Just 'Casue It's a Just Cause

I used to own a "Hands Across Your Face" t-shirt.



This song, off of the still-unprofiled Animal Boy, contains one of my favorite verses of all time:

If I was stupid or naive
Trying to achieve what they all call contentness
If people weren't such fags and I never made mistakes
Then I could find forgiveness

I like this song -- and this verse in particular -- because it does something I've repeatedly taken the Ramones to task for not doing. The song and verse express postadolescent disappointment with oneself and everyone else succintly and understandably while bordering on incoherency. That's a job for punk rock, yessir.

The entire song works because it employs the timeless trope of using slapstick-y comedy to couch and cover a real expression of pain and anger.

What Dee Dee Ramone was feeling so upset about when he co-wrote "Something to Believe In," I can't say. But it's good for listeners that he was going through whatever whenever.