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Shea Moxon is a lawyer who lives with his wife, Kathy , and their 10-year-old son, Raven , in St. Petersburg. Moxon, 35, has short, dark hair and looks like an ordinary guy in his jeans and T-shirt, walking around the Emerald, the downtown St. Petersburg bar where local bands perform.
The Harvard-educated professional isn't the chattiest guy at the bar. But strap a guitar around his shoulder and Moxon manages to say plenty, thanks to his hero, Johnny Ramone .
Ramone died Sept. 15 after a five-year battle with prostate cancer. His passing got only a brief mention in the mainstream media and was deemed noteworthy mostly because he was the third original member of the legendary punk-rock quartet to die in three years.
Johnny Ramone was 55.
To Moxon, guitar player for punk band Car Bomb Driver , however, and to legions of music lovers worldwide, his death marked the end of an era.
The first of the Ramones to go was the band's beloved leader, Joey Ramone , who succumbed to lymphatic cancer in 2001 at 49.
The next year, the year the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, bassist Dee Dee Ramone died of a drug overdose. He also was 49.
Moxon knew even when he was a teenager that punk wasn't like the rest of rock 'n' roll. Punk rock had no stars.
"(Punk)'s not about worshiping idols," Moxon said from the Tampa law firm where he works. "It was always okay to take potshots at punk rockers.
"But when Joey died, I realized how important he was," Moxon said. "I realized how important his personality was. That's when it really hit me, "Gosh, now it's really over. It's never going to be the same again."'
The Ramones, along with the Detroit garage rock bands Iggy and the Stooges and the MC5 , are credited with inventing punk. The band, who referred to themselves as bruddas , formed in 1974 in Queens.
Once accused of playing songs that were too short, Johnny Ramone, not known for being a big talker, famously quipped, "They're not too short, we just play 'em real fast." Indeed, most Ramones songs clock in at under 2 1/2 minutes.
They're love songs, many of them, or songs about high school, dances, girls. Sure, Joey gives the lyrics his special comical twist -- hence, Teenage Lobotomy and I Wanna Be Sedated and Sheena Is a Punk Rocker -- but the formula is tried-and-true early 1960s pop.
The Ramones were, William McKeen says, "Rock 'n' roll babies." McKeen, editor of Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay: An Anthology , says the Ramones have had such a lasting impact because of the glee in the band's music.
McKeen, who teaches a rock 'n' roll history class at the University of Florida, says "There is a minimalist joy in the Ramones music. I'm not sure I hear that in a lot of music today. You just feel good listening to it."
Evan Harrison is the vice president and general manager of AOL Music and the AOL Radio Network. AOL recently launched a 24-hour online station that plays nothing but Ramones available at AOL Keyword: Radio and Radio@Netscape) The company has several other stations dedicated to artists, but Harrison, 34, is particularly excited about this one because he's a diehard Ramones freak.
"The Ramones are an institution," says Harrison by phone from New York. He attended more than 50 concerts before the band called it quits in 1996.
Harrison mentions bands, including Green Day and Pearl Jam , who cite the Ramones as an influence. (Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder and his wife, Jill, were reportedly at Johnny Ramone's bedside when he died.)
But the Ramones, for all the band's influence, never once scored a top 40 hit.
Ramones DVDBe on the lookout next week for Raw ($19.99, Image Entertainment), a DVD visual scrapbook of the band's history. It features five hours of material, including live performances, footage of television interviews with Howard Stern and others, and scenes from drummer Marky Ramone's Super 8 films on tour. Celebrity guests include Robby Krieger (The Doors) , Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder ,Carly Simon(!), Bono , Debbie Harry even Al Lewis , the guy who played Grandpa on The Munsters.
- Gina Vivinetto, gina@sptimes.com