Vale Tommy Ramone

The first Ramones LP. Tommy Ramone, second from left.

It was with some sadness that the world received reports of the passing of Tommy Ramone. It's one thing for a musician to die. But what makes this one remarkable (and not necessarily in a good way) is the fact that Tommy's passing means that all the original members of the band are no longer. Vocalist Joey Ramone was the first to go in 2001, followed by bassist Dee Dee in 2002, Johnny in 2004 and now Tommy.

Love them or hate them, The Ramones established the format for punk music for the next few decades. We're still hearing echoes of the sound now, if not always in sound, but in energy and in spirit from the likes of Green Day, Descendents, NOFX, The Donnas and heaps more..

Tommy Ramone, or Tommy Erdelyi to his mum, was truly remarkable in as much as he wasn't supposed to be the band's drummer. He was their early manager, booking and organising the gigs and rehearsal spaces. When auditioning drummers, he was forever showing the prospectives how to play the songs. Eventually it became tedious as no-one they tried could quite get the feel right, Tommy just played the drums himself.

Tommy played on the first 3 Ramones albums, as well as co-producing the first 5 of them. He also managed the band during those years. He'd tired of touring and vacated the drum stool before "Road To Ruin" was recorded. He went on to produce records for The Replacements (the essential album "Tim") and Redd Kross ("Neurotica"). Tommy was also instrumental in getting The Replacements signed to the Sire records, home to the Ramones.

It could be argued that Brisbane band The Saints established the punk sound first. And maybe they did, but the Ramones were doing the same thing on the other side of the world, oblivious to the other, and were the first to commit the sound to vinyl. Regardless, the world is a better place for the contribution of the Ramones in my view.

 

The first Ramones LP, with the surviving members

 

And now all the original members of the band that launched a million more are no longer with us. As with most of these things, it is inevitable, but it still sucks.

Vale Tommy. Thanks for the music.

Greatest Live Albums, as selected by The Sound and the Fury

Just this morning I read yet another article going on about the greatest or most essential live albums.

This list again got me thinking about my favourite live albums. As is usually my taste, most of what critics say are the greatest albums of all time are not ones that I particularly rate. The Allman Brothers' "Live at the Fillmore East" is always touted as a classic, but I find it overlong and bloated. Ditto "Kiss Alive!". I love Kiss, but the poor recording quality and thin production always puts me off.

Putting on my thinking cap, I've come up with six live albums that, in my view, should be regarded as must have albums but generally don't rate a mention.


Pacifier Live

The only double live album from New Zealand-via-Melbourne hard rock band Shihad (aka Pacifier, post 9/11). This is an album that runs through key album tracks and radio hits with fierce-some power panache, and the pace rarely drops across the entire two LPs. The live version of "My Mind's Sedate" is worth the price of the album alone. Also issued on double vinyl in a limited run of 500 with an amazing looking gatefold sleeve.




Bruce Springsteen - Live 1975/85

Bruce is renowned for his epic live shows, sometimes lasting up to four hours in duration. About the only way to emulate that on a record is to release a multi-disc boxed set. While pretty much every record on this list is at least two discs long (on vinyl at least), "Live 1975-85" is a whopping five LPs long (three CDs and three cassettes back in the day) and over three and a half hours long. It includes songs that he never released on a record himself, as well as a few covers of other people's songs, band versions of tracks from his solo album "Nebraska" and a stunning piano-led version of "Thunder Road" that is one of the greatest things he ever committed to vinyl. Absolutely Essential.




Wings - Wings Over America

In 1976 Paul McCartney and his first post-Beatles band Wings traipsed across the States on an epic tour that broke records for ticket sales. It was years before he toured so widely again. This album is a beautifully recorded triple vinyl souvenir of that tour with any highlights including the opening medley, a gorgeous version of Paul Simon's "Richard Cory", and great song previously unreleased called "Soily".




The Tea Party - Live in Australia

The Tea Party are an amazing live band, and one that care deeply for their fans, by travelling off the beaten track to play small shows in regional clubs and pubs as well as larger venues in capital cities. A Canadian band, they combine middle eastern influences with a few sub-continental influences, with a hard rock punch. A live CD is never going to replicate the experience perfectly, but this is as close as we'll ever get. The music is superb and well worth a listen. This crowd-funded album was also pressed in a limited edition on double vinyl.




Paco de Lucia, John McLaughlin and Al DiMiola - Friday Night In San Francisco

Jazz fans are spoilt for choice when it comes to great live albums, so choosing one was a hard choice. This one is a guitar players' dream come true. Flamenco master Paco De Lucia meets fusion greats John McLaughlin and Al DiMiola for a fun album full of tight playing and camaraderie. At only five tracks long and just over 40 minutes, it was not originally issued as a double vinyl in 1981. It has recently been reissued on a double audiophile-grade vinyl LP cut at 45 RPM.




Ramones - It's Alive!

Take it Dee Dee...
1! 2! 3! 4!
...so goes pretty much every song on this record - all 28 of 'em. They all rip through in under an hour (54 minutes to be precise. Do the math - it's less than 2 minutes per song on average). It's a full-throttle rip through the highlights of the first four Ramones albums. When taken in one sitting it is utterly exhausting listening, but it's definitely worthwhile.



So what are your favourites? Let us know in the comments below. Cheers.

Microsoft Songsmith...still lives

...and seemingly refuses to die.

The Microsoft Research Labs seemingly do create some fantastic and fascinatingly useful software. They create all kinds of useful stuff for software developers and those who need to do more advanced things on a Windows machine.

Microsoft Songsmith is not one of those great pieces of software.

Well OK, hang on a minute. It is a great idea, in the sense that Communism or the Hindenburg Blimp were great ideas...on paper at least. In practice however, it turns out to be a very different story...

The idea is great - you sing a line or two, select the mood and style of music for your song, and Songsmith will build the music bed for you. It builds the chords and seemingly structures the song for you, based on the limited input you give it.

The idea is great but falls flat when you consider that most people cannot sing in tune. No matter how great a piece of software is, if you can't hold a tune or even pitch to a note, what you'll end up with will sound like someone pushing a grand piano down a flight of stairs.

It's designed for education, to teach how music is put together. Again, a noble premise. But when the music is as vanilla as this? You can edit the chords, that's cool. But I fail to see how this will teach music to anybody with no clue about music to begin with, especially if you don't know what a chord is.

The idea has received a great deal of lampooning on the internet, and almost deservedly so. The results speak for themselves.

Here's what happens when you feed Lemmy from Motorhead's vocals into Songsmith:



Or the Ramones:



Metallica:



...or random pissed bogans with nothing better to do on a Friday night:



Get the free copy, have some fun and share with us the nutty tunes you invent!

ENJOY!