Joey Ramone
as nominated by ‘Challenge 69’ reader Jonas D
“Gabba Gabba Hey!”
Jonas’s original, admirable suggestion was to induct The Ramones as a collective, but we then exchanged emails about how best (to meet the ‘maverick club’ rules) we could filter this down to one single Ramonic representative.
Dee Dee, as the principal songwriter, had to be considered, but we quickly agreed that, “the hair, the sunglasses, the voice, and the attitude,” meant there was really only one sensible candidate. Take a step forward Jeffrey Ross Hyman, forever immortalised as Joey Ramone.
The Ramones were notorious for keeping everything short and sweet, with their classic self-titled debut album (with its iconic cover) clocking in at a perfectly formed twenty-nine minutes, so it seems only appropriate to keep this ‘nomination post’ similarly brief.
On that basis, it’s straight over to Stuart for his final judgement:
“There’s a Joey Ramone saying I always like to quote, that the band wrote, ‘simple words about complex subjects; not like other bands, who do it the other way around.’
For that one genius concept alone, the world of music should be forever grateful. So, no beating around the bush on this one, Joey is about as ‘maverick’ as you can get, he’s in!”
To finish off; Jonas and I found ourselves in ‘violent agreement’ about the only song that could sensibly be chosen to represent Joey and his Ramone brothers on our ‘12 Days of Mavericks’ playlist.
“Hey Ho, Let’s Go!”
Remember to look out for our seventh ‘new maverick’ nomination at the same time tomorrow.
I used to dream of legs and jeans like that.
Dear Tim (and Stuart)
I love this series including this nomination -its a great idea and even though no-one will agree with all of them (let all us rap-haters stand up :)) it does remind me or open my eyes to some great mavericks. I had trouble thinking of many at first (depends on your definition of maverick perhaps). But, having seen a few of the nominations, and from following up something I heard quite by chance on the radio the other day, had a few more ideas, but happy to save that for another round sometime :)
Brendan