From The Vaults: Kick Out The Tories - Newtown Neurotics

Kick Out The Tories / Mindless Violence - Newtown Neurotics

CNT Productions/No Wonder Records

Produced by Neurotics and Nick Robbins

Released June 1982 

A-Side

A-Side

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Kick Out The Tories was the second single released by the Newtown Neurotics. 

With five days to go until the General Election here in the UK I thought I'd post this one just as a reminder of how vital it is to use your vote wisely!

Quite why it took three years for them to release a follow up to their Debut Single Hypocrite / You Said No, on No Wonder Records I do not know. But what a follow-up!

Let's Kick Out The Tories

Written by Steve Drewett

 

Lets kick out the Tories
The rulers of this land
For they are the enemies
Of the British working man
And it shows,while that bastard is in unemployment grows
And it shows,in hospitals,factories and
The schools that they've closed

Evil will triumph,if good men say nothing
Evil will triumph, if good men do nothing
And it shows, while that bastard is in unemployment grows
And it shows, from Toxteth down to the Crumlin Road

Lets overthrow them soon
Can't you see what they're trying to do
We'll all be frying soon
Can't you see what they're trying to do
Lets overthrow them soon
Can't you see what they're trying to do
They just abuse their power
Both black and white are being screwed

Don't believe every thing that you read in the press
Don't believe what you read

Revisiting Brain Drain - Ramones (Sire/Chrysalis 1989)

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Brain Drain - Ramones

Sire/Chrysalis

Produced by Bill Laswell (Jean Beauvoir and Daniel Rey proudced two tracks)

Released 18th May 1989*

US Chart #122

UK Chart #75

* I have also seen a date for release of this as 23rd March 1989. I'm not sure if that was the American release date!

Brain Drain (Full Album Playlist)

Side 1

Side 2

Personnel

Ramones
    Joey Ramone – Lead vocals (All tracks apart from Punishment Fits The Crime)
    Johnny Ramone – Lead guitar
    Dee Dee Ramone –Bass guitar (credited, but did not record bass), backing and lead (Punishment Fits The Crime) vocals, synthesizer
    Marky Ramone – Drums

Additional musicians
    Daniel Rey – bass guitar
    Jean Beauvoir - bass guitar (performed on at least "Pet Semetary")
    Andy Shernoff – bass guitar (performed on at least "All Screwed Up" and "Ignorance Is Bliss")
    Artie Smith – additional guitars
    Robert Musso – additional guitars

Singles on Brain Drain

Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight)*

Beggars Banquet

Released November 1987

*was a Double A-Side with I Wanna Live.

A-Side: Pet Sematary

B-Side: All Screwed Up / Zero Zero UFO

Chrysalis 12"

Released June 1989 (US)*, September 1989 (UK)**

Did Not Chart

*US version of the single contained Sheena Is A Punk Rocker as the B-Side and on the 12" played at 33⅓ RPM, it included Life Goes On as an extra track.

**On the 7" Single All Screwed Up was the B-Side on its original release but the single was reissued in December 1989 adding Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight) as the B-Side on the 7". It was also released as a 12" that also included the two songs that had been on the original 12" release.

A-Side: Pet Sematary

B-Side: Palisades Park

Liberation Records (Australia)

Released 14th May 1990

The German release of the single included Don't Bust My Chops as the B-Side.

A-Side: I Believe In Miracles

B-Side: All Screwed Up

German Promo 7"

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There are a bucketload of links below so click on them to listen to more music from the Ramones and the various projects since the band folded.

There's nothing stable when it comes to Ramones World and for their 11th Studio Album, Brain Drain,  there were a few major shifts in the atmosphere that would have a momentus effect upon the band but even amid the dysfunction they continued to make some fine music.

Firstly, Richie Ramone was no longer in the band, his last album with them had been Halfway To Sanity in April 1987. He had departed the band in August 1987 after five years, apparently upset that he was still not being given a share of sales of T-Shirts! Richie is of course still out playing shows and recording and still using the name Ramone! He has released a couple of albums, Entitled (2013) and the latest album (2016) is called Cellophane.

Secondly, with Richie's departure that meant they needed to get a new drummer. They actually tried out Clem Burke of Blondie (under the name Elvis Ramone). He actually only lasted two shows in August 1987 (here's the first one from Providence, Rhode Island on the 28th August, the second show was the night after in Trenton, New Jersey). According to Johnny Ramone the performances were a disaster because Clem couldn't keep up with the band!

Thirdly, the Prodigal Drummer Marky Ramone returned to the fold in September 1987, clean and sober. Remember he had been ousted from the band after the release of Subterranean Jungle in 1983 due to his alcoholism!

Marky continues to play live shows these days (Check out Marky Ramone's Blitzkrieg in Argentina in 2016) and to release albums from time to time: Marky Ramone and The Intruders - Don't Blame Me (1999), Start of The Century (2006),  Teenage Head with Marky Ramone (2008) and also a couple with The Speed Kings.

Fourthly, Dee Dee, although present on the back cover of the album, credited with a number of co-writes, and offering the lead vocal on one track, he does not actually play bass on the album at all! His final live show with the band would be 5th July 1989 at Santa Clara, California (Listen to Indian Giver/Palisades Park from the show on the 3rd July 1989). He would of course continue to provide songs for the band.

Fifthly, with Dee Dee's departure that meant a new bassist was needed. Enter Christopher Joseph Ward (who of course became C.J. Ramone). C.J.'s live debut had been on a TV Telethon, 4th September 1989 and his live Concert Debut would be the opening night of the UK tour in Leicester (listen to C.J. singing Warthog from the show and you can also listen to the full show here).

C.J. continues touring and releasing music: Bad Chopper (2007), Reconquista (1st released in 2012 and then again in 2015), Last Chance To Dance (2014) and his latest American Beauty (2017). You can watch him in action here from 2016 in Paris, and in Houston back in April of this year.

(Ramones 1989 - 1996: Johnny, Marky, Joey and C.J.)

Back to the album for a moment a two. After mentioning that Something To Believe In was my absolute favourite Ramones song in a previous blogpost on the Animal Boy album, the opening track to Brain Drain is also very high on the list of Ramones Favourites. I Believe In Miracles is another fantastic tune from the pen of Dee Dee Ramone and Daniel Rey. Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam would record it for a Tribute To the Ramones album and it would also be a part of Pearl Jam live sets.

Ramones always chose some interesting Cover Versions down through the years and the inclusion of Palisades Park, the 1962 tune originally released by Freddy Cannon was a great choice and they totally made it their own.

Pet Sematary was written for the Stephen King movie and became one of the bands top radio hits and always a staple of their live shows.

All Screwed Up (co-written with former member of The Dictators Andy Shernoff, Daniel Rey and Marky Ramone) starts off sounding like a Slade song and was one of three songs that Joey co-wrote and there was a further three songs he penned himself (I Can't Get You Outta My Mind - which has that nice sixties pop feel to it that was so typical of Joey's writing; Come back, Baby and Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight) - which would also be included on Joey's second album Ya' Know in 2012). 

Six of the songs on the album were Dee Dee co-writes along with Daniel Rey, Joey Ramone, Richie Stotts (one of the founding members of The Plasmatics), Johnny and Marky Ramone.

Whilst it's not the best Ramones ever made there are enough songs on it for it to be considered a pretty decent release I think.

Revisiting Animal Boy - Ramones (1986)

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Animal Boy - Ramones

Beggars Banquet/Sire

Produced by Jean Beauvoir

Released 19th May 1986

US Chart #143

UK Chart #38

Side A

Side B

Ramones
    Joey Ramone – Lead vocals (all but Love Kills and Eat The Rat)
    Johnny Ramone – Lead guitar
    Dee Dee Ramone – Bass guitar, backing vocals, lead vocals (Love Kills, Eat The Rat)
    Richie Ramone – Drums, backing vocals

Additional musicians
    Walter Lure - extra guitar (on some tracks)

Singles On Animal Boy

UK Releases 

(There are Lots of Links Down Below so click on them to listen to further tunes from the band)

A-Side: Bonzo Goes To Bitburg

B-Side: Go Home Ann / Daytime Dilemma (Dangers of Love)

Released June 1985

7" and 12" Vinyl

UK Chart #81

A-Side: Something To Believe In

AA-Side Somebody Put Something In My Drink

Released April 1986

7" and 12" Vinyl

UK Chart #69

On the UK and  The Netherlands Release (You) Can't Say Anything Nice (written by Richie Ramone) was the second B-Side on the 12" version. 

 A-Side: Something To Believe In

B-Side: Animal Boy

US Single

Did Not Chart

A-Side: Crummy Stuff

B-Side: Something To Believe In*/ (And) I Don't Wanna Live This Life

Released July 1986

7" and 12" Vinyl

UK Chart #98 

*The band filmed a special video for the song.

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It had been just a little over 20 years since the Ramones released their Debut Self-Titled Album and in May 1986 they unleashed their 9th Studio Album, Animal Boy.

On the previous release, 1984's Too Tough To Die, the band had made one of their finest albums in a long time returning to a much edgier Punk sound than the previous "Pop" geared albums of Pleasant Dreams and Subterranean Jungle (both most surprisingly did not chart in the UK but did so in the US). There was a certain amount of expectation about the follow-up album as to whether it could live up to what had gone before. With former member of The Plasmatics, Jean Beauvoir on board as Producer it looked hopeful!

Eleven months prior to the release of the album, in June 1985, came the single Bonzo Goes To Bitburg. Sources at the Ramones' U.S. label, Sire Records, and its parent company, Warner Bros. Records, gave differing reasons for not releasing the single in America: The Sire products manager said the decision was "both financial and political"; an anonymous Warner Bros. source claimed, "It just wasn't considered a good enough record." Clearly that person from Warner Bros didn't have a clue what he was talking about! The band had never released a single before that was so Political and it was an outright attack upon sitting President Ronald Reagan.

"Better call, call the law
When you gonna turn yourself in? Yeah
You're a politician
Don't become one of Hitler's children"

The song was written in reaction to the visit paid by U.S. President Ronald Reagan to a military cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany, on May 5, 1985. Reagan laid a wreath at the cemetery and then gave a public address at a nearby air base. The visit was part of a trip paying tribute to the victims of Nazism and celebrating West Germany's revival as a powerful, democratic ally of the U.S.

Reagan's plan to visit the Bitburg cemetery had been criticized in the United States, Europe, and Israel because among the approximately 2,000 German soldiers buried there were 49 members of the Waffen-SS, the combat arm of the SS, which committed many other atrocities. Among those vehemently opposed to the trip were Jewish and veterans' groups and both houses of the U.S. Congress. The phrase "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" was coined by protesters in the weeks leading up to Reagan's trip. Employed as an epithet for Reagan, Bonzo is actually the name of the chimpanzee title character in Bedtime for Bonzo, a 1951 comedy starring Reagan. The phrase also echoes the title of the film's sequel, Bonzo Goes to College (1952), though Reagan did not appear in that picture.

Before departing for Germany, Reagan ignited more controversy when he expressed his belief that the soldiers buried at Bitburg "were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps." In his remarks immediately after the cemetery visit, Reagan said that "the crimes of the SS must rank among the most heinous in human history", but noted that many of those interred at Bitburg were "simply soldiers in the German army... There were thousands of such soldiers for whom Nazism meant no more than a brutal end to a short life."

Discussing the inspiration for the song, Ramones lead singer Joey Ramone, a Jew, explained that the President "sort of shit on everybody." Interviewed in 1986, he said,

"We had watched Reagan going to visit the SS cemetery on TV and were disgusted. We're all good Americans, but Reagan's thing was like forgive and forget. How can you forget six million people being gassed and roasted?"

(The above section regarding the backdrop to writing the song was "borrowed" from Wikipedia! - Doug)

The song title was changed for the album to My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes To Bitburg) apparently to placate Johnny Ramone, who was a staunch conservative and fervent supporter of Ronald Reagan (and George W. Bush years later!).

Then in April 1986 came what I think is one of the Ramones best singles ever, and infact what I consider to be their best song - Something To To Believe In (I know, a lot of people will complain about that one!) and the other A-Side being Richie Ramone's Somebody Put Something In My Drink. The second track was also a song written by Richie and it is him singing on it. Joey Ramone supported Richie's vocal and songwriting contributions: "Richie's very talented and he's very diverse... He really strengthened the band a hundred percent because he sings backing tracks, he sings lead, and he sings with Dee Dee's stuff. In the past, it was always just me singing for the most part...I encouraged Richie to write songs. I figured it would make him feel more a part of the group, because we never let anybody else write our songs."

I remember when Sheena Is A Punk Rocker was released in the UK as a single back in May 1977 and reading the Single Review in the NME by Charles Shaar Murray who said: 

"Look, all The Ramones songs sound like hit singles and then don't sell, but this song is so flat-out delightful that not even the nasty boring dull-as-bleedin' dishwater Republic will be able to resist it. The sheer charm of and essential niceness of Dolly Ramone's four horrible sons is gonna win out." 

I so wish Charlie's words had come true because he was perfectly spot on. Whilst Sheena became their first charting single in the US and the UK there was a decade of Single releases that followed which either failed to chart or crawled into the lower basement of the Charts (the only exception being Baby, I Love You which peaked at #8 - and wasn't even a Ramones song!). Here was another single, a Double A-Sided release in Something To Believe In / Somebody Put Something In My Drink that screamed LOUDLY HIT RECORD!...but it wasn't, just barely crept into the Top 70 (squeaking in at #69)! As I said above, Something To Believe In is my favourite Ramones song EVER! I love the video they did for it when it was reissued as the B-Side of Crummy Stuff (which only charted at #98 in the UK). A co-write between Dee Dee Ramone and Jean Beauvoir it stands as one of those great "hopeful" Ramones songs (and yes there are more than a few of them!). :

"I can't be someone else
I don't feel that it's hopeless
I don't feel that I'm useless

I can't throw it all away
I need some courage to find my weakness
And with your love, I know with all my heart I can win"

The song was later recorded by The Pretenders shortly before the death of Johnny Ramone. He produced the song and it was included on the We're A Happy Family: A Tribute to Ramones album.

When the album arrived it was not quite I expected, and although it went higher in the charts than Too Tough To Die, it was nowhere near as good! It does have a few great moments besides the Singles that were included: Animal Boy penned by Dee Dee and Johnny,  She Belongs To Me - which I had first thought must have been a Joey song because it has a lot of the elements of 60's Pop that the singer seemed to love, but it was actually written by Dee Dee. Mental Hell - a Joey song that seems to have captured a lot of his own personal dysfunction!

Even after 31 years I still can't get to grips with a lot of the other songs on the album. I know it seems like some kind of "musical blasphemy" to some to be critical of a band that they like (and hey, I not only liked 'em but loved them also!) and that one is to assume that everything they released is the best thing ever since sliced bread, but you have to be realistic about things. If a song is not good what's the point in defending it to the hilt?

I never ever liked Love Kills (I know quite a few people who totally love it) as I was never enamoured by the whole Sid and Nancy scene that developed after their deaths. Apeman Hop, Crummy Stuff, Eat The Rat, Freak of Nature and Hair of the Dog will never ever turn up on my favourites list of Ramones songs. As it is my blog I feel that I can get away with saying that and when it all comes down to it what music we like or dislike comes down to personal taste so if you actually like these songs then I am fine with that (I wouldn't pretend to understand why you do though) but to me they were just filler, nothing special about them at all. Basically half the album's tracks I liked and the rest I can't be bothered with. The first two Singles offered some hope that it was going to be another cracker but sadly it didn't live up to the expectation for me! The tracks that I have mentioned that I like from the album are ones that I still do play quite a bit even all these years on.

Making it his pick for "album of the week", New York Times critic Jon Pareles wrote that the Ramones "speak up for outcasts and disturbed individuals", (even when we may not agree with everything they release! - Doug).

Rewind: Warhead - U.K. Subs (1980)

Warhead/ The Harper / I'm Waiting For The Man

Gem Records

Produced by Nicky Garratt and Charlie Harper

Released 29th February 1980

UK Chart #30

A-Side

B-Side

The Harper

I'm Waiting For The Man

Fifth single for the U.K. Subs and the first single from their soon to be released second album Brand New Age (released April 1980).

Warhead opens with a bass line from Paul Slack that opens a floodgate of memories just as songs like Fast Cars (Buzzcocks), Something Better Change (The Stranglers) and Public Image (Public Image Ltd) do.

This was the U.K. Subs as you've never really heard them before. Tackling a big issue like the Middle East, Russia in Afghanistan, the rise of Islamic extremism, the political incompetence of both the USA and Russia to come to a solution and the destruction of nations was not something you would hear much about in those days especially on the radio and certainly not ever on Top of the Pops (until the U.K. Subs performed Warhead on there of course!).

Warhead (2008 Version) on Jet13 Records and re-issued on Combat Rock (France) on 10" Vinyl in 2016 (and CD in 2017) as Warhead Revisited.

It's still a popular live favourite as well:

Warhead - Rebellion 2016.

The B-sides were nothing much to write home about (which was quite unlike the U.K. Subs as their B-Sides were usually pretty quality). The Harper was a little instrumental where Charlie got to show off his chops on the harmonica (demonstrating that he still had a touch of the blues about him). Waiting For The Man was of course a rendition of The Velvet Underground song, whilst it would not necessarily be the one I would go to as a great cover version it did have a bit more of an edge than the Slaughter and the Dogs version (though the Slaughter cover does try and at least maintain some semblance of the original).

She who should not be named has left the building!

A trip back to 1980 and the sound of Derby Punk Band Anti-Pasti telling it like it is!

I don't often use this blog to make political statements but today it seems fitting.