Joey Ramone, Don't Worry About Me

Okay. So when I heard that Joey had died the first thing I did was phone my high school girlfriend whom I hadn't seen in three years who got me into "Rock N' Roll High School" and said she was first attracted to me because I hunched over like Joey (thanks, I guess). No one was home; I left a message that pretty much said "Hi, it's me, Joey Ramone is dead and I thought you should know", then hung up. The second thing I did was put my copy of "End Of The Century" on the turntable and play "Do You Remember Rock N' Roll Radio?" ten times. So, by the time this album came out and Joey's voice kicked in on the first song, "What A Wonderful World", that was all there was to it. I lost it. I wept and cried and didn't understand. This is a beautiful record. It sounds like waking up early on a Sunday, not feeling tired at all, going for a walk noticing crows perched shimmering on stop signs and the first golden swig of coffee in your mouth. When Joey sings "I got knocked down, but I'll get up" you hear a person striving to hold on to every shred of life he can, and at the same time never fearing, resolving a paradox we'll all come to at some point. Or, as Vonnegut put it, "everything is beautiful and nothing hurt".

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