Oct 25, 2016 Ramones exhibit at the Grammy Museum
Some other favorite musicians from New York famously asked, Who gives a fuck about a goddamn Grammy? Seriously. Did the Recording Academy ever nominate Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, or Tommy for anything? Marky, Richie, or CJ? I don’t think so.
But my brother and I love the Ramones–possibly my daughter’s second favorite band after The Beatles–and we couldn’t not take our families to see the Ramones exhibit which traveled from the Queens Museum to the Grammy Museum and will show until February 2017. The bulk of it is in four or five glass cases housing artifacts that start off with a high school yearbook and early fliers. What, no refried beans?
For certain items, I felt like a pilgrim checking out saints’ relics at a Catholic church: The pinhead costume, Johnny’s leather jacket and guitar, Joey’s leather jacket and microphone, Arturo Vega’s silkscreen… The projection of the famous It’s Alive show in London on New Year’s Eve 1977 in the theater was nice touch.
Key photos by Roberta Bayley (including a wall-sized version of the first Ramones album cover that is perfect for family portraits), Bob Gruen, David Godlis and manager Danny Fields add context to the artifacts. Us Los Angelenos may take issue with the “birth of punk” being associated solely with New York, but the New York Dolls and Blondie pictures are pretty cool.
The literature calls Hey! Ho! Let’s Go: Ramones and the Birth of Punk a two-part exhibit so hopefully there’s more to come. Despite my reservations, it turned out to be a cool place for my brother and me to take our spouses and kids who didn’t get to see the band in concert like we did. It’s weird to find things that we witnessed in your lifetime displayed behind glass but the Ramones are an influential and culture changing band that deserve it. Gabba gabba hey!
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