Fuente de la imagen
http://losmasparados.wordpress.com/frases-celebres-del-rock-n%C2%B4roll/
The Ramones Play Aberdeen, WA (Nirvana’s hometown)
On March 5, 1977, the Ramones played the Rocker Tavern in
Aberdeen, Washington. The bar, like Aberdeen itself, was populated by
hard working and hard drinking loggers.
Stephen Rabow, then a student at Olympia’s Evergreen State College, attended along with several friends.
A cover band opened, playing the popular songs of the day.
Bands playing Rocker’s had a very specific between-song procedure: they were expected to stop for a minute or two after each number.
During this time, couples would leave the dance floor to refresh their drinks and/or look for a different partner. This ritual was repeated after each song.
The cover band finished its set and the Ramones began setting up their equipment. Rabow and his friends braced themselves. “Just the hiss of the amplifiers…[we are] like looking at each other in fear,” Rabow remembers.
The Ramones took the stage, leather-clad punk rockers fresh from New York City.
Joey announced, “Wuh the Ramones! Glad yah heeah!” in his thick Queens accent.
Then the band did their standard ‘one-two-three-four’ and launched into a two-minute blast of deafening noise.
As was the Ramones’ style, they finished up the first song and Dee Dee immediately counted off ‘one-two-three-four’ and the band lurched into the next tune.
The Ramones continued at their frenetic pace, not allowing patrons off the dance floor.
For the audience, the scene became surreal. “They’re stuck,” says Rabow. “These people are stuck on the dance floor.
They don’t know what’s going on.
It’s louder than hell. It was like an alien invasion. They didn’t know what had happened to them.”
The entire show made it onto a 1979 bootleg recording called At Your Birthday Party.
Stephen Rabow, then a student at Olympia’s Evergreen State College, attended along with several friends.
A cover band opened, playing the popular songs of the day.
Bands playing Rocker’s had a very specific between-song procedure: they were expected to stop for a minute or two after each number.
During this time, couples would leave the dance floor to refresh their drinks and/or look for a different partner. This ritual was repeated after each song.
The cover band finished its set and the Ramones began setting up their equipment. Rabow and his friends braced themselves. “Just the hiss of the amplifiers…[we are] like looking at each other in fear,” Rabow remembers.
The Ramones took the stage, leather-clad punk rockers fresh from New York City.
Joey announced, “Wuh the Ramones! Glad yah heeah!” in his thick Queens accent.
Then the band did their standard ‘one-two-three-four’ and launched into a two-minute blast of deafening noise.
As was the Ramones’ style, they finished up the first song and Dee Dee immediately counted off ‘one-two-three-four’ and the band lurched into the next tune.
The Ramones continued at their frenetic pace, not allowing patrons off the dance floor.
For the audience, the scene became surreal. “They’re stuck,” says Rabow. “These people are stuck on the dance floor.
They don’t know what’s going on.
It’s louder than hell. It was like an alien invasion. They didn’t know what had happened to them.”
The entire show made it onto a 1979 bootleg recording called At Your Birthday Party.
Comments
Neil Hubbard says: So we went to a place in Bremerton called Natasha’s on that Friday night, to get a preview. I’ve never been to such a weird place. Bremerton is a Navy town across Puget Sound from Seattle. This place was a hang out for the Navy guys. We arrived long before the show started and helped the band load their gear in for sound check. Pop Rocks were a new thing then, and the guys in the band were fascinated by them.
The doors to the venue opened and the Navy guys started coming in. Somehow it was legal for them not only to bring their own beer, but it was also legal for them to bring girlfriends who were under 21. So in they came, a half rack of beer in one arm and a 16 year old girl on the other. Definitely weird.
I wish I could remember the name of the opening act, but they did Kansas covers. A perfectly matched billing, if you ask me. Once the Ramones took the stage me and my small gaggle of friends were the only people left on the dance floor. The others had retreated to the far dark corners of the club. But there was no escape from the immense intensity of sound those four boys from Queens put out. Like a New York subway train lurching between stations, they did their standard 2 minute blast, stopped, 1,2,3,4, two minutes more of blistering, blissful noise, on a repeat cycle for maybe 30 minutes. They only had one album of material at that point, so it was a rather short show.
The most memorable moment, the effects of which remain with me today, was between songs. I was walking in front of the stage left speaker stack, when an enormous burst of feedback from Johnny’s guitar ripped out from the speakers and into my left ear. I wasn’t wearing any hearing protection. As the sound entered my ear, I felt a “twang” and my left eye suddenly began watering uncontrollably. My hearing had been permanently damaged. Ever since that moment I’ve had tinnitus–ringing in my left ear. I hear it right now as I type. At some point after that I started wearing earplugs, and as a professional bagpiper I’ve worn custom fitted musicians plugs since Bill Rieflin turned me on to them in about 1992.
But the damage was done that night at Natasha’s–to my hearing and to my musical sensibilities.
The Ramones have remained one of my favorite bands ever since. We didn’t make the trek to Aberdeen the next night, but two nights later on Sunday March 6, 1977, we promoted the Ramones and Meyce show in the Georgian Ballroom of Seattle’s Olympic Hotel, today the Fairmont Olympic. 500 leather-clad punks invaded Seattle’s fanciest hotel in what is probably the oddest punk venue booking in Seattle history.
And today, I feel sad that three of those four original Ramones are no longer with us, and we have only the memories of their great shows, and their records, to remind us what an incredible band they were.
Fuente: Posted: August 30, 2011 in Offbeat Seattle-Related Music Stories
