Ramonper Stomper

Ramones - Commando
(From Leave Home album; 1977/YouTube; 2008)


Another reason why YouTube is the internet's crown jewel: fan-made animated videos for Ramones classics like Commando, I Don't Wanna Go Down To The Basement, Judy Is A Punk, Listen To My Heart and Sheena Is A Punk Rocker. Most 1970s New York Punk was alright if you like junkies with nary a decent tune in sight, but early Ramones knocked out more tunes than Lozenges. An irresistible cocktail of riffs, rhythm, repetition, stories, melodies, harmonies and humour. The Ramones condensed entire worlds into songs which rarely lasted longer than two & a half minutes. That's some Vividest Author™ Mekon-brain songwriting decades before Un Kasa.

And another reason why YouTube is the internet's crown jewel, particularly if you're a Ramones Stan: the uncensored original studio version of Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World is on there innit. Even though Johnny Ramone and Tommy Ramone were Jewish and the song's writer Dee Dee Ramone was a half-German military brat who spent most of his youth in mumsy's Das Motherland, Sire Records' supremo Seymour Stein deemed the "I'm a nazi baby, I'm a nazi, yes I am" line #problematic and insisted the band remove the song from their debut album unless they changed its lyrics. Da Brudders complied and re-recorded the song but always performed the original lyrics live. In 2017 the O.G uncensored studio version turned up on the Ramones' YouTube page and I'm pretty sure it's never appeared anywhere else previously or anywhere else since. The re-recorded version is a top five dead or alive closing song on a Rock album, and this O.G version is frigging incredible too. Fifth rule IS: "don't mention the war!"

Ramones - Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World (O.G uncensored version)
(From Ramones album recording sessions; 1976/YouTube; 2017)


One, two, three, for the treble: which American actor/director is a huge Stan of both the Ramones and Spoonie Gee? Hey ho, it's Vincent Gallo.