Today's Theme: Themes

Album: Ramones, Pleasant Dreams, 1991

Best Track: "This Business Is Killing Me"

Lasting Memory: I mentioned a couple of posts ago that attending a Ramones show during the summer of 1986 was one of my first real concert-going experiences. While I can't remember the exact month or date, I know that the concert took place on a Thursday night and that I had to go to work the following Friday morning.

All that Friday at work in the Little Creek Navy Exchange warehouse, I was completely jacked up from seeing the Ramones because the band was, at the time, my favorite. I was also nearly deaf because, not knowing any better at the time, I had stood directly in front of a speaker tower throughout the Ramones' set.

I spent the entire workday shuffling through the stacks and, I thought, singing songs off of Pleasant Dreams such as "We Want the Airwaves" and "All's Quiet on the Eastern Front" under my breath to myself. Shortly after lunch, I was informed by a couple of my co-workers that I had been singing quite loudly the entire time and they thought I was high or drunk or they didn't know what.

All I have to say in retrospect is screw 'em if they don't like music. Especially since two of the songs that recurred in my repertoire were "It's Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World)" and "This Business Is Killing Me."

Did I mention I was working in a warehouse?

If 80-plus years of talkies have taught us nothing else besides how to pay too much for cable movie channel packages, it has taught us that there is undoubtedly at least one perfect song each moment and situation. The work-hating songs on Pleasant Dreams have been remarkably resilient as theme songs for me at different time of life. Their thorough lodging in my subconscious undoubtedly played some role in my decision to become a freelancer a few years ago.

As an aside that builds to the larger point, at least one more song on the album seems to serve as another theme for another meme. "The KKK Took My Baby Away" seem to be thematically linked to an intraband love triangle involving Joey, Johnny, and the woman who left Joey for Johnny.

It's probably the case that every song has a specific meaning and message. After all, even the ridiculous but ear-catching "Abacab" contains the chord-progression coded message that Genesis would be turning from prog rock to pop. It is certainly not always the case that a singer or songwriter can successfully communicate and inculcate his or her message. Just watch the next American Idol contestant misinterpret "Poppa Was a Rollin' Stone" as being about having an Indiana Jones-esque adventurer as a father. (I hate myself for even knowing that performance exists.)

The Ramones absolutely did succeed time and again in making their songs stick as theme songs for the moment and the lifetime. Just don't let your Ramones-penned and -performed theme be "You Sound Like You're Sick" or "Sitting in My Room."

Up Next: Ramones, Subterranean Jungle, 1983