Ramones vs Ratt - cool or not?

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Magazine Desk; Section 6
THE LIVES THEY LIVED

The Ratt Trap

By Chuck Klosterman
995 words
29 December 2002
The New York Times
Page 24, Column 3

Dee Dee Ramone and Robbin Crosby were both shaggy-haired musicians
who wrote aggressive music for teenagers. Both were unabashed heroin
addicts. Neither was the star of his respective band: Dee Dee played
bass for the Ramones, a seminal late-70's punk band; Crosby played
guitar for Ratt, a seminal early-80's heavy-metal band. They died
within 24 hours of each other last spring, and each had only himself
to blame for the way he perished. In a macro sense, they were
symmetrical, self-destructive clones; for anyone who isn't obsessed
with rock 'n' roll, they were basically the same guy.

Yet anyone who is obsessed with rock 'n' roll would define these two
humans as diametrically different. To rock aficionados, Dee Dee and
the Ramones were ''important'' and Crosby and Ratt were not. We are
all supposed to concede this. We are supposed to know that the
Ramones saved rock 'n' roll by fabricating their surnames, sniffing
glue and playing consciously unpolished three-chord songs in the
Bowery district of New York. We are likewise supposed to acknowledge
that Ratt sullied rock 'n' roll by abusing hair spray, snorting
cocaine and playing highly produced six-chord songs on Hollywood's
Sunset Strip.

There is no denying that the Ramones were a beautiful idea. It's
wrong to claim that they invented punk, but they certainly came the
closest to idealizing what most people agree punk is supposed to
sound like. They wrote the same two-minute song over and over and
over again -- unabashedly, for 20 years -- and the relentlessness of
their riffing made certain people feel like everything about the
world had changed forever. And perhaps those certain people were
right. However, those certain people remain alone in their rightness,
because the Ramones were never particularly popular.

The Ramones never made a platinum record over the course of their
entire career. Bands like the Ramones don't make platinum records;
that's what bands like Ratt do. And Ratt was quite adroit at that
task, doing it four times in the 1980's. The band's first
album, ''Out of the Cellar,'' sold more than a million copies in four
months. Which is why the deaths of Dee Dee Ramone and Robbin Crosby
created such a mathematical paradox: the demise of Ramone completely
overshadowed the demise of Crosby, even though Crosby co-wrote a song
(''Round and Round'') that has probably been played on FM radio and
MTV more often than every track in the Ramones' entire catalog. And
what's weirder is that no one seems to think this imbalance is
remotely strange.

What the parallel deaths of Ramone and Crosby prove is that it really
doesn't matter what you do artistically, nor does it matter how many
people like what you create; what matters is who likes what you do
artistically and what liking that art is supposed to say about who
you are. Ratt was profoundly uncool (read: populist) and the Ramones
were profoundly significant (read: interesting to rock critics).
Consequently, it has become totally acceptable to say that the
Ramones' ''I Wanna Be Sedated'' changed your life; in fact, saying
that would define you as part of a generation that became
disenfranchised with the soullessness of suburbia, only to rediscover
salvation through the integrity of simplicity. However, it is
laughable to admit (without irony) that Ratt's ''I Want a Woman'' was
your favorite song in 1989; that would mean you were stupid, and that
your teenage experience meant nothing, and that you probably had a
tragic haircut.

The reason Crosby's June 6 death was mostly ignored is that his band
seemed corporate and fake and pedestrian; the reason Ramone's June 5
death will be remembered is that his band was seen as representative
of a counterculture that lacked a voice. But the contradiction is
that countercultures get endless media attention: the only American
perspectives thought to have any meaningful impact are those that
come from the fringes. The voice of the counterculture is, in fact,
inexplicably deafening. Meanwhile, mainstream culture (i.e., the
millions and millions of people who bought Ratt albums merely because
that music happened to be the soundtrack for their lives) is usually
portrayed as an army of mindless automatons who provide that
counterculture with something to rail against. The things that matter
to normal people are not supposed to matter to smart people.

Now, I know what you're thinking; you're thinking I'm overlooking the
obvious, which is that the Ramones made ''good music'' and Ratt
made ''bad music,'' and that's the real explanation as to why we care
about Dee Dee's passing while disregarding Robbin's. And that
rebuttal makes sense, I suppose, if you're the kind of person who
honestly believes the concept of ''good taste'' is anything more than
a subjective device used to create gaps in the intellectual class
structure. I would argue that Crosby's death was actually a more
significant metaphor than Ramone's, because Crosby was the first
major hair-metal artist from the Reagan years to die from AIDS. The
genre spent a decade consciously glamorizing (and aggressively
experiencing) faceless sex and copious drug use. It will be
interesting to see whether the hesher casualties now start piling up.
Meanwhile, I don't know if Ramone's death was a metaphor for
anything; he's just a good guy who died on his couch from shooting
junk. But as long as you have the right friends, your funeral will
always matter a whole lot more.

Chuck Klosterman is a senior writer for Spin and the author
of ''Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota.''
His last article for the magazine was a profile of Billy Joel.

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But the contradiction is that countercultures get endless media attention: the only American perspectives thought to have any meaningful impact are those that come from the fringes. The voice of the counterculture is, in fact,
inexplicably deafening.

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Overigens hebben de Ramones in Nederland wel meer hits gehad dan Ratt (1-0) hoewel ik me kan voorstellen dat dat in Duitsland anders is

Nog een interessant detail aan dit artikel is dat deze zanger blijkbaar aan aids is overleden, en hij wordt 'de eerste van een generatie' genoemd, met de vraag er bij hoeveel zullen volgen. Daar kan hij wel eens gelijk in krijgen vrees ik Holly Johnson leeft nog steeds trouwens volgens mij? Die had toch ook hiv?

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Op maandag 30 december 2002 14:35 schreef josja het volgende:
Leuk stukje inderdaad, interessant.

Even iets ter correctie; Robbin was niet de zanger van Ratt, dat was Stephen Pearcy. Crosby was gitarist voor zover ik weet.

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