.::Good Charlotte/The Ramones: Posers or punks?::.

Here's a little something that you can read and show to anyone who happens to like the Ramones and hate GC, it's very to the point and to me, it makes a heck of alot of sense. Enjoy!

Good Charlotte/The Ramones
Posers or punks?
The truth has been spoken!

Person #1: So many of you Good Charlotte haters call Good Charlotte posers & feel the Ramones are punk. Ok, but the problem is the way you diss actually applies directly to the Ramones, so are the Ramones posers in your eyes also?

Examples:

(1) You say Good Charlotte sold out. Ramones were in it for money also. They never said differently.

(2) You say Good Charlotte can't play their instruments well. Did you ever listen to the first several Ramones albums? Really! that is some seriously simple playing. Joey Ramone once told the Clash to not worry about how well they played because the Ramones could barely play and they were on tour. That is right out of Joey's mouth.

(3) You say Good Charlotte has stupid lyrics. Again, you obviously have not listened to the Ramones much. The simplicity of Ramones' lyrics is part of their charm.

(4) You say Good Charlotte changed to pop just to sell records. Ever read the history of the Ramones? They tried EVERYTHING to sell albums, including slick producers of (then) current pop bands to make their songs more marketable. It is not selling out, it is trying to get your songs heard.

These are just a few discussion points to start with. So, Good Charlotte haters, are you saying the Ramones were posers?

Person #2: I doubt punk rock appealed to preteens and little kids back then. Besides, punk was original then from what I know. The Ramones were there WAY before Good Charlotte ever was.

Person #1: Actually the demographics on record sales has not changed much at all in the last 40 years. Since the 60s the big buyers have always been pre-teens and teens. Those are the people who spend the money on records & those are the people the record companies want to appeal to.

And the early punk bands like the Ramones and Clash did appeal to them WHEN THEY COULD reach them. Unfortunately, that was before "downloading" and MTV so reaching them was a REAL problem and one reason why those bands were not financially very successful.

Person #3: For #3) the Ramones have stupid lyrics, yes, but they did not have a million teenage girls thinking they were the greatest thing in the world or claiming they saved them from suicide.

Person #1: So why does having a million teen girls liking the band or claiming they were saved from suicide make you not like Good Charlotte? I would think a bunch of people claiming they were helped by a band's music would be a GOOD thing about a band.

I think you make one of my point very well. I think a lot of Good Charlotte haters actually diss Good Charlotte because they have achieved a level of commercial success that their favorite bands have not. Achieving success does not validate good music anymore than not achieving it invalidates it.

Don't hold Good Charlotte success against them. Judge their music for music's sake.

Person #4: I never said that the Ramones were posers, they had their charm, as you said, in the fact that their music was simple... but they did sell out, but that’s all that I’m going to say.

Person #1: Never said you called the Ramones posers. What I said was if you called Good Charlotte posers for the reasons above, then you were definitely calling one of the keystones of punk music posers - the Ramones. And the Ramones can hardly be called posers.

And there are two types of bands - those that adapt to a growing fan base and commercial demands to reach a broader audience and those that doggedly stick by a single musical stance and stagnate. Some call it selling out, I call it growing.

Person #5: Well, here's how I see it:

Jello Biafra, in kind of a side rant on his spoken word album "Machine Gun in the Clowns Hand" He goes on about why he became a punk singer.

He and his friend used to listen to glam and stuff after smoking pot-it was ritual. then they found a Ramones record for cheap and bought it and listened to it. They thought it was interesting. Back when he was a kid in the Midwest, Country Rock was big. He was in Denver, and they were having a show hosted by a label. They had Joni Mitchell and everyone, but the first act was some band called the Ramones, so Jello and his friend's checked it out. As soon as these guys came on, the middle class yuppies, these people he despised, were horrified, and that was the beauty of punk.

But we don't get that from GC. Their lyrics aren't sarcastic or political, they're just pop music with louder guitars, and, though their fake look might, their music DOES NOT scare or offend anyone.

Person #1: Interesting story.

But really, ANYONE, including Good Charlotte would SHOCK the people at a JONI MITCHELL concert!

Have you actually listened to any Ramones music? It is not very scary or offensive. Punk music is defined by how offensive or scary it is or, let's face it, the death metal bands would be the ultimate punk bands!

And think about it - one of the MOST SCARY AND OFFENSIVE bands of all time to people of status were the BEATLES and ELVIS PRESLEY! They scared the crap out of parents! So I guess that makes Elvis and Ringo punk rockers. I don't think so What I was trying to get thru to folks like you and other Good Charlotte haters in this thread was that you may not like Good Charlotte, and that is fine. But it is NOT because they are not punk if you think of punk in the sense that it is reflective of the Ramones work.

You are just using that label as a reason why you do not like Good Charlotte because that argument just does not hold true.

The Ramones are not punk since so many fans and media refer to them as punk. But just like any genre, punk as EVOLVED and what punk started out to be and is now is different.

Or maybe punk just fractionalized into many various sub-genres. Whatever the case, the initial theme of this discussion stays the same - the arguments used to discount Good Charlotte from the realms of punk would also exclude the Ramones from the realms of punk.

Person #6: I dislike plenty of punk bands and love plenty of non-punk bands. it's just that the Ramones had something Good Charlotte doesn't- CHARACTER. they weren't built in a factory and forced down your throat, at least not nearly to the extent of Good Charlotte Inc.

Person #1: So now it is a matter of CHARACTER that makes you like a band or not. OK, but the Ramones did not have anymore character than Good Charlotte. In fact, if you learn a little bit about the Ramones you will find that they all grew up in a very nice neighborhood in upper middle class families. Their "character" was self manufactured to set themselves apart from their middle class backgrounds.

Good Charlotte members came from a whole lot lower down on the old socio-economic scale than Joey Ramone. Some of them did suffer child abuse and experienced the effects of alcoholic parents. Those thing are character builders, and these experiences are reflected in their music.

Did you ever notice that in the Ramones body of work very little of their music says anything about their background experiences. Why? Because except for only one member of Ramones their backgrounds did not provide much input for their music because it was just too plain, or put another way, characterless.

So you tell me again which band has more "character" based on real life and which manufactured "character" to include in their image and songs.

Person #7 (Me): The answer to all this would be: If you are a hater and where to by any chance call Good Charlotte posers you would call the Ramones (Which as stated above are one of the keystones of punk music) posers too.