Women in Technology

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• Ramones are not dead
  2005-02-22 22:03:46  Michael(tm) Smith | [View]
  
  
  er, I guess I ought to explain that in the time and place where I grew up, it wasn't "cool" to like bands like the Ramones. Or the Stooges or the New York Dolls. Most other people I knew looked forward to going to see their favorite bands perform in big stadiums, light shows and all that.
  
  My friends and I weren't old enough to even get into the places where most of our favorite bands played when (if) they came to town. Because the places were mostly bars or "clubs" that you had to be of drinking age to get into. So instead we traded records and listened to them at home. Or hung out at local record stores and talked about music and listened to new stuff there.
  
  In high school, we were the ones that other kids usually had in mind when they talked about "losers". So that's what we called each other sometimes -- "Hey loser, what's up?". And one of the things we really liked about the Ramones is that they seemed a lot like us. Losers. But losers that had made good.
  
  And whe we finally were old enough to get into bars and clubs to see bands play, they weren't the "big" music venues. They were smaller, much dingier ones. The Ramones were playing in bigger places by that time, though not much bigger. But guys like Johnny Thunders were still playing all the crap bars when they came around.
  
  The first time I went to a Johnny Thunders show, it was at a dingy little bar like, and even then the place was probably only about 75 percent full. Anyway, one of the first things he said he when he got on stage was, "You're all a bunch of fucking losers". We all looked at each other and cheered.