WHAT PRICE GLORY? RAMONES SOLDIER ON
If God has a sense of humor, the Ramones will finally go all the way.
“Survival of the fittest. And besides, it’s fun.”
—Daffy Duck, helping a wabbit-hunting Elmer corner Bugs in Rabbit Fire.
If God has a sense of humor, the Ramones will finally go all the way. The world will at last realize that the Forest Hills 4, whose slapstick rock is the sound of knuckles cracking, have a rendezvous with destiny. There will be stories *to tell then. 3tories told with a shrug of inevitability. They will tell of those days right before the spring of 1980. That angel of fame had never seemed so close to their leatherjacketed shoulders. Not when album one made a new age sound two chords away. Or when “Sheena Is A Punk Rocker” and “Rockaway Beach” hung precariously in the lower fourth of Billboard’s chart. Or when they stumbled on the road to ruin. Or when Corman’s brave New World made Ramones celluloid clown-heroes. No, never were the thighs of that angel parting as invitingly as in March of this year when End Of The Century, Phil Spector’s sonic expander on the basic format, was breaking down those last remnants of Ramone resistance.