Rancid - I Kept a Promise - all I hear is Ramones

Ramones much?

I know the guys in Rancid love The Ramones. You can hear the influence on their song "The Brothels." They were on the stage for the last Ramones show ever, and did 53rd and 3rd with them for fuck's sake. But they generally don't sound very Ramones-y to me. But then comes along a track like this:



I just hear about five different Ramones songs in that one, not the least of which is I Wanna Be Sedated.

The Armstrongs - If There Was Ever a Time

So this took long enough - Tim Armstrong (Operation Ivy, Rancid, The Transplants, Tim Timebomb & Friends) and Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day, Foxboro Hot Tubs, etc.) and two other guys last-named Armstrong that I'm less familiar with formed a band.



It's a fund-raising track for 924 Gillman Street. I've never been there, but my friend Jesse (The Criminals) has long been involved in keeping it going.

Green Day w/Tim Armstrong - Knowledge / Radio

Here is a good-quality sound video of Green Day featuring Tim Armstrong of Rancid, aka Lint of Operation Ivy. They cover Knowledge by Op Ivy, and then play Radio by Rancid. I can't really say "cover" here because Billie Joe Armstrong co-wrote Radio - he's got songwriting credits on it along with Tim and Matt Freeman.



It's a nice image - Tim and Billy Joe sitting on a porch writing, with no idea of their respective, successful, futures ahead.

The Kowalskis - 100% Fun

I first saw The Kowalskis at a show including Mental Decay and SUX at The Court Tavern in New Brunswick, NJ.

I went to see SUX. What I didn't know was:

- it was a birthday bash for Lindsay Anderson, lead singer of the Kowalskis

- that those three bands had overlapping members.

I ended up really falling for The Kowalskis. Great, great band. Even better live than on their CD - and their CD kicks ass. It's 100% Fun.

King Missile - Saturday

Because it's Saturday.

Shonen Knife (少年ナイフ) - Bear Up Bison / Riding on the Rocket

I was just telling someone the other day about Shonen Knife. This is my favorite version of Bear Up Bison - the lead off track from Pretty Little Baka Guy. It just feels more raw and fuzzed out than the cleaner (but still good) version off of Let's Knife.



Same thing with the Japanese language version of Riding on the Rocket. Even when the only Japanese I knew was ich-ni-san-shi-go-roku-shichi-hachi-kyu-jyu, hajime, yame, and sensei, I liked this version more than the English language version. Again, it just feels more raw.



Probably didn't hurt that Pretty Little Baka Guy was one of the first two albums I owned by them, so I played it to death. And it helped me learn the planet names in Japanese, except I can only sing them.

Music Mythos: The Ramones

This is a pretty entertaining, very angry, long retrospective/rant about The Ramones.

And this guy likes one of my favorite albums by The Ramones - Subterranean Jungle. That was the first full-length album by The Ramones that I owned. It was a $2 cassette from the discount bin because someone had driven a nail through the case when it was being packed. The tape was fine, and I played the living hell out of it.

The Kinks - Live in London 1973

My sibling showed me the final song of this set by The Kinks today, Village Green Preservation Society. It's outstanding. But the whole 10-song set is worth listening too.

Such a good, good band.

Pantera - Walk

Pantera is one of those bands I missed, more or less, when they came around. They weren't a big-name metal band when I was listening to metal.* They pretty much started making the music I'd have liked, and like now, after I wasn't really seeking out and listening to metal bands.

But this one song kept coming up - Walk.

It's really what I like in a metal song. It's one I can't turn off when it comes on. If you haven't heard it, give it a try.


* Not just metal, for sure, but most of the metal I got into was when I was in high school.