Life Less Literary

Last night I went to the Sheffield International Documentary Festival at the Showroom, to see Ramones: End of the Century. It was a good film, some great one-liners (e.g. Joey’s brother on the early effects of fame: “for the first time, Joey was getting girls <short pause> who weren’t <long pause> on medication” - now I understand what is meant by “comic timing”).

Most interesting of all was the insight the film gave into the wildly different personalities of each Ramone. To me they were always just a bunch of guys in black with silly haircuts, but this film really brings out their individual differences, particularly between Joey, the sensitive, liberal, OCD sufferer, and Johnny, the control-freak, right-wing bottled-up kid. Actually, Johnny comes across as quite a nasty piece of work (right down to his 2002 acceptance speech when the Ramones were inducted into the Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame: “God bless President Bush, and God bless America” - a statement which the rest of the band didn’t seem entirely happy with). He was a crazy out-of-control kid who apparently, at the age of eighteen, had a moment of clarity where he calmed himself down and decided what he was and wasn’t allowed to do for the rest of his life. That bottled-up control freakery seems to have lasted out his entire life, and seeped into the Ramones: they wouldn’t have been the band they were without him ordering everyone to dress and look as they did, turn up play as they did, just generally to stay in line, but… man, what a wanker. He even stole Joey’s girlfriend, married her, and never even spoke to Joey about it during the remaining 18 years that he was alive (in fact, from what I can gather the two never really spoke again after that moment). Dee Dee, of course, was the nutty clown of the group: a fucked-up junkie who sounds as if he came close to some kind of Sid Vicious-Nancy Spungen relationship early on in the group’s career.

It was awesome to see them play Sheena is a Punk Rocker: I felt a shiver go up and down my spine and all around my body; weird, I haven’t felt that feeling in years, and I would never have expected it to have been re-awakened by a Ramones song, but looking back I remember now when they played the same song on Top of the Pops, I must have been seven or eight, and I got exactly the same buzz of it then. And when Baby I Love You came out, I looked forward to hearing it every week. I’ve never thought of myself as much of a Ramones fan: short, indistinct, whatever-y songs, but actually they had a few damn good numbers.

Something else that amazed me about the film: I never knew the Ramones had such a huge South American following. Although they were never truly big in the USA, once they headed south of the border they would be mobbed by hordes of gabba-gabba-heying fans. Apparently the street kids in Brazil, who had very little to live for, found inspiration in the band’s DIY ethic and fuck-you stance.

And now… I’m just gutted that I’m off to Bochum tomorrow; there are so many other films at the festival which I’d like to see, particularly Moog, The Yes Men, Czech Dream, Darwin’s Nightmare, Every Little Thing, The People of Angkor, Wall, Tintin and I, Me, Myself and the Universe… in fact everything, really.