Garbage Days Revisited #16: Ramones - "Mondo Bizarro" (1992)
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"So much death and confusion before my eyes. But nothing seems to faze me...and this one still survives..." - Ramones - Poison Heart
The general wisdom when it comes to the Ramones is that you only really need the first three albums. Fair point but not exactly true. Although it's safe to say that the band never really deviated too much from their tried and tested "wun-too-free-for!" brand of knucklehead pop-punk over their twenty year career, they were very much like a punk AC/DC in that they knew their strengths, stuck to them and for the most part did it well even as their star was fading commercially with the '80s turning into the '90s. Mondo Bizarro and its predecessor Brain Drain are all the proof you need.
It's one of my eternal regrets that I was a year or two too late getting into the Ramones to see them live - I'm pretty sure it was a Ginger Wildheart shout out that led to me picking up their double CD best of Hey! Ho! Let's Go! in a sale at HMV and it quickly hooked me in. I started to look for the individual albums and eventually picked up a triple CD box set called The Chrysalis Years covering the group's final four albums (plus a live effort from around the time). So I guess you could say that it was the final stage of the Ramones which was my early proper education into them.
Mondo Bizarro, released in 1992, had something of a troubled genesis - the group had been dropped by Sire thus ending a 13-year association and the group had suffered the hammer blow of founder member and chief songwriter Dee Dee leaving. Against this backdrop, it's quite a surprise that they managed to turn in arguably the best album of the late stage of their career. Maybe it was down to the return of Ed Stasium in the producers' chair who'd overseen a lot of their classic early material but tracks like Heidi Is A Headcase, Tomorrow She Goes Away and I Won't Let It Happen were classic Ramones writ large.
It isn't just a one-dimensional pinhead lobotomy fest though - Dee Dee may have gone but in Strength To Endure and the all-time classic Poison Heart (originally written for a proposed Stiv Bators solo album - Stiv's version has surfaced on a few bootlegs down the years) he came up with two of the strongest tracks on the album - the sad story behind it though is that he essentially sold the rights to the songs to Joey, Johnny and Marky so he could afford a lawyer to bail him out of jail after being imprisoned for drug possession. Elsewhere, Censorshit (taking a swipe at Tipper Gore and the PMRC), the anti nine-to-five rant of The Job That Ate My Brain and Cabbies On Crack showed the group going political with a small p to good effect. They even turn in a cover of the Doors' excellent Take It As It Comes which really has no right to work as well as it does.
It's quite strange to think that in an age where nearly every alternative band cites them as an influence, the Ramones pretty much couldn't get arrested in the early '90s - like its predecessors Brain Drain and Halfway To Sanity, Mondo Bizarro undeservedly tanked although Poison Heart did give the group a minor hit both over here and in the States. One covers album (1993's undeservedly maligned Acid Eaters) and one final album (1995's Adios Amigos) and the group were no more. With Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee no longer with us, it's safe to say that a reunion very much ain't happening. I did go to see Marky's Ramones covers band Blitzkrieg at the Islington Academy a few years back when I was living in the Smoke and...yeah, let's not go there aye?...
Although by 1989-92 any groundbreaking or shock value that the Ramones once had was very much a thing of the past, saying that there was a quality drop-off on those later albums just doesn't ring true to me. Mondo Bizarro and Brain Drain (give the awesome Zero Zero UFO, Don't Bust My Chops, I Believe In Miracles and the Stephen King film theme Pet Sematary a listen off that as well as their fun cover of Palisades Park) might not have had the novelty value of the group's first few albums but they're certainly no worse for it and both have plenty of great songs to keep you listening. In fact, to be honest, you could say that about most of their '80s and '90s albums. Take a trip away from the road more travelled and go explore, trust me when I say you'll enjoy what you find.
RIP Joey, Dee Dee, Johnny and Tommy. All much missed.
It frankly astonished me that at that stage in their career they could come out with something as good as Mondo Bizarro. It's a fantastic album all round, and a far more three-dimensional work than some might expect. Lots of nuance and variety there. For a lot of bands it might even be considered a career peak, rather than a footnote. And of course "Poison Heart" is extraordinary - I don't think it was actually written FOR the Stiv project, so much as it was among the material Dee Dee had when he went to participate in that particular clusterfuck, but Stiv's version was the first to be recorded. The very best version I ever heard was when Dee Dee's solo band ICLC played the Duchess in (I think) '95 - for the encore he came on alone, without the band, just him and an electric guitar, and played the thing as a slowed down lament. It was one of the most affecting, powerful, hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck gig moments I've ever experienced at a gig.
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