September 16^th 2004

Its another shitty day. The weathers turned, summers gone, the sky is overcast.

I make it into work late after the dentist has butchered another tooth and see I've got an email from Pauly Mabawsa. Hopefully this is something to cheer me up.

"You probably know this already" and a link to the BBC website.

So I click on it

Johnny Ramone is Dead

He lost his 5 year battle with cancer the afternoon before and died at home in LA surrounded by friends.

Some people think Joey Ramone was the most important Ramone, as the singer he was always going to be the public face of the band

Some people think of Dee Dee as the true Ramone, he was a genuine street punk who could write a song with amazing imagery at the drop of a hat

Some people think that Tommy deserves a lot of credit for bringing these guys together and putting them in a band - a lot of what the Ramones were about came from his pure vision

When I think about the Ramones, when I saw the Ramones, when I hear the Ramones the first thing I feel is the main sound - the sound of a Mosrite guitar played with only downstrokes through a Marshall - the sound of Johnny Ramone

Johnny didn’t need to speak much, his guitar said it all

The truth is the Ramones are defined by the combination of those 4 guys, every one of them was completely necessary, they were greater than the sum of the individual parts

Although I don’t listen to them much nowadays, they'll always be my favourite band

I got home tonight, put on a Ramones T-shirt, stuck on the first album and although I'd felt sad all day I didn’t cry, how could I ?

They still sound so fucking great !

Johnny makes Number 1 in the 100 greatest guitarists of all time

 Later on that night I checked my email

>From: JohnnyThunders@heaven.com

>To: murrayramone@hotmail.com

>CC: god@god.co.hvn

>Subject: He made it

>Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 21:08:13 EDT

>Hey Murray, how you doing ?

> Don’t be too shocked, but they got this internet thing up here as well, kinda interesting dontcha think ?

> Anyways, just thought I'd let you know that Johnny Ramones gotten here and already he's had a practice with Joey and Dee Dee, as a matter of fact he's had two - one with Jerry Nolan on drums and another with Rock a Billy Rogers

> They were sounding real good, but I need to keep these drummer boys for my own thing now that Arthurs here, its bad enough Jerry running off to play alongside Gene Krupa all the time, I'm telling you, it aint easy !

> Still, its good to see em all happy smiling and getting along and doing what they do best, I think its going to be some party here tonight

> So, tell little Tommy if ya see him not to worry, they're still playing without him, but they'll be ready for him when it's his turn to show

> Awright, I'll see ya later

> Johnny Thunders, XXX