By Ed Staskus

   Maggie loved the Ramones, who were Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, Tommy, and the Marky. There was no doubt about her love. She had all their records and CD’s, although she never got their autographs. She did, however, have the ticket stub from the Variety Theater where she saw their movie.

   The Variety Theater was in a bad neighborhood in Cleveland. Maggie had to sneak out of Bay Village, which was a good neighborhood, to see the movie. She didn’t tell her parents. It was worth the risk. They were kicking back with martinis, anyway.

   “It started with the movie ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll High School,’ which was the best most fun movie you ever saw,” she said. “It’s a cult classic. If you haven’t seen it, or if you say you can take it or leave it, all I can say is, what is wrong with you?”

   Maggie saw it in the winter of 1980, as soon it hit the silver screen, at least when it finally came to Cleveland. The city was the Home of Rock ‘n’ Roll, more-or-less. A few years later, when it was in stores on VHS, she bought it and watched it one hundred times. She couldn’t get enough of the movie.

   “Rock, rock, rock ‘n’ roll high school, well I don’t care about history, rock, rock, rock ‘n’ roll high school, cause that’s not where I want to be.”

   She loved the movie so much, which was about high jinks and punk music. “Play before you get good,” Joey Ramone said, “because by the time you get good, you’re too old to play.”

   The Ramones never waited until they knew what they were doing.. “They were like a UFO landing in the middle of rock music,” Bono said. “Joey had an intensity and heart in his voice that made him stand out.”

   “Sis, that’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen,” her sister Elaine told her.

   “How can you say that?” Maggie asked. “It might be a stupid movie but it’s awesome. Maybe you need to watch it with me, so I can show you once and for all how great all the parts are. It’s awesome because the Ramones are actually in it, with all their punk and all their attitude, blowing everybody away. You have to hear them upfront and loud to understand.” 

   The first time the Ramones came to Ohio, to Youngstown, three years before the movie, only ten people showed up to the show. Two of them wandered in by mistake. All of them were blown away. “They were the real deal ,” Iggy Pop said. “Watching the Ramones was like seeing the essence of rock boiled down to its raw, primal form. They were a breath of fresh air in a lot of fake, bloated rock at the time.”

   Johnny Ramone, the lead guitar player, was maybe the ugliest guitar player anyone will ever see in their life. He was even uglier than Howard Stern, if that could possibly be. He had long black hair and wore red glasses. He always looked dirty and greasy. He didn’t think much of “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School.” He liked scary movies. “I like 60s and 70s Italian and Spanish horror movies. ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’ might be my favorite horror movie.”

   Their movie is about a high school girl, Riff Randell, who’s in love with Joey Ramone. Joey was the beanpole lead singer of the Ramones. Riff is his Number One fan. She’s written a song for them. She has to meet them so they will play her song.

   “Rock, rock, rock ‘n’ roll high school, I just want to have some kicks, I just want to get some chicks, rock, rock, rock, rock, rock ‘n’ roll high school.”

   Riff spends three days in line to be the first person to buy Ramones concert tickets. The first day she cuts school she writes a note, “Please excuse Riff because her mother has died.” The second day she writes, “Please excuse Riff because her father has died.” The third day she writes, “Please excuse Riff because her goldfish has died.”

   She buys one thousand tickets and starts distributing them at school.

   The school principal, Principal Togar, is a no fun, buttoned-down bully of a she-goat. She has hired goons who are her hall monitors. They’re always writing love letters to Principal Togar, while one of them is all the time rolling a joint and getting high, although she doesn’t know that about him.

   Riff is non-stop on Principal Togar’s shit list, and when the hall monitors body search her, they confiscate her Ramones tickets. Now neither she nor anybody else from her school can go to the show. She and her friends are sad. “Everyone’s going to be there, but not us.”

   But then she wins a radio station’s “Name This Song” contest. It’s a Ramones song, of course. She knows it right away.

   Before the concert Principal Togar does a science experiment with white mice. They have to listen to rock ‘n’ roll music with headphones on, to the Who, the Clash, and Led Zeppelin, and finally the Ramones “Watch what happens when they have to listen to the Ramones,” Principal Togar says. The mouse’s head explodes. 

   “If you’re not into stupid humor you won’t like it.” Maggie was without a doubt into stupid humor. “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” was one of her all-time movie favorites.

   The band comes to Riff’s school. A mouse wearing headphones is there, like at all their shows. The music in the movie is full blast Ramones, except for a few songs by Devo and Alice Cooper. It’s where Maggie got her first taste of them. She sang “Teenage Lobotomy” for weeks while walking to school.

   She went to a Ramones concert in 1989, at the Phantasy Night Club on the east side of Lakewood. She thought she could handle being in the mosh pit, but she ended up flopping around on the floor.

   “Well, the girls out there knock me out you know, rock, rock, rock ‘n’ roll high school, cruisin’ around in my GTO.”

   A bouncer dragged her to safety. “Don’t come into the pit anymore,” he said. “It’s not for suburban girls.” There were bodies everywhere. After the concert everybody went upstairs to drink at the bar. The Ramones came up, too. She was star-struck, even though Johnny Ramone was uglier in person than he was in the movie. She couldn’t go to their table to get autographs. She was frozen in place and just watched them from a distance.

   There was a tribute to the band twenty years later at the Happy Dog Saloon on Cleveland’s near west side. It had been an Eastern European restaurant called Mom Socotch’s for sixty years until mom sold it to hipsters. Maggie was beyond excited. When they announced during the show at the Happy Dog that “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” was going to be shown on the big screen at the Capital Theater the following week she jumped for joy.

   “Oh, my God,” she turned to her husband Steve. “Can we go? We’ve got to go! I’ve got to see it for real again.”  She had watched “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” on the small screen from the word go through high school and beyond. She would push the cassette into the VCR whenever she wanted to and crack up all night long.

   “Rock, rock, rock ‘n’ roll high school, I hate the teachers and the principal, don’t want to be taught to be no fool, rock, rock, rock, rock, rock ‘n’ roll high school.”

   The Ramones are all dead now, except for Marky. “I’m really lucky I’m still around,” said Dee Dee Ramone, just before he died. “Everybody expected me to die next. But it was always someone else instead of me.” He was the troublemaker in the band.

   In 1999, the year Maggie’s father died, he started listening and singing along to the music of the Ramones. He had been a stockbroker all his life. She didn’t know what had gotten into him.

   “Hey ho, let’s go, hey ho, let’s go, they’re forming in a straight line, they’re going through a tight wind.”

   “Who sings this song?” her father asked Maggie.

   “That would be the Ramones, dad.”

   He kept up the beat until he had a heart attack. “The Ramones didn’t mess around,” Lemmy Kilmister said. “They got up there, played their hearts out, and left.” The Ramones were the soundtrack, like seeing your life with your ears.

   “We’ve got to stop this crazy carrying on, It’s going to be the death of me, I don’t feel so good inside, but I had a good time, you know it was good.”

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.” His books are available on Amazon and Apple Books.

“Bomb City”

Cleveland, Ohio 1975. The John Scalish Crime Family and Danny Greene’s Irish Mob are at war. Car bombs are the weapon of choice. Two police detectives are assigned to find the bomb makers. It gets personal. Revenge is always personal.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication