April 15th, 2001: Punk Rock has a huge gouge in its ugly, scratched veneer today. Joey Ramone is gone. Like any semi-celebrity/icon, I didn't know him, but yet I did. He accompanied me on some very odd goings-on in my life, and he didn't even know it. I picked up Rocket to Russia in a bargain bin in Oxford, MS for $4. I wasn't even sure if I knew who they were—I just loved their look and the gritty sensibility that I intuited from the cover. Listening to "Sheena is a Punk Rocker" doesn't seem much like rebellion now, but anything grimy or dirty in the 80s was so antithetical to Duran Duran or A Flock of Seagulls. The Ramones were a hair band (when that meant something quite different than Tesla) unparalleled. I tried for that hair—died for that hair—my hair would only frizz out so far. But the idea stuck. Ever since that cover, I ask my stylist for Barbara Streisand with a tinge of Joey Ramone.

One night in 1989 we set out in the Quarter to find the garret where Johnny Thunders died. We listened to "Do You Wanna Dance" before we left. You would have thought we would be priming the pump with "Personality Crisis"—but no. Somehow, discovering the apartment where Johnny had died could only be done with the help of The Ramones and ample quantities of acid. Yes, we found the apartment and much more trouble. A fitting soundtrack.

They say that the Lord can heal the sick, cure the wounded. A friend of a friend idolized Joey Ramone—he unabashedly displayed concert tickets, T-shirts and a coveted autograph. The FOF had a very pronounced stutter. But when he spoke of Joey or imitated him, there was no stutter—no stammer—no hesitation. Just pure Punk. For a few tangible, elusive, sweet moments, he could speak without tumbling over himself. If Joey could do that for him, I wish he could have healed himself. Alas.

Blythe Christopher

Summer 1976: I spent the summer in Mobile, Alabama with my mother's family, as I always did when I was a youngster, and under the influence of my slightly older cousins. It was a summer spent stealing beer from convenient stores, smoking pot and vandalizing neighborhoods with golf balls and bowling balls. I saw a Peter Frampton concert and I listened to a lot of Grand Funk, Foghat, Bad Company and Aerosmith, usually stolen 8-tracks from K-Mart, in my cousin David's Camaro.

I also had a job for the first time in my life, the only white boy working in the kitchen washing dishes in a restaurant where one of my cousins was a waitress. The job afforded me to buy a quarter-pound of Mexican weed, a distortion box go to with the guitar and amp my dad had bought me the previous summer and, in what had to be the hippest bookstore in Alabama, the latest issues of Rock Scene magazine. Spending most of my days that summer getting stoned and trying to play along with the Yardbirds records I bought, I also spent a lot of time reading Rock Scene, digging all these cool pictures of bands I had never heard of: the Ramones, Television, Blondie, etc.

When the summer of '76 was over I was shipped back to North Carolina. My mother picked me up at the airport and since my birthday is in August she took me to the mall and let me buy two records. Now after reading about this new scene in New York all summer long I was very interested in hearing this band the Ramones. They were touted in Rock Scene as the most exciting, energetic band in New York. I thought they looked cool...skinny, black leather jackets, t-shirts, ripped up jeans and sneakers. They had some wacky song titles: "Blitzkrieg Bop," "Beat on the Brat." That day in Greensboro, NC I had the willingness to take a chance and buy The Ramones. I took my records, including the Rolling Stones' Get Yer Ya Ya's Out as the safe bet, home, staring the whole way at The Ramones cover. I couldn't wait to hear this record, to put the music with the pictures and articles I had been reading all summer.

When the needle hit that vinyl, it was fast, really fast, and hard! The guy's voice sounded funny and all the songs sounded the same, but I LOVED IT. I had never had this kind of visceral experience listening to music. It was really working for me, the songs were amazingly catchy and the lyrics were simple but great. I couldn't wait to play this for my friends. Well, much to my surprise, not many people liked it! "How can you not like this, what's not to like about it?" Listening to it one night a friend of mine began laughing so hard he started crying, "Every song sounds the same...ha, ha, ha...I can't believe it!" (It might have been the acid because I couldn't stop laughing either.) This person eventually turned me on to other punk rock music so the sonic assault of that night was not lost on him.

Looking back I have to admit that buying The Ramones album was probably the most enlightening musical occurrence of my life. It opened me up to all kinds of music that I never knew existed. Much like getting into Howling Wolf after listening to and reading about the Stones. It was the Ramones that let the Dolls, the Stooges, MC5, the Velvets, ad infinitum into my consciousness. They opened the door for new things come.

Joey Ramone was a true American original, a rock 'n' roll genius and I think most of all, a liberator!

Brad Rice