Almost every day in the office, Garry Shrum tells me some heads-up about items we have coming in. When he told me we were receiving items straight from the man born Marc Bell (better known to the world as Marky Ramone), I stopped dead in my tracks. I was happy to discuss the twice-signed snare drum and signed Vic Firth sticks for our Instagram page, and I was amazed to see and hold his MTV Moonman and the Pablo Echauerren painting of the band.
As a drummer who is still trying to perfect Marky’s flawlessly rigid drumming technique that he perfected in the 1990s (when Johnny Ramone wanted to play their songs significantly faster than before) getting to hold these sticks felt magical. Same with the snare drum.
The Ramones really set the tone for all kinds of punk bands. They started out as a band that wanted to strip rock music down to its sparseness in the day and age of Yes, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and Jethro Tull. With the iconic logo, kids like me knew the name before we heard their songs. And honestly, when we heard those songs, we wanted to hear them again and again.