"I started listening to and playing other music in the '90s. It was after hearing other bands, like Bad Religion, cover Ramones songs that I started to like our songs again"
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A punk lifer admitting he needed someone else to teach him how to hear his own work again is about as unromantic - and as revealing - as it gets. Dee Dee Ramone frames the '90s not as a victory lap but as a recalibration: he steps outside the Ramones universe, listens wider, plays other music, and only then rediscovers the electricity in the songs that made his name. The intent is disarmingly plain: he is describing the psychological numbness that comes from repetition, from being trapped inside your own greatest hits.
The subtext cuts deeper. When Bad Religion covers the Ramones, the songs return with a new accent - cleaner, faster, more doctrinal in that SoCal way. A cover is both tribute and critique; it exposes the bones of a track, the architecture you stop noticing when you built the house yourself. Hearing other bands treat Ramones tunes as sacred text forces Dee Dee to see the catalog from the outside, as culture rather than labor. It is also a sly acknowledgment that influence can feel like validation only once the original band has been pushed to the margins by time, trends, and industry amnesia.
Context matters: by the '90s, punk had professionalized, splintered, and gone mainstream-adjacent. The Ramones, foundational but under-credentialed in their own era, became the template everybody borrowed from. Dee Dee's line lands because it captures that bitter, funny twist: you may not appreciate your own songs until the next generation tells you they're worth stealing.
The subtext cuts deeper. When Bad Religion covers the Ramones, the songs return with a new accent - cleaner, faster, more doctrinal in that SoCal way. A cover is both tribute and critique; it exposes the bones of a track, the architecture you stop noticing when you built the house yourself. Hearing other bands treat Ramones tunes as sacred text forces Dee Dee to see the catalog from the outside, as culture rather than labor. It is also a sly acknowledgment that influence can feel like validation only once the original band has been pushed to the margins by time, trends, and industry amnesia.
Context matters: by the '90s, punk had professionalized, splintered, and gone mainstream-adjacent. The Ramones, foundational but under-credentialed in their own era, became the template everybody borrowed from. Dee Dee's line lands because it captures that bitter, funny twist: you may not appreciate your own songs until the next generation tells you they're worth stealing.
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| Topic | Music |
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