Gig 029 The Ramones / Talking Heads

The Ramones / Talking Heads
31 May
Swindon Brunel Rooms

I don’t think I have ever looked forward to a gig as much as this one. I’d first heard the Ramones almost exactly one year previously and had developed an obsession from that moment, coveting their unaffordable import-only debut album until my friend Phil bought the UK release and it was sort of shared among our group of friends it in our unspoken sweetly anarcho-communist way. I bought their second album Leave Home, and their single Sheena is a Punk Rocker, which was a minor chart hit around the time of this gig. My 12” copy was one of a limited edition with a logo on the back of the sleeve which could be exchanged for a mail-order t-shirt. 44 years on I still have my copy (seen here), the offer unredeemed – a Ramones logo t-shirt, that’s an idea that will never catch on.

As mentioned, Oxford was at this time something of a desert for punk gigs. Swindon on the other hand, or at least a promoter in Swindon, was hip to the trip. I lived on the main road halfway between the two towns, and on a Saturday set off on my moped to buy tickets. The Brunel Rooms was a nightclub in central Swindon, not that Swindon really has a centre, and on a Saturday afternoon the doors were locked and there was naturally enough no sign of life. I had thought there might be a box office or something. Nah. I mooched around town until I found a likely looking record shop.

‘Are you selling tickets for the Ramones at the Brunel Rooms?’

‘No mate.’

‘So where can I get them?’

‘You can’t, just queue up on the night.’

That was how it worked in those days. I bought a copy of In The City by a group called The Jam, and another single by The Table called Do The Standing Still, I’d take a punt on anything vaguely punk in those days and singles only cost about 50p.

So the night comes round and all I can think is ‘arrive early’, which we did, and got in no problem. The Brunel Rooms was the sort of nightclub we’d normally avoid like the plague, not that they would allowed us entry in the first place. Most nights it would have been the domain of older lads with a perm, a moustache and Brut aftershave who after a few pints and having failed to pull – ugly charmless clods that they were – would have given any of us a pasting soon as look at us, or so we imagined. Every town had them. There were alcoves around a dancefloor, a circular revolving bar and a low stage on one side of the room. I suspected CBGBs was much shabbier and much cooler than this.

I’d read a little about Talking Heads in the music press, and bought their single Love > Building on Fire, a taught and minimal take on a Stax-style rhythm with a neat brass break in the middle. Great single, certainly not punk. We were close enough to touch the group, who inspired curiosity rather than adoration. If Steve Hillage and Todd Rundgren had been quite conventional in their countercultural weirdness, Talking Heads were genuinely weird in their normality. They wore quite stylish, unremarkable preppy clothes and had sensible haircuts, looking much like the privileged US college students they undoubtedly had until recently been; the bass player was a small woman who seemed to be concentrating very hard and whose guitar seemed too big for her; there wasn’t much denim or leather in evidence. The ordinariness of their demeanour made the strange and undemonstrative intensity of their performance quite unsettling. It’s now understood that David Byrne created a persona similar to that of Psycho’s Norman Bates, a respectable regular guy suppressing homicidal tendencies, which fitted perfectly their closing tune Psycho Killer. It was kind of thrilling. At the age of 17 you want to buy into the culture of the groups you love but I wasn’t sure how you would do this with Talking Heads. Get a sensible haircut and buy some boring clothes?

‘Hi, we’re the Ramones, and you’re a Loudmouth baby!’ ‘1-2-3-4!’ The Ramones, on the other hand, looked exactly like the photos of the Ramones. I was pressed against the front of the stage as Joey Ramone leaned over the front rows, mic stand tilted forward, Johnny hunched over a Mosrite guitar like a cobra, Dee Dee hammering away on root notes and counting in the tunes without a pause, except once to say ‘leave da kids alone!’ when the security threatened to get heavy. I think he started one song, possibly Today Your Love Tomorrow the World, with ‘eins-zwei-drei-vier’. They were a living comic strip, whipping though a set of 30-odd minutes like a tightly wound-up clockwork toy, no notion of pacing the set, no tension and release, no slow/fast, no loud/quiet, just consistently very short songs with strong melodies which bore the influence of the Stooges, surf music and 60s girl groups. While not technically challenging, such simple music is hard to play inasmuch as there are an insane number of chord changes and the slightest mistake or deviation will stink the place up. No worries on that score with the Ramones. Such variety as slipped through involved a revved-up cover of The Rivieras’ California Sun, maybe one or two minor chords on the newer tunes such as Sheena. It was a form of perfection, and as it turned out career-wise it left them with nowhere else to go, unlike those clever Talking Heads. Hey, who cares about careers? ‘1-2-3-4!’