Fascinating! Always love these backstories. The Ramones were brilliant - I don't have a favourite album but my most-watched DVD is The Ramones Story
I was wondering the same thing about Iron Maiden the other day - they seem more of a merch company than a heavy metal band these days.
You can get Iron Maiden beer, Iron Maiden wine, Iron Maiden sunglasses etc. let alone the common merch like T-shirts.
Given many more people can buy merch than can buy a concert ticket (which has inherently limited numbers) I wonder how the two revenue sources compare.
Well, Brian Eno said of Velvet Underground's first album that it didn't sell many copies but everyone who bought it started a band.
Shawn Stussy printed shirts to promote his surfboards and ended up being the originator of “streetwear”
I dunno, Seems like author of article is projecting, I feel like most people would be happy if they made that much of an cultural impact
I have a friend that worked with them. I sent him the article. He’d know, if it was correct.
I don't mean to be crude, but how can it haunt them, when they're all dead?
Wikipedia says 3 of them are still alive (Marky, Richie, C.J.).
[dead]
Made my day. Thank you
How does it haunt them when they are dead?
And they explicitly said that they didn't wanna be buried on a pet sematary!
The Ramones are haunting us all.
Seems like The Ramones were way ahead of their time, whether they knew it or not. Before the digital age, most bands made the bulk of their their money from record sales. Concert tours were just promotional events for the latest album. That model has since been flipped to what The Ramones were doing 50 years ago - "music sales" earns little compared to concerts and merchandising. Now that's punk rock! LOL
I think you are describing the most successful bands. I wouldn't be surprised if the average band good enough to play a small venue made more money on the shirts than the records and tapes. People weren't choosing them from among all the bands at the record store but from all the experiences in the town that night.
I read that Aerosmith made more money from Guitar Hero game royalties than from their albums. And it's been true for a long time that most acts make more from touring and merch than song sales.
If you read the article, it will be clear that one of its core theses is that their lighting tech and graphic designer was essentially a pioneer of selling merchandise as a revenue generator for a band.
The Ramones sucked. can we just all finally be real about this?
They have certain charms but talent wasnt high on that list.
shots fired.
I really enjoy their songs, and I first listened to them in my late 20s, long after the age where bands imprint on you like a baby chick.
Music is always highly subjective, but to my ears, I'd have to agree. Not that my opinion means anything at all.
I think the headline implies as much... people liked the idea of the Ramones more than they liked actually listening to them.
Pinhead
They didn't. What happened is that one of them (Johnny) was a staunch conservative, so, like Sex Pistols with Johnny Rotten, they are routinely "cancelled" from the punk scene (e.g. they are not real punk, their music sucks etc). Other bands with less musical prowess (like the Exploited) are still idolatred by the punk scene because they were largely anarchists. It's fun that, after 50 years, Ramones and SP are the only punk bands that still generate controversy. Pretty much all the others are run-of-the mill punk bands that we got used to and completely lost any provocative charge.
Johnny Rotten voted for Trump in 2020.
(What? He did. I don't like it either. Well, I thought it was funny.)
Isn't it normal and typical for musical acts to make more money from concert tours and merchandise sales than the music itself?
I seem to recall reading that Gary Holt or Jack Gibson, either from Exodus, claim that despite being known worldwide as a thrash metal act they have to support themselves selling t-shirts, since their earnings from touring, albums or streamings won't cover their expenses
As is noted in the article, selling band shirts was not yet common practice when the Ramones starting doing it. Until Napster came along tours were marketing for albums, which were the primary revenue source.
Not in the past. When that change flipped from music sales to merchandise and tours, I couldn’t be sure but I’d reckon the early 2000s.
It's not that they made more money from merchandise, it's that they sold more t-shirts than albums. Implying that more people were interested in the "image" of punk rock than the music.
I guess that's the definition of 'iconic' - many a time I have approached someone wearing a Ramones or Motörhead T-shirt trying to chat a bit, only to be told 'Sorry, don't know the music at all, but the shirt is cool...'
Gabba gabba hey!
I can wear out a t-shirt much faster than an album, tape or CD, and I am not very caring of the conditions of albums.
I've also never seen anyone slam dance carrying a Ramones album, but I have seen them slam dance wearing a Ramones t-shirt that got tore up.
They're played every day on the radio, on streaming services, etc. Billions of listens vs. thousands (?) of shirts.
> Billions of listens vs. thousands (?) of shirts.
how much of the revenue derived from those listens turn into commission to the musicians?
Those t-shirt sales came about because of those listens, so even tho the music wasn't as revenue generating, it acts as the biggest funnel.
I mean I sort of believe that most Ramones t-shirt sales came along because of the listens, but then again I see lots of Misfits t-shirts on kids born this century and considering it's in Denmark it seems unlikely it's because their parents were big Misfits fans.
Of course Misfits had a much more impressive visual aesthetic, so that might explain their continuing design relevance.
Isn't the whole point of touring to sell merchandise?
Today perhaps. But in the past the artists money from selling records. So the tour was to promote the album, rather than the other way around
Getting paid for live performance was the traditional way for musicians to earn money for centuries. Record sales was a temporary thing that is now gone.
If the Ramones put their name on all sorts of merchandise does that make them sellouts?
I joke, of course, and I'm a big Ramones fan. I've had numerous iterations of that shirt over the years. I often use them as an example when discussing "what is good art?" They are one of the most influential bands of all time and yet they were terrible musicians.
I believe in the idea that if you really do the hell out of something, you can make up for a lot of shortcomings. Quantity and spirit can substitute for quality in almost all artistic pursuits.
Here's Bill Withers on selling out: “Sellout… I’m not crazy about the word. We’re all entrepreneurs. To me, I don’t care if you own a furniture store or whatever – the best sign you can put up is SOLD OUT.”
Sell meant "give" in Old English, including the sense of "give up", "surrender", "betray". (Their word for sell was equivalent to *be-buy.)
https://www.etymonline.com/word/sell
Etymonline says the meaning "betray for gain" is from 1200. So this is probably where "sellout" comes from. Compare with "he sold us out".
There's an entry for sellout too: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=sellout "corrupt bargain".
Terrible in which way? Did not use counterpoint sufficiently elegantly? It’s punk, mate. Try to do a set downpicking like Johnny.
Yeah, punk was a bit of a rejection of the polish of the big bands of the time. In a sense, the "horrible" was sort of the point. And for the shock value. But did that really mean they were horrible? Probably everyone kind of sucks at first. But it's hard not to improve your skills once you have got to a point where you have done a certain number of shows because you created a sustainable cash flow to support it.
>I joke, of course, and I'm a big Ramones fan. I've had numerous iterations of that shirt over the years. I often use them as an example when discussing "what is good art?" They are one of the most influential bands of all time and yet they were terrible musicians.
This makes me to wonder why do you and other people like them and why were them influential?
Isn't a band's purpose to produce good music and aren't people supposed to like musicians because they produce good music?
I know most people don't take the concept of "selling out" seriously anymore, but the Ramones would not be sellouts for making Ramones merch. If they had turned into a hair metal band, where they would otherwise not make hair metal, just so they could sell a bunch of records, that would be selling out. Merely making money is not selling out
So something like getting Phil Spector to produce their record?
given the massive influence of 60s girl groups on the Ramones, I would say that getting one of the architects of that sound to produce their record is not selling out.
To stay on the "hair metal" example I gave, getting Mutt Lange circa Pyromania to produce a Ramones record would be selling out.
> they were terrible musicians
Not only are the songs they wrote really good and catchy, Ramones are one of those bands where it sounds so easy anyone can do it but if you give it a try, you quickly find out it’s difficult to get the nuances right and your results, unlike theirs, sound crude and obviously amateurish.
They’re like AC/DC in that respect. Or Melvins.
But have you tried recording your version and also playing it in public and promoting it for decades? It’s possible that’s what is making the one thing sound like it has something hard to name, and the other one not.
Like if you are sloppy there is an element of randomness in the output, and any particular randomness will be difficult to replicate.
for this stuff its mostly just a question of buy same gear really. they play a bit 'wild' so esp live it wasnt like super clean. but the sound is mostly having the right kit including recording gear / setup or live equipment etc. depending on what ur trying to do.
playing sloppy isnt too hard to replicate.
Punk is not easy, they were developing new techniques and song writing approaches. Otherwise you tell me why we talk of Ramones as being different from older rock like say Led Zeppelin. I will say by the time we get to bands like Minor Threat we have genuinely new song structural paradigms that never existed in rock music.
And to say nothing of course of the mechanical finesse and stamina required to play this kind of music.