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The Curse of the Ramones

rollingstone.com

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Re: The Curse of the Ramones

#21

Post by dizzystar »

jomamaxx wrote: post #18

They were never that good. 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 ...

What is a meme band?

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.

Re: The Curse of the Ramones

#22

Post by puranjay »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #15

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,…

I absolutely hate the floating navbar trend.

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.

Re: The Curse of the Ramones

#23

Post by puranjay »

ilamont wrote: post #2

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 b…

It's interesting to me that you say that.

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.)

Re: The Curse of the Ramones

#25

Post by Xylakant »

drcongo wrote: post #19
tdubhro1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And you blame them for that, not Android or 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.

Re: The Curse of the Ramones

#26

Post by ptaipale »

jomamaxx wrote: post #18

They were never that good. 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 ...

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).

Re: The Curse of the Ramones

#28

Post by bogomipz »

alrs wrote: post #13
bogomipz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

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.

Re: The Curse of the Ramones

#29

Post by alrs »

bogomipz wrote: post #28
alrs wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

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.

If Blondie or the Talking Heads broke up after the first year we would have never heard of them.

Byrne has done OK, but couldn't have bankrolled his label without his 80s Heads income.

Re: The Curse of the Ramones

#30

Post by BurningFrog »

alrs wrote: post #6

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 w…

Tenure at universities has a similar effect. You have a job for life, but you're stuck with the other equally unfirable people.

I suspect that is one reason personal feuds in academia can be so bitter and last so many decades.

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