Track of the Week: The Ramones: I Don't Care (1977)

The Ramones: the denim-clad, leather jacketed saviours of Rock 'N' Roll, or a bunch of goons with barely an I.Q. point between them playing a limited repertoire of sped up surf songs long after they should have been old enough to know better? (Is there any difference?) For the most part, the bruvvers were simply too rock to subscribe fully to the bracing nihilism that defined much of the punk era. And on one hand, 'I Don't Care' is typical Ramones-patented cartoon rebellion, saying no simply because you want to. With their typical tongue-in-cheek humour, and a sound understanding of the mechanics of pop music, the lyrics start off as an anti-love song, but of course, as Joey sings 'I don't care about that girl,' we all know that he really does, and no amount of nihilistic posturing can get him out of it. But, are our heroes really so stoopid? There is something wilfully nasty about 'I Don't Care'. It only has three chords, like pretty much every other Ramones song, but it is somehow a far cry from the bubble-gum pop of 'Rockaway Beach', say. Dee Dee's bass and Johnny's guitar merge together to form a particularly thick, grungy wall of noise, and the agitated repetition of the song's chords, claustrophobically close together, sound particularly nagging and intense. Then, in the next verse (not quite the same as the first), Joey turns it all round again by dropping the line about the girl and sneering 'I don't care about these words' instead. Now that's nihilism - he doesn't even give a hoot about the song he's singing. Screw the music, we don't care. Now that's punk. But is he being 100% serious? As the bridge descends into endless repetition of 'I don't care / I don't care / I don't care / I DON'T CARE!', you wonder if you can imagine a slight smirk beneath Joey's fantastic sneer. By contrasting the reference to the girl with the line about the song itself, is he drawing a line between pent up teenage sexual repression and nihilism itself? Or is the song just good, clean, stoopid fun? But of course, you don't have time to think about this, do you, because the whole song is over in one minute and thirty-nine seconds, giving you only a split second of silence before the Ramones race through the perfect pop of 'Sheena Is A Punk Rocker'. Interestingly enough, 'I Don't Care' was one of the first songs The Ramones wrote. In just over 90 seconds in encapsulates everything that is great about the band, but also sums up quite neatly all their limitations. All of their classic songs are more or less variations on this theme, ranging from the anthemic straight rewrite 'I Wanna Be Sedated' to other cartoony-and-not-as-dumb-as-you-think classics such as 'Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue'. But unfortunately, The Ramones never managed to find a satisfactory way to expand their sound, and once they'd squeezed all they possibly could from their original formula - i.e.' half way through making 'Road To Ruin' if you want to be generous - they could only become hollow parodies of their former selves. From 'stoopid' to stupid in the space of two years, not bad. Still, this article was going to be far less complementary to the band then it has wound up being. It has been a while since I have felt the need to listen to The Ramones, and certainly I don't really feel like sitting through a whole album, but every now and then, nothing quite sums up the way I feel better then 'I Don't Care' or 'I'm Against It' - perhaps the shrewdest dissection of modern youth's attitude towards politics yet written. All together now: ONETWOTHREEFOUR!!!!!