Creativity Quote by Dee Dee Ramone

"It’s very expensive to bring a band to New York" lands like a throwaway complaint, but it’s really a tiny manifesto about the economics of cool. Dee Dee Ramone isn’t romanticizing the city; he’s pricing it. New York is sold as the proving ground where real scenes happen and real careers begin, yet the gatekeeping isn’t only taste-makers or labels. It’s gas money, van rentals, lodging, rehearsal space, backline, time off work, and the hidden tax of simply existing in a city designed to drain you.

Coming from a Ramone, the line carries extra bite because the band helped invent the downtown mythology people still chase: the idea that a few broke weirdos can roll in, plug in, and change culture. Dee Dee’s understatement punctures that legend. It’s not that the dream is fake; it’s that it comes with receipts. Punk’s image is thrift-store purity, but touring has always been logistics and debt. The subtext is a warning to anyone who thinks music scenes are pure meritocracies: access is bought, not bestowed.

There’s also a quiet tenderness in the phrasing. He’s not blaming New York for being hard; he’s acknowledging what it demands. The city becomes a machine that converts ambition into overhead. In one blunt sentence, Dee Dee captures the paradox that built countless great bands: you come to New York to be seen, and you risk going broke just trying to arrive.