douglas Jehl
  WASHINGTON — A surprise last-minute defection by an Ohio Republican forced the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to postpone a vote that had been scheduled for Tuesday on the nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. (Rest of article here.)
  End of Day: 8:55 pm
  + = I can see clearly now, the rain is gone.
  - = But the ground is still squishy.

  • 11:32 pm
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