Motorhead were great, though slightly sloppy and almost painfully loud. When they began playing, the house was only half-full, so their sound was roaring and bouncing off the concrete. They played nine songs in 40 minutes—”We Are Motorhead,” “No Class,” “Metropolis,” “Doctor Rock,” “RAMONES,” “Killed By Death,” “Sacrifice” (with drum solo), “Ace Of Spades” and “Overkill” (the long version). A fast, tight, punishing set. Shame they didn’t play anything from Hammered; it’s a great album. Go buy it, you fuckers.

Dio got a little more time than Motorhead, maybe an hour. I don’t much like Dio. When I saw him in 1986, I was actually there to see Accept, who I really liked at the time (I was 14). I like his four big songs, all of which he played—”The Last In Line,” “Rainbow In The Dark,” “Holy Diver” and “Heaven and Hell” (yeah, it’s a Sabbath tune, but it’s from when he was their singer, so if he wants to steal it for his gigs, he certainly should—it’s not like Ozzy sings it). He played three or four other songs, none of which were particularly memorable, and his drummer also took a solo, which was very annoying, as it concluded with said drummer playing along to the fanfare from some really pompous, militaristic orchestral piece which I’d know the name of if I wasn’t such an uneducated metalhead thug.

Finally, around 10 PM, Iron Maiden hit stage, and I mean hit. They opened with “The Number Of The Beast,” and I was on my feet screaming with everybody else. I can’t believe I still know every word of that song.

The band was insanely tight, and Bruce Dickinson is a truly great frontman—he was all over the stage, jumping over the monitors, running around on top of the amps and stage backdrops, waving giant British flags during “The Trooper,” really giving a performance no one should expect from a guy in his late 40s. The band has three guitarists now (Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Jannick Gers), which really fills out their sound. They played a mix of classic and newer material, including one new song, “Wildest Dreams,” which is from the forthcoming album and sounds okay. The album won’t disappoint anybody, but it won’t change the world of metal the way their really great mid-80s stuff did.

What was disappointing was “The Clansman,” a song from one of the two albums Maiden released while Dickinson was out of the band. It was bloated and boring (acoustic interludes), and they shouldn’t make him sing substandard material he wasn’t around for. That spot in the set could have been filled by “Powerslave” or “Can I Play With Madness.” (Or maybe both—”The Clansman” isn’t just boring, it’s long.)

Other than that, though, the show was one of the best I’ve seen in awhile. Much better than seeing Ministry a few months ago. It’s funny—when I first arrived, I was kind of scoffing at some of the older folks in the crowd. You can look at people sometimes and pinpoint the exact year when they gave up trying to be hip, because they still dress like it’s that year. For a lot of people in the crowd last night, hipness ceased somewhere around 1988 (the year Maiden released Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son, their last consensus classic album).

But I stopped laughing pretty quickly, because, well,

1) Iron Maiden totally rocked the fucking walls down, and

2) I was there, too, standing up screaming along with “Revelations” and “The Number Of The Beast” and “The Trooper” and all the rest.

I, too, am a metalhead, and I love to hear great old metal tunes. So who the fuck am I to criticize a guy in his late 30s who has no idea who The Black Dahlia Murder is, or Orthrelm, or even Immortal, but who really wants to go see Iron Maiden and rock the fuck out? Nobody, that’s who.

I still didn’t drop $35 on a T-shirt, though. I’m a grown-ass man, as Cedric the Entertainer would say, and $35 is a lot of damn money. For that same $35, I can buy remastered CDs of Powerslave and The Number Of The Beast, and you know what? Sometime in the next month or so, I probably will.

Today’s CDs:

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, A Night In Tunisia
Dexter Gordon, Daddy Plays The Horn
Hawkwind, In Search Of Space
Motorhead, Bomber
Origin, Informis Infinitas Inhumanitas
Nicholas Payton, Sonic Trance
Sonny Sharrock, Black Woman
Archie Shepp and the Full Moon Ensemble, Live In Antibes
Vader, Revelations
Yes, Tales From Topographic Oceans

Most of it is poorly aimed, ill-considered boilerplate. McWhorter criticizes Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message” for its bleak lyrical tone, but cuts off the verse he quotes before getting to the “punch line,” in which Melle Mel warns the listener not to turn to crime, that it’s not glamorous, and that it brings nothing but destruction. “The Message” is actually one of the best examples of rap’s potential for imparting lessons, but McWhorter (possibly on purpose) misses that.

However, he does make one reasonable point:

>Many writers and thinkers see a kind of informed political engagement, even a revolutionary potential, in rap and hip-hop. They couldn’t be more wrong. By reinforcing the stereotypes that long hindered blacks, and by teaching young blacks that a thuggish adversarial stance is the properly “authentic” response to a presumptively racist society, rap retards black success.

Later, McWhorter returns to this theme, writing,

>Seeing a privileged star like Sean Combs behave like a street thug tells those kids that there’s nothing more authentic than ghetto pathology, even when you’ve got wealth beyond imagining.

This is a legitimate criticism. The hyper-materialism, the sexism, and the portrayal of violence as a first response to any perceived threat to one’s dignity are all poisonous memes that have circulated through hip-hop for at least ten years, and are now the dominant messages of the music. Yes, there are rappers whose lyrics are not concerned with the flaunting of wealth and the destruction of one’s enemies in order to gain further wealth, but they are the exception that proves the rule. If the dominant mode of the music was not so grotesque, the few semi-rational alternatives would not stand out in such sharp relief.

McWhorter also criticizes the academic embrace of hip-hop, and I agree with him about that. There is little or no value, as far as I can see, in constructing a college course around the study of hip-hop, unless it’s to undertake a systemic criticism of the music and its attendant culture. I don’t think that’s likely to be the case, though—the present condition of cultural studies suggests that any course on hip-hop is likely to be a Well-Meaning-White-Person blowjob session, in which Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls will be fellated from beyond the grave. I really don’t foresee a class in which the major topic of discussion is the destructive potential of describing (and selling) pimping as a hip lifestyle choice to 10-year-olds.

It’s not that I’m disappointed in hip-hop’s failure to articulate a genuinely revolutionary position. I don’t think it’s the place of schlocky pop records (which is what hip-hop is) to do that kind of thing. I suppose my biggest problem with hip-hop is its critical reception. If it were granted the same level of respect from highbrow quarters that death metal gets (that is to say, none), I’d have no beef. But the idea that the hostile, deliberately ugly, violent, fantasy-driven music of black kids from the ghetto is somehow inherently more worthwhile than the hostile, deliberately ugly, violent, fantasy-driven music of white kids from the suburbs is, well, racist.

Maybe that’s part of it. If I was conspiracy-minded enough, maybe I could convince myself that the white embrace of hip-hop culture, and the glamorization/promotion of same, is part of a large-scale plan to destroy the black community even more than it’s been damaged already. Sell them on the idea that crime and promiscuity and an attitude that all personal interaction should be greeted with an attitude of pre-emptive hostility/paranoia is a good thing, a cool thing, the way “real” black folks behave, and shazam! You’ve created an unemployable class of poor folks you can push around! About the only thing that keeps me from believing this is the relentless marketing of hip-hop to white kids.

I’ve discussed my problems with hip-hop as a music (that its dominance is detrimental to black music in the long term, because it discourages the playing of actual instruments) before, so I’ll skip that. I’ll just let the rambling above be it for today. Feel free to yell at me in the comments.

Today’s CDs:

The Black Dahlia Murder, Unhallowed
Children Of Bodom, Hatecrew Deathroll
John Coltrane, Settin’ The Pace
Miles Davis, Filles De Kilimanjaro
Miles Davis, Black Beauty: Miles Davis At Fillmore West
Exhumed, Anatomy Is Destiny
Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Inner Mounting Flame
Monster Magnet, Superjudge
Nebula, Atomic Ritual
Wayne Shorter, Super Nova
Cecil Taylor, Indent

Since I’ve been sick (the cold I’ve got has mostly cleared out, but some vestiges still linger in my head and chest), my appetite for music has diminished sharply. I’m not sure whether this is coincidental or connected. I think it may be the former, and in fact linked not to illness but to the sheer volume of work I’ve taken on lately.

In addition to The Book (which is progressing fairly well), I just did an Iron Maiden piece for a site, I’m working on a Matthew Shipp/El-P feature for Jazziz, a longish (1000 words) review of The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions for another site, and the usual steady dribble of CD reviews.

Though the book’s probably shaping up fine, I’m riddled with panic and doubt over every word I type, in a way I never am with newspaper or magazine pieces. I guess some of the reviews of my last book have kinda spooked me a little. I know that the minute a writer announces his decision to tackle a Major Topic (and Miles Davis is still nothing if not The Major Topic in jazz), other writers begin sharpening their knives in anticipation. Not everyone does this, of course, but enough do that it’s easy to begin wondering “why bother?”

So anyway, the tension of writing The Book plus the frantic pace I’m setting myself churning out articles, plus of course the fact that I’ve still got a full-time day job, is turning me into a guy who really doesn’t want to go on any musical adventures into uncharted sonic territory right now, thanks. No challenges, please, just a nice music-blanket I can pull over my head for awhile.

Can’t let it get out of control, though. When I find myself turning on the radio, or buying a Bruce Springsteen album, that’s when it’ll be time for drastic intervention.

Today’s CDs:

Marshall Allen/Kidd Jordan/William Parker/Alan Silva/Hamid Drake, The All-Star Game
The Blasters, Testament: The Complete Slash Recordings
Ornette Coleman, Friends And Neighbors
Miles Davis, In Person Saturday Night At The Blackhawk, Complete
Exuberance, The Other Shore
Jimi Hendrix, First Rays Of The New Rising Sun
Kousokuya, First
Other Dimensions In Music w/Matthew Shipp, Time Is Of The Essence/The Essence Is Beyond Time
Prong, Beg To Differ
Spirit Caravan, Jug Fulla Sun

Those are the discs I brought to work with me, but I have no desire to listen to any of them!!

Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O., Electric Heavyland
Antipop Consortium, Antipop vs. Matthew Shipp
Art Ensemble of Chicago, Americans Swinging in Paris
John Coltrane, In Europe, Disc One
Dimmu Borgir, Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia
Farmersmanual, Explorers We
Opeth, Deliverance
Cecil Taylor, Conquistador!
Yes, Yessongs

CDs I brought with me to work today:

Amon Amarth, Versus the World
Fred Anderson Quartet, Volume Two, Disc One
Art Ensemble of Chicago, Reese and the Smooth Ones
Anthony Braxton, Quintet (Basel) 1977
Derek & the Ruins, Tohjinbo
Die Like a Dog Quartet, From Valley To Valley
Grave, Back From The Grave
High On Fire, The Art of Self Defense
Sonny Rollins, Our Man In Jazz
DJ Spooky, Optometry
David S. Ware, Third Ear Recitation
Yes, Relayer

Black Sabbath Lyrics

Released: February 13, 1970 – A Friday, no less!

1. Black Sabbath (6:16)
2. The Wizard (4:18)
3. Wasp, Behind the Wall of Sleep, Basically, N.I.B. (10:40)
4. Wicked World (4:42) / Evil Woman (3:22)
5. A Bit of Finger, Sleeping Village, Warning (14:20)

“Still falls the rain”
“Still falls the rain,the veils of darkness shroud the blackened trees,
which, contorted by some unseen violence,shed their tired leaves,
and bend their boughs toward a gray earth of severed bird wings.
Among the grasses, poppies bleed before a gesticulating death,
and young rabbits, born dead in traps,stand motionless,
as though guarding the silence that surrounds and threatens to engulf
all those that would listen. Mute birds, tired of repeating yesterdays
terrors,huddle together in the recesses of dark corners, heads turned from the dead, black swan
that floats upturned in a small pool in the hollow.
There emerges from this pool a faint,sensual mist,that traces
its way upwards to caress the feet of the headless martyr’s statue
whose only achievement was to die too soon,and who couldn’t wait to loose. The cataract of darkness forms fully,the long black night begins,
yet still by the lake a young girl waits.
Unseeing she believes herself unseen,
she smiles faintly at the distant tolling bell, and the still falling rain.”

Black Sabbath (6:16)
What is this that stands before me?
Figure in black which points at me,
Turn ’round quick and start to run,
Find out I’m the chosen one
Oh, No!

Big black shape with eyes of fire,
Telling people their desire
Satan sitting there he’s smiling,
Watches those flames get higher and higher
Oh, No, No please God help me!

Is it the end, my friend?
Satan’s come around the bend,
People running ‘cos they’re scared
Ya people better go and beware
No! No! Please! No!

The Wizard (4:18)

Misty morning, clouds in the sky,
Without warning a wizard walks by,
Casting his shadow, weaving his spell,
[Funny clothes]/[Funny cloak], twinkling bell* (*b-hell)

Never talking,
Just keeps walking,
Causing his magic

Evil power disappears
Demons worry when the wizard is near
He turns tears into joy,
Ev’ryone’s happy when the wizard walks by

Never talk’n,
Just keeps walk’n,
Spreadin’ his magic

Sun is shining; clouds have gone by,
All the people give a happy sigh,
He has passed by, giving his sign,
Left all the people feeling so fine

Never talk’n,
Just keeps walk’n,
Spreadin’ his magic

Wasp (10:40)

Behind the Wall of Sleep

Visions cupped within the flower,
Deadly petals with strange power,
Faces shine a deadly smile,
Look upon you at your trial

Chill that numbs from head to toe,
Icy sun with frosty glow,
Words that go read to your sorrow,
Words that go read no tomorrow

Feel your spirit rise with the breeze,
Feel your body fallin’ to its knees
Take your wall of remorse, Takes your body to a corpse
Takes your body to a corpse Takes your body to a corpse
Sleeping wall of remorse,
Takes your body to a corpse

Now from darkness there springs light,
Wall of sleep is cool and bright,
Wall of sleep is lying broken,
Sun shines in, you have awoken

Basically

N.I.B.

Oh yeah!

Some people say my love can not be true
Please believe me, my love, and I’ll show you
I will give you those things you thought unreal
The sun, the moon, the stars all bear my seal

Oh yeah!

Follow me now and you will not regret
Living the life you led before we met
You are the first to have this love of mine
Forever with me ’till the end of time

Your love for me has just got to be real,
Before you know the way I’m going to feel,
I’m going to feel,
I’m going to feel

Oh yeah!

Now I have you with me under my pow’r
Our love grows stronger now with ev’ry hour
Look into my eyes, you’ll see who I am
My name is Lucifer, please take my hand

Oh yeah!

Follow me now and you will not regret
Leaving the life you led before we met
You are the first to have this love of mine
Forever with me ’till the end of time

Your love for me has just got to be real,
Before you know the way I’m going to feel,
I’m going to feel,
I’m going to feel

Oh yeah!

Now I have you with me under my pow’r
Our love grows stronger now with ev’ry hour
Look into my eyes, you’ll see who I am
My name is Lucifer, please take my hand

Wicked World (4:42)

The world today has such a wicked face
Fighting going on between the human race
People go to work just to earn their bread
While people just across the sea are countin’ the dead

A politician’s job they say is very high
For he has to choose who’s got to go and die
They can put a man on the moon quite easy
While people here on earth are dying of (old/all) diseases

A woman goes to work every day after day
She just goes to work just to earn her pay
Child’s (sitting/city) cry “my life is harder” *1
He doesn’t even know who is his father

*1 Child sitting by a body life is harder

Evil Woman (3:22)
(By Wiegand, Wiegand, Waggoner)

I see a look of evil in your eyes
You’ve been filling me all full of lies
Sorrow will not change your shameful deed
You will bear someone else’s bitter seed

Evil woman don’t you play your game with me
Evil woman don’t you play your game with me

Now I know just what your looking for
You want me to claim this child you bore *1
Well you know that it was he not me
And you know the way it’s got to be

Evil woman don’t you play your game with me
Evil woman don’t you play your game with
Evil woman don’t you play your game with me
Evil woman don’t you play your game with me

Wickedness lies in your moistened lips
Your body moves just like the crack of a whip
Black cat sleeps on top of your stain(ed) bed,
Your true wish that you could see me dead

Evil woman don’t you play your games with me
Evil woman don’t you play your games with me
Evil woman don’t you play your games with me
Evil woman don’t you play your games with me
Evil woman don’t you play your

*1 bought

A Bit of Finger (14:20)

Sleeping Village

Red sun rising in the sky,
Sleepin’ village, cock’rel’s cry
Soft breeze blowin’ in the trees
Peace of mind, feel at ease

Warning
(By Aynsley Dunbar, “Brox” (Victor Hickling), John Moreshead, Alex Dmochowski)

Now the first day that I met ya
I was looking in the sky,
When the sun turned all a blur and the thunder clouds rolled by
The sea began to shiver and the wind began to moan,
It must of been a sign for me to leave you well alone
I was warned about you baby but my feelings were a little bit too strong

You never said you love meand I don’t believe you can,
‘Cos I saw you in a dream and you were with another man
You looked so cool and casual and I tried to look the same,
But now I’ve got to love ya,
Tell me who am I to blame?
I was warned about you baby but my feelings were a little bit too strong

Now the whole wide world is movin
”Cos there’s iron in my heart,
I just can’t keep from cryin’ ‘cos you say we’ve got to part
Sorrow grips my voice as I stand here all alone
And watch you slowly take away a love I’ve never known
I was warned about you baby but my feelings were a little bit too strong,
Just a little bit to strong

Now the whole wide world is movin”cos there’s iron in my heart,
I just can’t keep from cryin’ ‘cos you say we’ve got to part
Sorrow grips my voice as I stand here all alone
And watch you slowly take away
A love I’ve never known
I was warned about you baby but my feelings were a little bit too strong,
Just a little bit to strong

Happy New Year 2006

I guess since it’s the 31st, I should make some comment about The Year In Music. Well, I’m not going to instead I’m going to reflect on 2002 instead.

The two genres that seemed to have the strongest year (2002), to my ear anyway, were metal and jazz. I heard a ton of great jazz this year, from the NY “free” scene (David S. Ware, William Parker, Sabir Mateen, and Jemeel Moondoc all released great records, and DJ Spooky collaborated with many great NYC players on the best record of his career) and some out-of-town folks (Fred Anderson put out another great album; I don’t think he’s dropped a dud since his re-emergence in the late 90s). Some specific recommendations:

Fred Anderson, On The Run (Live At the Velvet Lounge)
David S. Ware Quartet, Freedom Suite
Sabir Mateen/Hamid Drake, Brothers Together
William Parker’s Clarinet Trio, Bob’s Pink Cadillac
DJ Spooky, Optometry
Jemeel Moondoc Trio, Live At Glenn Miller Café, Vol. I
Cecil Taylor/Bill Dixon/Tony Oxley, s/t

That year saw a ridiculous amount of incredible reissues, too. Much of the legendary BYG catalog re-emerged, on vinyl and on CD, including the following essential titles:

Dave Burrell, Echo
The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Reese And the Smooth Ones
Archie Shepp, Yasmina, A Black Woman
Alan Silva and the Celestrial Communications Orchestra, Seasons
Sonny Sharrock, Monkey-Pockie-Boo

A lot of non-BYG stuff came back into the light, too, like Sonny Sharrock’s Paradise, the Art Ensemble’s Live In Milano, Fred Anderson’s The Missing Link, Peter Br?tzmann’s Balls, Manfred Schoof’s European Echoes, and literally dozens more. It’s about the best possible time to be a fan of 1960s and early-70s free and avant-jazz.

Metal seemed to be the only rock genre with any vitality. All that garage-rock bullshit was just that; hype with little or no actual sonic pleasure to back it up. I really don’t understand how anyone could listen to the White Stripes for more than five minutes at a stretch, let alone the warmed-over Nirvanarama of the Vines. And don’t even get me started on the Hives. Since when do matching suits, and white shoes, count as rock ‘n’ roll? Somebody call Pat Boone; his look has finally come back in!

Here’s a short list of great metal albums from 2002:

High on Fire, Surrounded By Thieves
Yakuza, Way of the Dead
Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Frozen Corpse Stuffed With Dope
Isis, Oceanic
Theory of Ruin, Counterculture Nosebleed
Napalm Death, Order of the Leech
Stone Sour, s/t
Bloodbath, Resurrection Through Carnage
Immortal, Sons of Northern Darkness
Meshuggah, Nothing

There are probably two dozen others I could name, but those’ll get anybody who might have lost touch with metal, for whatever reason, back in the game. It didn’t look like the resurgence is anywhere even close to over, either. There were some great releases from Amon Amarth, Grave and others for 2003 as well, another good year.

Reflection over.

I discussed the Klosterman piece I posted yesterday with a few people, and encountered a lot of dismissiveness. One guy said, more or less, that he’s tired of hearing this theory that “people who’d rather listen to Nirvana than Motley Crüe are doing it to make the Crüe fans feel dumb.” I think this misses on two levels. First of all, just because you’re tired of hearing it, does that make it untrue? Secondly, the piece (and the attitude it addresses) is not about rock fans, it’s about rock critics. One of the other people I discussed the piece with understood the latter point, but felt it merited dismissal because the piece appeared in the New York Times, therefore it was obvious (in his formulation) that Klosterman was not expressing a minority view, but conventional wisdom. Yeah, that sounds right. And Ratt are sure to make the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame on their first go-round, in 2008, because the people who vote on such things, the arbiters of rock taste, do in fact think L.A. hair metal is just as important and valid a form as three-chord NYC punk (1970s division – I’m not holding my breath for the Cro-Mags’ induction), and anyone who feels otherwise is just paranoid, or has some kind of inferiority complex.

Another argument that was raised is that there’s nobody speaking up for other forms of crappy mainstream music, like Kenny Loggins or Mr. Mister. That’s disingenuous, and mentioning it is a diversionary tactic. Those are pop acts; Ratt and the Ramones were rock bands, and thus subject to the judgment of rock critics in a way the other two are not. Within the critic sphere, which is an entirely separate realm within the world of rock, Ratt and their hair-metal brethren were seen as rock, and not pop, and thus fit subjects for discussion, but they were viewed as an affront to the elevated sensibilities which had come with the 1970s, both in the art-rock and punk divisions. (Let no one tell you that punk was a proletarian movement, at least in America. It was an art project, with all the built-in classism of the art scene. Once it became proletarian, in the “hardcore” years 1980-83 and particularly after, the critics turned on it. If the Ramones were the Beatles, NY hardcore bands like Gorilla Biscuits and Sick Of It All were Grand Funk Railroad, and the only reason they didn’t get the critical pasting Grand Funk did was that by then, there was new wave, and later “college rock,” and thus critics had no reason to pay attention to hardcore at all.) All truly proletarian movements within rock are greeted with suspicion by rock critics. This is not to say that all proletarian movements within rock are automatically worthwhile. Some (death metal) are, some (rap-metal) aren’t. (It should be noted that even within a crappy genre, some worthwhile bands can emerge – the Deftones and Slipknot, for example.) But this reflexive suspicion – which is not brought to bear upon bands appealing to upper-echelon American youth like, say, Pavement – is a barrier to successful criticism, and only serves to seal the writer away from any genuinely functional role in the larger rock universe. It’s a recipe for irrelevance.

CDs I brought with me to the office today:

Caspar Br?tzmann Massaker, Black Axis
Dave Burrell, Echo
Cannibal Ox, The Cold Vein
Miles Davis, Water Babies
Isis, Celestial
Kreator, Violent Revolution
Archie Shepp and the Full Moon Ensemble, Live in Antibes
Matthew Shipp, New Orbit
Solace, 13
Cecil Taylor, Air Above Mountains
Wire, Chairs Missing

The Ratt Trap
By CHUCK KLOSTERMAN

Dee Dee Ramone and Robbin Crosby were both shaggy-haired musicians who wrote aggressive music for teenagers. Both were unabashed heroin addicts. Neither was the star of his respective band: Dee Dee played bass for the Ramones, a seminal late-70’s punk band; Crosby played guitar for Ratt, a seminal early-80’s heavy-metal band. They died within 24 hours of each other last spring, and each had only himself to blame for the way he perished. In a macro sense, they were symmetrical, self-destructive clones; for anyone who isn’t obsessed with rock ‘n’ roll, they were basically the same guy.

Yet anyone who is obsessed with rock ‘n’ roll would define these two humans as diametrically different. To rock aficionados, Dee Dee and the Ramones were “important” and Crosby and Ratt were not. We are all supposed to concede this. We are supposed to know that the Ramones saved rock ‘n’ roll by fabricating their surnames, sniffing glue and playing consciously unpolished three-chord songs in the Bowery district of New York. We are likewise supposed to acknowledge that Ratt sullied rock ‘n’ roll by abusing hair spray, snorting cocaine and playing highly produced six-chord songs on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip.

There is no denying that the Ramones were a beautiful idea. It’s wrong to claim that they invented punk, but they certainly came the closest to idealizing what most people agree punk is supposed to sound like. They wrote the same two-minute song over and over and over again — unabashedly, for 20 years — and the relentlessness of their riffing made certain people feel like everything about the world had changed forever. And perhaps those certain people were right. However, those certain people remain alone in their rightness, because the Ramones were never particularly popular.

The Ramones never made a platinum record over the course of their entire career. Bands like the Ramones don’t make platinum records; that’s what bands like Ratt do. And Ratt was quite adroit at that task, doing it four times in the 1980’s. The band’s first album, “Out of the Cellar,” sold more than a million copies in four months. Which is why the deaths of Dee Dee Ramone and Robbin Crosby created such a mathematical paradox: the demise of Ramone completely overshadowed the demise of Crosby, even though Crosby co-wrote a song (“Round and Round”) that has probably been played on FM radio and MTV more often than every track in the Ramones’ entire catalog. And what’s weirder is that no one seems to think this imbalance is remotely strange.

What the parallel deaths of Ramone and Crosby prove is that it really doesn’t matter what you do artistically, nor does it matter how many people like what you create; what matters is who likes what you do artistically and what liking that art is supposed to say about who you are. Ratt was profoundly uncool (read: populist) and the Ramones were profoundly significant (read: interesting to rock critics). Consequently, it has become totally acceptable to say that the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” changed your life; in fact, saying that would define you as part of a generation that became disenfranchised with the soullessness of suburbia, only to rediscover salvation through the integrity of simplicity. However, it is laughable to admit (without irony) that Ratt’s “I Want a Woman” was your favorite song in 1989; that would mean you were stupid, and that your teenage experience meant nothing, and that you probably had a tragic haircut.

The reason Crosby’s June 6 death was mostly ignored is that his band seemed corporate and fake and pedestrian; the reason Ramone’s June 5 death will be remembered is that his band was seen as representative of a counterculture that lacked a voice. But the contradiction is that countercultures get endless media attention: the only American perspectives thought to have any meaningful impact are those that come from the fringes. The voice of the counterculture is, in fact, inexplicably deafening. Meanwhile, mainstream culture (i.e., the millions and millions of people who bought Ratt albums merely because that music happened to be the soundtrack for their lives) is usually portrayed as an army of mindless automatons who provide that counterculture with something to rail against. The things that matter to normal people are not supposed to matter to smart people.

Now, I know what you’re thinking; you’re thinking I’m overlooking the obvious, which is that the Ramones made “good music” and Ratt made “bad music,” and that’s the real explanation as to why we care about Dee Dee’s passing while disregarding Robbin’s. And that rebuttal makes sense, I suppose, if you’re the kind of person who honestly believes the concept of “good taste” is anything more than a subjective device used to create gaps in the intellectual class structure. I would argue that Crosby’s death was actually a more significant metaphor than Ramone’s, because Crosby was the first major hair-metal artist from the Reagan years to die from AIDS. The genre spent a decade consciously glamorizing (and aggressively experiencing) faceless sex and copious drug use. It will be interesting to see whether the hesher casualties now start piling up. Meanwhile, I don’t know if Ramone’s death was a metaphor for anything; he’s just a good guy who died on his couch from shooting junk. But as long as you have the right friends, your funeral will always matter a whole lot more.