I am a Ramones fan. I've talked about it before, but tonight I
have an extra special reason to talk about them. They are now selling tacos...
Blitzkrieg Bob in a Taco Bell commercial? That's right... This is
a few years after the same song appeared in a Nissan commercial.
Normally, I have no issue with artists selling their music to make
money. The Biz today is much different than previous years. Artists have to go
to extreme measures to generate income.
However, I have 2 very obvious problems with the Ramones selling
out to Taco Bell.
1. All of the original Ramones are dead.
2. Punk rock was supposed to stand for something.
The spirit of Punk pointed a middle finger at the establishment
and created art for the misfits of society. To quote the Refused: "new art
for the real people."
Radio was bogged down with dinosaur rock and disco. Fleetwood Mac
and the Eagles, albeit great music, was lost on a generation of kids trying to
make sense of the world handed down to them. The ass end of the Baby Boom
was tired of the formulas laid out for them by the previous generation.
Punk was pure.
People site bands like Iggy and the Stooges, MC5 and New York
Dolls as the spark that ignited the scene, but the Ramones are the Black
Sabbath of Punk and the godfathers of the movement. The band that inspired
other New York bands like Talking Heads, Patti Smith and Blondie, as well as
across the pond with Sex Pistols, The Clash and Generation X.
Ramones lived punk until the day they all died. Joey, Jonny, Dee
Dee, and Tommy changed everything and burned themselves into the underground of
American culture.
Dee Dee Ramone was a main songwriter for a while. His
contributions to punk rock puts him at a status above other influential
Punkers. He was crazy, he was a drug addict, he even tried his hand at Hip Hop,
but the thing he did best was counting off 1,2,3,4, and writing some of the
most iconic, simple and catchiest songs ever put to vinyl.
I will always think of the original Ramones as a perfect storm. 4
awkward guys that decided to take over the world, and actually believed that
they could. They were odd, not well trained, but magical and very musical in
their own way. DIY never got much better.
So now they sell Tacos? How in the fuck did that happen? They are
all dead, so they don't need the money, and that means some greed is in play.
To see that makes me ill. The only thing I can even imagine being worse would
be Lennon's "Working Class Hero" in a Walmart commercial.
The Clash sold out London Calling a long time ago, yeah I know.
That bothered me too. Again, it's only because the spirit of what it all stood
for is diminished by shit like this. What did it all mean?
That's the way of things when greed gets involved. Someone is
cashing in. Shame on them. I don't eat Taco Bell, so I can't even boycott.
Sheena is A Punk Rocker, the KKK Took My Baby Away, and Carbona
not Glue are probably my favorite Ramones songs, but everything pre 1986 is
golden to me. Whenever Ramones comes up randomly on a playlist or the radio, I
get sucked in and everything else gets tuned out.
The Taco Bell commercial did not have that effect on me.
Gabba Gabba Hey
Nago
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