MARKY RAMONE AND THE INTRUDERS
Live at the The Continental, NYC, USA on
February 1, 1997.
BACK
This show was a few
months ago, but I remember it as well as yesterday. This was the first day
of February (1997), this was only the second time the Intruders played
in NYC.
This was at a club called Continental ( the Remains played there too a few
weeks earlier ).
Marky Ramone And The Intruders were supposed to come on at
midnight, I got there about twenty minutes late worried that I might have
missed part of the set, but the opening band Suicide King was still
playing. It cost 8 bux to get in. It was pretty crowded and it was a
pretty
small club.
They were selling a lot of Marky Ramone And The
Intruders merchandise. They had hats, T-shirts, sweatshirts, Marky Ramone
drum sticks, posters, thats all I can remember. When suicide king was
finished,
Marky came out to set up his drums himself, he had to walk through part of
the crowd and no one tried to talk to him or anything. Then he went back
stage again. Around 12:45, Legs McNeil ( author of please kill me, and he
was editor of punk magazine in the 70 's) came up to introduce the band.
He
admitted that when he announced the band a few weeks earlier, he got the
name of the band wrong. He said " Marky Ramone & the Invaders". He got the
name right this time.
Then Marky walked up on stage wearing his
leather jacket and sat behind the drums. The other 3 walked on stage
carrying their
guitars up on stage and immediately plugged them in and started playing.
The first song they played was "Can't take it with you" and the second was
"Anxiety". The line up was :Ben Trokan on rythmn guitar, Johnny Pisano on
Bass, Skinny Bones on lead guitar and lead vocals, and guess who played
drums. They played with a lot of energy. Ben Trokan played really fast and
jumped around a lot. Johnny Pisano did not use a pick, he played with his
fingers as fast if not faster than all other fast Bass players. Skinny
Bones sung and played guitar really well sounding even better than he
sounded on the album. Marky (suprise, suprise) was awesome as
always.
He played the drums really fast and hard, never missed a
beat, never slowed down for a second. It was diferrent than a Ramones
concert because there were no security guard standing in front of the
band, and if you stood in
the front ( which I did), they were only about 2 feet in front of you. It
was a lot of fun watching them play. They played a bunch of songs off the
album ( at this time the album wasn't out in America, but I had the album
as an import) like telephone love, oh no not again, 3 cheers for you, I
wants my beer, coward with a gun, Maybe tomorrow. They also played the
job
that ate my brain, and have a nice day, and Skinny Bones said "this is not
a cover of a Ramones song, they covered our song".
While they were
playing I turned around and noticed that 10 feet behind me among the crowd
was...Joey Ramone! He looked different than how he usually looked. He had
his hair in a ponytail, he wore a baseball cap backwards, he was wearing
some long jacket ( not the leather jacket) that went down to his feet. But
he was wearing his sunglasses. ( yes, I'm sure it was him, I even got his
autograph) Nobody tried to talk to him. He stood there staring at the band
looking angry and annoyed. I don't know what he thought of the
music.
They covered the Ramones song "I don't care ", and Lars from Rancid came
on stage to join them. Skinny Bones took off his guitar handed it to Lars,
and Skinny Bones just sang. Lars stood next to the bass player, and he
sang backing vocals. Lars went off stage after one song and stood in the
front and watched the band be great. After that they played a few songs
they wrote which were not on the album. They covered the Richard Hell &
the Voidoids song "Blank generation" ( Marky was the Voidoids drummer
before he joined the Ramones). I liked the Intruders version of that song
better than the Voidoids. After that they played a song not from the
album, then they played "Back off". After that they walked off stage, but
came back a few minutes later to play an encore.
The Encore had a
cover of
the Ramones song "Outsider" and then they played " Holding a grudge", the
last
song. Then they walked off stage and Marky waved goodbye to all his fans.
It ended around 1:45. It was a lot of fun and I'll never forget it. I
highly reccomend you go see them when they come to your town. You'll love
them, if you don't, you suck!
(THANKS REALLY AGAIN FOR JC)