'Pleasant Dreams' (Annotated) : Appreciating the Ramones' Overlooked Power-Pop Classic

this album got a lot of airplay on wnew-fm alongside bruce, pat benatar, bob seger etc. calling it power-pop makes sense. i've always thought of it as the most produced ramones album, a more successful version of what they tried to do on end of the century. looking forward to ypur analysis of "not my place in the 9-5 world" which is a very compelling song and also kind of terrible at the same time IMO.

speaking of which...

It's Not My Place (in the 9 to 5 World) (Joey) 3:24
in some ways i think this is the album's signature song, thematically and also because it's hard to imagine it on any other ramones album. it's where gouldman i think has the most sway, from the sound effects (the alarm clock that starts it) to the massed backing vocals and the tympani-laden who-style bridge. it's kind of an aural trainwreck, but i love it for the beat (kind of a bastardized, punked-up latin thing) and marky's drumming -- he's all over the snare and toms, it really makes me wish more songs gave him so much room. and the lyrics are an entertaining mishmash of ramones shout-outs (to phil spector, alan arkush, stephen king, roger corman, themselves -- "ramones are hanging out in kokomo") and contempt for the straight world. ("to get a good job you need the proper schooling/now who the hell do you think you're fooling?") who needs a job when you can hang out with lester bangs? (was this song the first one to mention lester?)

I can remember ten of these tracks!

My mom really hated "She's a Sensation."

My first Ramones record. Never got the hate. She's a Sensation was great and Morbs mom, while usually otm, is off base here.

I'm sure the similarity is probably coincidental or the result of some shared influence I'm not aware of, but is anyone else unable to hear "We Want The Airwaves" without thinking of Elvis Costello's "I'm Not Angry," or vice versa?

can sort of see that. the whispered "angry!" falls in the chord progression about the same place the "that's right, that's right" does.

She's a Sensation (Joey) 3:28

with all due respect to morbz's mom, i think this is pretty close to perfect, as far as joey's '60s-pop pastiches go. starts with a spectorish guitar-drums vamp, and then joey rolls on the double alliteration of the title (SHe's a Sen-Say-SHun/SHe's a Sen-Say-Shu-un). i love his singing on this, including the way he sometimes stretches the title out to double its length instead of repeating it -- "she's a sensay-sha-aaan-oh-wo-oh/she look a so fine." christgau wrote a good thing at one point about how underrated joey was as a rock singer, which is otm. dude really knew how to play a line. anyway, the song structure is ridiculously simple: verse-chorus-bridge, repeat the same verse/chorus/bridge, and out. the only real variation is marky gets to throw some nice fills in on the second chorus. but the bridge! the bridge is the real key, the way the song modulates up a notch and joey just sounds so smitten: "i didn't know until i walked you home ..." also, i think after the first bridge, it stays in that key for the next verse, and then climbs again on the second bridge, so the whole song has an exuberantly upward trajectory. the only song on the album where joey gets and keeps the girl...

yeah the whispers in both choruses are really what put it over the top and make me go 'hmm'

Why is this considered overlooked? Did it not sell very well? Isn't "KKK..." their most famous non-70s hit?

i don't know how it sold, tho none of their albums sold all that well. but by overlooked i just mean it tends to get lost in the shuffle when people talk about them.

I'm sure the similarity is probably coincidental or the result of some shared influence I'm not aware of, but is anyone else unable to hear "We Want The Airwaves" without thinking of Elvis Costello's "I'm Not Angry," or vice versa?

Probably coincidental, because the Ramones' "That's right!" is a direct lift from Donovan's "Mellow Yellow."

(Speaking of direct lifts, the melody of the "Don't wanna be a working stiff..." section in "It's Not My Place" is taken from the John Entwistle Who song "Whiskey Man.")

OK, I'm off to Oxfam tomorrer.

the melody of the "Don't wanna be a working stiff..." section in "It's Not My Place" is taken from the John Entwistle Who song "Whiskey Man.")

aha! i knew it sounded who-ish. and true about "mellow yellow," obv.

7-11 (Joey) 3:39

the album's longest track and one of my favorites. joey's loving send-up of "leader of the pack," transposed from '60s teenville to bland '80s urbia. he meets her at the 7-11, they spend a torrid night at the holiday inn, and then she dies in a car crash. lots of funny lines -- "she was standing by the space invaders/so i said, can i see you later?" -- but also manages to pick back up the album's thematic thread: "whatever happened to the radio/and where did all the fun songs go..." and since this is joey fantasyland we're visiting, where the radio stayed fun, when they go down to the record swap the kids are dancing to the blitzkrieg bop. the song is mostly a joke, though, as joey makes clear with the deadpan reading of the climactic verse (accompanied by strings and thunder and rain audio effects): "the crash, shattering glass, the sirens and pain." yet another terrific bridge. makes me wonder if gouldman kept demanding bridges or something.

i mean a tetralogy with End Of...

Ramones albums do seem to go together in fours, conceptually:

* Ramones/Leave Home/Rocket/It's Alive: the classic era with Tommy
* Road to Ruin/End of the Century/Pleasant Dreams/Sub. Jungle: the pop era with Marky
* Too Tough/Animal Boy/Halfway/Brain Drain: the 'return to rock' era with Richie (well not BD, but it fits)
* Mondo/Acid Eaters/Adios/We're Outta Here: the final, post-Sire, post-Dee Dee, post-me bothering to buy new Ramones albums era

yeah i think that's a good way to break them down. obviously the drummer wasn't the only influence, but it's interesting how important that is. marky's chops worked well with more ambitious production, and i think richie's muscle was what johnny was looking for at that point.

You Didn't Mean Anything to Me (Dee Dee) 3:00
Come On Now (Dee Dee) 2:34

choice dee dee cuts, back to back. the first is some kind of weekend getaway gone bad ("everybody was cranky/even the maids were mean") leavened with oddball grace notes ("we came across a miracle/there was beer in the soda machine"), powered by a stomping surf-guitar riff and sweet aah-aah harmonies. johnny does one of his begrudging stripped-down solos, over a flaring organ. there's more organ (and another johnny solo) on "come on now" -- on the surface, a straight-up throwback that just about lives up to its ancestry ("come on, let's go," "come on everybody"). (of course, they'd already used the opening riff of "come on everybody" in "suzy is a headbanger.") but anyway, "come on now" also works in some classic dee dee couplets: "i'm just a comic-book boy/there's nothing scary to enjoy," "freak admission, stroll inside/i was born on a rollercoaster ride." and it goes out over one of johnny's single-note progressions, which get me every time.

supposedly walter lure (of the heartbreakers) was brought in for the gtr solos on this LP and Sub Jungle.

because johnny couldn't play them, or wouldn't?

This Business Is Killing Me (Joey) 2:42

i like this song, but i've never known wtf it's about. i like the intensity of the verses, joey's frantic, stream-of-anxiety singing -- "i'm sick-ta-death i'm nervous wreck this bizness killin me ya know this bizness killin me ya know" -- but it seems sort of unconnected to anything in particular. the only hint of any kind of business comes on the bridge ("you work, you work/you write all night") but that collapses into paranoia and resentment ("can't please all the people all the time/but then they don't please me"). the chorus is just a long string of "oh no, oh no, oh no." since this came out the year after the shining and "it's not my place" namechecks stephen king and jack nicholson, it's occurred to me the song could be written from the p.o.v. of jack torrance, but that's a random guess. anyway, gouldman amps up the psycho-tension with thumping piano and those ghostly soaring oohs and aahs in the coda.

Sitting in My Room (Dee Dee) 2:31

the album admittedly ends with a bit of a whimper. these is pro forma dee dee alienation, feels pretty tossed off. i like the line about "humming a sickening tune," but mostly it's by the numbers stuff, including the glue-sniffing reference. album would have been better served by, say, "touring" (demo version of which is on the rhino reissue). but maybe they were trying to keep some semblance of a joey/dee dee balance -- even though this is, on the whole, much more a joey record.

Joey was not a well budgie, you know...

of the original quartet, only tommy seems anything like a well-adjusted human being.

I remember seeing them on the Tomorrow show when this album came out ... alas, there was a guest host for Snyder.

I've steered clear of this one all these years, but looks like I'll finally have to check it out.

supposedly walter lure (of the heartbreakers) was brought in for the gtr solos on this LP and Sub Jungle.

― m coleman, Tuesday, March 17, 2009 5:42 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

because johnny couldn't play them, or wouldn't?

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, March 17, 2009 9:42 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

even the solos such as they are aren't much. i love the one-note solo on "i wanna be sedated."

http://www.punkrockcds.com/images/OperationIvy.jpg
Is this meant as tribute?

I remember seeing lots of album covers that matched more closely.
I will probably lose this bet, but I bet there are more homage album cover arts to Pleasant Dreams than for Rocket to Russia.