Ticket Number 1

Okay, the truth is my good friend Pauly Mabawsa bought the tickets and by luck they were numbered 1 and 2 and me being the Ramones geek ended up with ticket number 1

Almost 30 years to the day after the very first Ramones gig we have a couple of pints next door and head down to the show - theres always clubs on at weekends in the liquid rooms so it pays to get there early

This time its no exception - 7:30 and the screens are showing some great footage from all over the place

Marky talks - photo by Lynne Cameron

Just after 8, Marky takes to the mic and shows some slides and gives his life story from juvenile delinquent who decides to fool around with rock'n'roll before he has to get a real job to right here right now tonight

Some arsehole in the crowd is shouting out to "shut up and play some songs" - its been promoted as a spoken word show so the heckler should know better

Marky tells him to shut the fuck up or come up and say it to his face

Wisely, the heckler shuts the fuck up - Marky is a man who has made a living from hitting things as hard as he can for 30 years, I wouldn't fancy my chances against him

The talk is entertaining and informative and touching - he mentions how he thinks Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan from the Heartbreakers could've been still making great music now if they'd got themselves straight when he had while they smile from the screen behind him

"… and I miss them. A lot"

He takes a few questions from the audience, but hey, I was drinking not taking notes - go along yourself and ask him what you want to know, I'm not going to give the whole show away !

Then he says if Green Day and Rancid etc can do it, so can he, and he comes back on about 8:30 with Brian and Alan from the UK subs on Bass/Vocals and Guitar respectively and does a set of Ramones classics along with a couple of Heartbreakers songs and a track from Joeys solo album which was the highlight of the gig for me (go see em and find out what it is !)

Marky rocks - photo by Lynne Cameron

The gig was well received and there was enough demand from the audience for another encore but we were left wanting more, I think it was all over by ten past 9, but hey, he still played more songs than you'd hear at David Byrnes gig (he happened to be playing Edinburgh as well that night)

Some Ramones fans probably say "BUT ITS NOT THE RAMONES !" - yup, its not the Ramones - it doesn’t pretend to be and with Joey dead it never will be, but lets face it most of us Ramones fans have been to see Ramones covers bands and enjoyed them, why not see this ? it's like a movie, a lecture and a chat show with a band thrown in for free, what is there to complain about ?

The audience was pretty mixed, from people who had seen them a lot of times to people who had never seen them, nobody I talked to after the show was disappointed

Marky drums - photo by Lynne Cameron

I don’t know if he'd seen it for 16 years or not, but he looked fascinated by it and eventually gave up reading it to sign it

Poster © Richard Hell with a photo © Roberta Bayley and a signature © Marc Bell

I'd like to say that we had a good chat and promised to keep in touch, but the truth is there were other folk waiting to see him and I didn’t want to come across as an obsessive stalkeresque fan (well, no more than I probably already had) as undoubtedly I know more about the Ramones than can be considered healthy so apart from some brief chat that was pretty much it

Marky signs - photo by Lynne Cameron

I forgot to ask him if he'd been asked to drum for the New York Dolls at their reunion show in London in a couple of months, or ask him how his brother Fred was doing or any of the other stuff that would normally fly into my head if someone said "give me ten questions for Marky Ramone", but fuck it, I had a good night - if you get the chance go and see him while you can, you'll have a good night too