Something for Joey

This morning from the Bowery and Second Street — aka, Joey Ramone Place.

Ramone, an East Village resident, died on this day (April 15) of lymphoma in 2001. He was 49. 

And from 1996, Joey and Marky announce on the Howard Stern Show that the Ramones have retired...

 

Friday's parting shot

Joey Ramone died on this day in 2001...

ICYMI: Pete Davidson to play Joey Ramone in Netflix biopic

Pete Davidson will produce and star in I SLEPT WITH JOEY RAMONE, a new biopic chronicling the life of the king of punk — whom we lost 20 years ago today.

The film, directed by Jason Orley from a treatment by Davidson and Orley, is based on Mickey Leigh's memoir of the same name. pic.twitter.com/4r49gZfsmo

— NetflixFilm (@NetflixFilm) April 15, 2021

The first reaction I heard was that Pete Davidson was too short for the role. He's 6-3. Joey Ramone was 6-6. 🙄 

More details at Deadline.

Joey Ramone died on this day in 2001

Hard to believe, but Joey Ramone, lead singer of the Ramones, died 20 years ago on this day... April 15, 2001, of lymphoma at age 49. 

On this occasion, the Post talks with Joey's brother Mickey Leigh ... and discusses some of the mementos from Joey's former apartment on Ninth Street at Third Avenue. 

You can read my interview with Leigh from 2012 following the release of Joey's posthumous album, "Ya Know," and the new video for this song "New York City."

   

The 20th annual Birthday Bash for Joey is expected to happen in some form on May 19.

The Joey Ramone street sign returns to Joey Ramone Place

[Photo from this morning]

After nearly a month-long absence, the city returned the Joey Ramone Place street sign yesterday afternoon (H/T Jessie Malin!) to the northeast corner of the Bowery and Second Street. (This block of Second Street is co-named for the frontman of the Ramones.)

It appeared that the light pole on this corner was under repairs. (Plus, the street sign looked as if it had been bashed a few times.)

The sign first went up in November 2003. The sign remains pretty high up there ...


[Photo from this morning]

This placement happened several years ago after the sign was previously stolen a half-dozen times. So workers raised the sign to 20 feet. Standard street signs are between 12 and 14 feet off the ground, per the Post.



Meanwhile, the two-year-old Joey Ramone-CBGB 40th anniversary mural a block away at Bleecker and the Bowery has been painted over in place of a Debbie Harry-Blondie mural by Shepard Fairey. Will post on that a little later.

Details on the 17th annual Joey Ramone Birthday Bash

Via the EVG inbox today...

Before succumbing to lymphatic cancer on April 15, 2001, Joey Ramone had been planning another of his infamous bashes for his 50th birthday. He'd asked his mother, Charlotte Lesher, and brother Mickey Leigh to promise they'd throw a huge party to celebrate the occasion, regardless.

The Joey Ramone Birthday Bash has since become an annual tradition. This year's Bash will take place on Friday, May 19, Joey's actual Birthday, beginning at 7 p.m. at the Studio at Webster Hall.

Headlining this year's event: Joey's former bandmates, drummer Richie Ramone and bassist CJ Ramone, will be playing in a trio formed just for this occasion called The Love Triangle, with Mickey Leigh on guitar. They'll perform several select songs from the seminal Ramones albums Leave Home and Rocket to Russia, both of which turn 40 this year.

Also being honored is David Peel, who passed away earlier this year and whose band David Peel & The Lower East Side had performed at previous Bash events. The Accelerators, Joff Wilson, Bill Connor and Koshek Swaminathan will take part in his Bash tribute. Performances from The Cuts and LES Stitches will also round out the night.

You can find ticket info here.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Mickey Leigh on his brother Joey Ramone's 'New York City' video

Tagging Joey Ramone

This morning, EVG reader Lola Sáenz noted that the Joey Ramone mural on Bleecker Street at the Bowery was tagged... the mural, by Solus and John CRASH Matos, arrived on Sept. 3 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Ramones debuting at CBGB. This is the first time that we recall it being defaced.

A Joey Ramone-CBGB 40th anniversary mural for the Bowery

A new mural featuring Joey Ramone is going up today on Bleecker at the Bowery... across the way from the former CBGB... EVG reader Lola Sáenz says that the mural is by Solus and John CRASH Matos...

The mural is via The L.I.S.A. Project to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Ramones debuting at CBGB.


[Top photos by Lola Sáenz]

Here was the view around noon...

A photo posted by Solus (@solusstreetart) on Sep 3, 2015 at 9:37am PDT

Joey Ramone: May 19, 1951 – April 15, 2001

[Image via Wikipedia Commons]

Joey Ramone died on this date in 2001. He was 49.

We recently looked up to take in the Joey Ramone Place street sign on the Bowery and East Second Street…



For a moment we thought someone had stolen the sign again…



No, just looks like someone or something whacked it a few times…



Back in 2010, the Post reported that Joey Ramone Place is perhaps the most stolen of the 250,900 street signs in New York, according to the Department of Transportation. It has been stolen at least four times … and workers raised the sign to 20 feet. Standard street signs are between 12 and 14 feet off the ground.

Meanwhile the Joey Ramone Birthday Bash is May 19 at the Studio at Webster Hall. Find details here.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Mickey Leigh on his brother Joey Ramone's 'New York City' video

Looking for Joey Ramone Place

More on Joey Ramone Place

Joey Ramone died on this date in 2001

Born: May 19, 1951
Died: April 15, 2001

Previously on EV Grieve:
Mickey Leigh on his brother Joey Ramone's 'New York City' video

Happy birthday Joey Ramone

He would be 62 today. And the 13th annual Joey Ramone Birthday Bash is tonight at the Bowery Electric.

[Photo via CBGB on Facebook]

The 13th annual Joey Ramone Birthday Bash is Sunday at the Bowery Electric

Find tickets here.

-----

Previously on EV Grieve:
Mickey Leigh on his brother Joey Ramone's 'New York City' video

Looking for Joey Ramone Place

Joey Ramone died 12 years ago today

Born: May 19, 1951
Died: April 15, 2001

Previously on EV Grieve:
Mickey Leigh on his brother Joey Ramone's 'New York City' video

Looking for Joey Ramone Place

Mickey Leigh on his brother Joey Ramone's 'New York City' video

You may have seen the new video for Joey Ramone's "New York City," which was released last Tuesday. (I first saw it over at Flaming Pablum.)

Ramone died in 2001; his posthumous album, "Ya Know" came out in the spring.

"We had to do something without the artist’s involvement, but that would pay homage to the artist," director Greg Jardin told Fast Company.

So Jardin took thousands of still photographs of Ramone's friends, fans and strangers throughout the city and "pieced them together to create a stop-motion tribute film in the spirit of the artist and the song," per Fast Company. (You'll likely spot a lot of familiar faces in the video.)

As you can see, the video starts in the East Village and first features Ramone's brother, Mickey Leigh, a longtime musician who also plays on "Ya Know?"

Via Facebook, I asked Leigh a few questions about the video.

What are your thoughts on seeing the final product — especially thinking back to how terribly hot it was during the filming in July?

I could not be happier about the way this video turned out. I love it! Director Greg Jardin did an amazing job. It's perfect for this song, and perfect for Joey. Fast, funny — the energy and feeling you get from it is just totally uplifting.

The love and respect all the people involved had for Joey emanates off the screen. Everyone had the right spirit, which is what inevitably got them through the shoot, as this was filmed during the most brutal heat wave in NYC on record. One of the producers actually did suffer heat stroke. But, thankfully, a few days later she was OK and back in action.

You do a lot to keep Joey's spirit alive as well as raise money for lymphoma research through the annual Joey Ramone Birthday Bash. How does it make you feel to see the continued outpouring of affection/accolades with the new record and now the video?

Seeing that outpouring of love for my brother is what makes it all worthwhile for me. It's what enables me to keep going, and ward off the attacks and vicious insults hurled at me by the few blackhearted hatemongers too poisoned to enjoy what the vast majority of Joey's fans are so thrilled about. Their loss.

I do get a little appreciation from some of the more thoughtful people out there, and I appreciate that more than I can say right here. But, the display of sheer joy, and expressions of love for Joey from the overwhelming majority of his fans, far outweighs anything and everything else. They are just so happy to be hearing these new songs, and seeing this video. That's what it's all about for me.

Luna Lounge owner Rob Sacher on Joey Ramone, a new CBGB and what killed the Lower East Side

Rob Sacher, the former co-owner of Luna Lounge on Ludlow Street, has written "Wake Me When It's Over." The book covers his formative years growing up in Brooklyn in the 1960s, his days as a musician and songwriter and time running several clubs, including Mission (1988-1993, where the Ace Bar is now on Fifth Street) and Luna Lounge (which relocated to Williamsburg for a 16-month stint in 2007-2008). Sacher is self-publishing his book through his own DIY imprint and is raising promotion money through Kickstarter. The funding campaign ends on Wednesday. (He already reached his modest goal of $5,000.) The official release date of the book is Thursday.

Sacher talked to us via email about his first musical memories, his friend Joey Ramone and the state of the Lower East Side music scene today.

You were born and raised in Brooklyn. What was your first musical memory? How did that help set the course for your career?

Yes, born and raised in Brooklyn. My first musical memory. Well, that's a bit difficult to say for sure but my mom says that I would raise myself up in my crib at the age of one and rock back and forth to Elvis Presley's "Blue Suede Shoes" every time she played that record. I don't recall doing that but I do remember falling in love with The Shirelles when I heard "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" on the radio. I guess I was about four or five when that song was first played.

However, I had other moments a bit later on when I realized that the joy that music brought me was something that other people also felt. Two moments that are forever part of who I am came first when I was nine and I discovered a group of teenage girls singing in the handball courts near my home, and second, when I first heard an electric 12-string guitar.

Why did you decide to write this book?

I decided to write "Wake Me When It's Over" because that time is now over and is consigned to the pages of indie rock history in New York. There are no other books that have yet been written about the New York music scene that came after CBGBs, and Luna Lounge may possibly have been the most important NY club of its size in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Where else could you have come in off the street and see The Strokes, Elliott Smith, Interpol, Longwave, The National and stellastarr* for free — all possibly in the same week? And, on top of that, you could come by on Monday night and see Marc Maron, Louis C.K. and a dozen other young comedians working out their craft on the Luna Lounge stage? I guess I have a story to tell.

People had mixed reactions when news surfaced of a possible resurrected CBGB. You wrote for PBS, "Don’t burden yourself with a tether to some idea or concept of a bygone age." Do you think the city/Lower East Side will ever have a time and place like that again?

No. The creative people who lived there were allowed to be driven out by real-estate interests and that includes anyone and everyone who stood by and did nothing to stop that from happening. I'm talking about the Community Board, the City Council members who represent lower Manhattan, the developers, the real-estate agents, the landlords, the co-op and condo owners, the mayor, and especially the people who were willing to allow the commercial transformation of this once glorious neighborhood into the cultural travesty it has become so that their apartments would increase in value.

Well, you get what you deserve in this life, I believe. And, because few people were standing up for places like Collective:Unconscious, Tonic, CBGB and Luna Lounge, the Lower East Side must now live with obnoxious bistros that cater to people with little interest or understanding of the former importance of this neighborhood.

Perhaps, it's time for a TAKE BACK THE LOWER EAST SIDE movement. I would love to see that happen. Of course, I can hear the vested interests and the people who live here now who couldn't care less remind me of my recent words, "Don’t burden yourself with a tether to some idea or concept of a bygone age." Of course, the difference between CBGB and Luna Lounge is that Hilly Kristal is dead and I am still around, available, and would love to resurrect Luna Lounge under the right conditions if such conditions could be created.

You and Joey Ramone once talked about opening a club. What did you envision for the venue?

Joey always wanted to open a club and we talked about it on many occasions. He liked a club that I co-owned before Luna Lounge called the Mission. He and I went around the neighborhood in the early 1990s and looked at different possible locations.

Joey's brother, Mickey, is now trying to find a location to open up a club called Joey Ramone Place, and Mickey and I have had long conversations about what Joey would have envisioned for this kind of bar. In the end, it really just has to be Joey in any and every way possible. Joey Ramone was very smart, irreverent, had a great appreciation for the absurd, a great sense of humor, and had awesome taste in music. Any club that either Joey would have opened or Mickey will open will be all of those things all wrapped up in one.

And, by the way, we've been looking at locations for more than year and all we keep hearing is that the Community Board will never support our request for approval of a liquor license because there are too many bars in the neighborhood now.

Can you imagine that? The Lower East Side and the East Village Community Board can tolerate what my grandfather would have called the mishigas and meshugine but have no place for a proven cultural icon like Luna Lounge and a possible club connected to the most important New York rock musician who ever lived — yeah, that's right, the most important New York rock musician ever!

A lot of up-and-coming bands came in and out of your doors at the Luna Lounge, which closed in June 2005 when the landlord sold the building to a developer. Which band made the most immediate impact on you?

That's a tough question to answer because, in so many ways, I feel like so many of those artists were like my children. I never had any of my own so those bands were like my kids. Here's a short list. Of course, The Strokes, Interpol and The National are now three of the biggest bands in the world and those three are, without doubt, the three biggest New York bands of the last decade. All three of these bands did their very first shows at Luna Lounge and I am grateful to have helped in some way to nurture the start of their careers.

Beyond that, I still have a close friendship with Michael Jurin of stellastarr* and Steve Schiltz and Shannon Ferguson of Longwave. I feel like I had a lot of influence in helping both of those bands get started. Steve and I talk all the time and I am so honored to have him in my life. I think Steve Schiltz is the most underrated musician I know. I just love the music he creates. And last, I was fortunate to know the brilliant Elliott Smith for the short time he was with us in New York and the short time that he gave to us on this Earth.



How would you describe the state of the Lower East Side live music scene today?

Bands might come in from Brooklyn and might still play in a handful of clubs that offer sub-par basement spaces or play as one band on a bill of a baker's dozen on any given night but that is hardly an excuse for the idea of a scene.

With the exception of The Living Room, a worthy acoustic room, there is no club on the Lower East Side doing anything of any value in nurturing a scene — how can they with the fratboy, baseball cap, yuppie types that dominate the sidewalks? They are a cancer on any artistic scene on which they come in contact. And, that cancer is what killed the Lower East Side.

You can find an excerpt of the book here.

Joey Ramone would have been 60 today

And to celebrate ... at the Irving Plaza tonight...(I don't know if any tickets are left...)

And because you haven't seen this since the last time that I posted the clip...

When Joey Ramone went to the day spa

Marjorie Ingall uncovered a long-lost treasure from her time at Sassy: An article from the never-published last issue (December 1994) in which the magazine sends Joey Ramone to a day spa. However, thanks to the Internet, the article — written by Andrea Linnett — lives on...

An excerpt!

With Joey's hair saturated, Getty placed a pure plastic cap on his head and led the famous songwriter to a heat-lamp throne, where he enjoyed reading about his socialite friends in Town & Country magazine. After about 20 minutes of pure 18-carat relaxation, Getty took Joey to the extravagant hair washing massage bed so he could receive an aromatherapy scalp rub and shampoo. Joey was on cloud nine as he purred, "I'm finding this very pleasant. I'm in nirvana. (not the band)"

Hairdresser to the rich and famous Hugh Mac Dill arrived to blowdry and style the golden voiced singer's newly revived locks to perfection. Joey's reaction? "My hair's fluffy full." Rejuvenated and ready for the fast-paced life of a superstar, Joey bid Brian and his team farewell, and headed home to his luxury apartment in Manhattan's superexclusive East Village, where a bag full of Aveda products awaited him for his whirlwind tour of glitzy Czechoslovakia.

You can read the whole piece here.

Writes Marjorie on her blog: "I remember everyone gushing about how terribly sweet and terribly shy Joey Ramone was on his spa day."

Related reading, kind of, on EV Grieve:
Forget James Cramer and his ilk, how would Joey Ramone invest in this troubled market?

More on Joey Ramone Place

Last Thursday, I wrote about trying to find Joey Ramone Place on the Bowery and Second Street....

The Post follows up on the piece today... And on page three — right next to Lindsay Lohan!



Per the Post piece by Jeremy Olshan, who also gave me credit for noticing how high the sign is now:

"Joey Ramone Place" is perhaps the most stolen of the 250,900 street signs in New York, according to the Department of Transportation, which recently asked contractors to install the sign for the fourth time since 2003.

He would have appreciated the distinction, said the group's longtime drummer, Marky Ramone, sole survivor of the Ramones' longest-running lineup.

"But maybe they should find a better way to attach it," he said. "Now you have to be an NBA player to see it."

Although most street signs are about 12 to 14 feet off the ground, Joey Ramone Place was raised to 20 feet, an oddity first noted on the blog EV Grieve.

Speaking of Joey, video maker Paul Dougherty sent along this piece on the sign dedication back in 2003...

Looking for Joey Ramone Place

I wrote about the Joey Ramone drink at Peels on Monday.... some people pointed out that this actually made some sense seeing as Peels is on the corner of Second Street and the Bowery — aka Joey Ramone Place.

True. So I thought I'd walk by and check out the street sign. Don't recall seeing it lately.... So I looked...



...and looked...



...and looked...



....and...



...and...




Oh! There it is way up there!




For a moment, I thought the sign had been ripped off again. (Or removed by the city.) How many times has it been stolen anyway? Five? So now it's up there pretty high ... out of the reach of thieves... The sign first went up in November 2003.

Also, the Times has a great piece from October 2001 ... when the idea of Joey Ramone Place came before CB3. According to the article: "only two of the eight board members said they had heard of his band, the Ramones." They even asked for a Ramones primer...

Today's drink special: The Joey Ramone

Speaking of The Joey Ramone... an old friend of Joey's sent this photo along...



It's the work of rock photographer Joe Stevens (aka, Captain Snaps), who gave me permission to post the picture ...