This photo was taken on May 16, 2000, at Joey Ramone’s last birthday party. At least, the last one he attended in the flesh. Joey’s birthday is May 19. That party was a couple days early; this post is a couple days late. It’s all right.

Joey’s been gone ten years. Everything about the world is different from the way it was on May 16, 2000, the night Arturo threw down a stack of photos on his living room worktable – the very table the Ramones had leaned on to sign their first record deal – and instructed Joey to autograph and me to flip and stack while he snapped this picture.

I just read something about the plane that emergency-landed in the Hudson a couple years ago. One of the passengers referred to the water landing as a “miracle”. It wasn’t a fucking miracle. It was the work of an excellent, experienced and competent pilot doing his job in an exemplary way. Those lives were not saved by an imaginary god, but by a real human being.

Why is there no longer any appreciation of excellence in our culture, in our society? We don’t strive for it… we don’t even seem to understand it anymore when we see it. What entertains Americans in 2011? Shit we can poke fun at, ridicule. Things that make us feel superior. The “Friday” video, the rapture fail. Our spirits are broken. This is all we have left. We justify the time we waste picking over garbage by invoking “irony”… but there’s no irony here. Slapstick isn’t ironic. Ineptitude isn’t ironic. Self-flagellation isn’t ironic.

The Ramones made music that was simple. Simple can be a cop out; it’s easy to be simple and shitty, or simple and stupid. But Ramones music isn’t shitty or stupid, and it’s very, very difficult to play well. The generation that beatified the Ramones was X – my generation. Not coincidentally, we also wielded irony – real irony – as a weapon. We bludgeoned bullshit to death with it. Like the Ramones, though, Gen X is history.

I want to share a video with you. I found this earlier tonight on some old mini DV tapes and edited a couple of camera angles together. This is from October 8, 2004 – the Ramones “Beat on Cancer” event in New York City. Joey, Dee Dee and Johnny were all gone by then. CJ Ramone, Daniel Rey and the Descendents’ Bill Stevenson performed with rotating singers, including Suicide’s great Alan Vega.

This performance is funny, yeah; it’s a mess. But it’s touching, and it’s right. I offer this without a trace of irony… here is a true artist with giant fuckin balls doing what he does, doing whatever the hell he wants. Being excellent over excellent music. Happy birthday, Joey.

It’s the 7th! My Single of the Month for May is “The Breeze”, recorded with Skyscape over two millennia.

I wrote this song when I was 17 years old; my friend Chris Hug and I had been debating whether it was possible to write an emotionally resonant song lyric without including any human (or anthropomorphized) characters. I thought this was possible. And maybe it is… I couldn’t do it, though.

My approach involved a Rube Goldberg chain of cause and effect, but in the end the only way to make it worthwhile was to introduce people – to have it all impact human beings. Ironically, “The Breeze” turned out to be my first love song, albeit a really goofy one. It’s also the first song I ever wrote on a guitar, which probably shows in the chord progression and the opening riff.

Skyscape recorded “The Breeze” that summer (1993… ouch!). At the time we didn’t know whether we wanted to be Pavement, They Might Be Giants, The Doors or Dream Theater, so we sounded pretty much like Pavement, They Might Be Giants, The Doors and Dream Theater all playing at once, and not necessarily the same song. “The Breeze” ended up a casualty of our non-approach, crushed under, like, 50 tons of mëtal.

With the 20th anniversary of Skyscape’s first album, Band Of The Week, approaching, a bunch of us got together to reimagine and rework some of the old tunes. “The Breeze” got the most dramatic facelift; almost nothing of the original recording remains. We kept Steve Theater’s hyperkinetic drums in the choruses, and Sean Gould’s ringing chords in verse two, but the rest is new. Alex Dubovoy added a more textural set of acoustic and electric guitars, and Mike Keaney – who had joined the band about a month after we finished Band Of The Week – finally got to record the bassline he had played live so many times in the early ’90s. I put down some piano, B3 and mellotron (the only keyboard on the original was a now-dated synth pad), and Joe Abba made his Skyscape debut with an entire section’s worth of 11/8 percussion.

The biggest change is in the vocal track. Instead of my dorky solo lead, my friend Maryann Fennimore joined me to make the song a dorky duet. (Maryann is on April’s Single of the Month, too; no matter what weird-ass shit I’ve asked her to sing, she’s always been such an awesome sport.) And since no Skyscape song is complete without Dom, we added a triple harmony at the end: Dom, Mike and Alex.

I definitely have a soft spot for “The Breeze”… with its odd time-signatures and chord structure quirks, the track represents a turning point in my understanding of songcraft. It’s nerdy and a little silly, and it reminds me of how little I’ve actually changed since I was 17!

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Don’t forget, the 7th of every month is Single of the Month day here at the Song Foundry. We’re already hard at work mixing next month’s track, which will be brought to you by the initials A.F., R.G., G.M., J.S., and L.B., and the word “kalimba”!

My dear friend LB went on a quest for a deck of Oblique Strategies cards last night. She discovered that a fresh deck can’t be had for less than $60, and the aftermarket is even more outrageous.

I’ve had an Oblique Strategies randomizer app on my iPhone for some time, but it’s no longer available in the App Store. Too bad for LB, because it beats carrying around a deck of cards; at least I could tell her from firsthand experience that the “wisdom” contained therein is not worth this economy’s version of 60 bucks. I’m all for allowing circumstance and externals to color the creative process – back in my, uh, academic days I even wrote an exhaustive paper on ways John Cage used the I Ching to supplement his compositional decisionmaking* – but in my opinion many of the Oblique Strategies are just stupid.

I decided to save LB a few bucks by making a set of my own Strategies. I posted these on Facebook as they occurred to me, between midnight and 2:00 this morning. Here, in no particular order, are my collected Obtuse Strategies. Feel free to print them on cards and slip them into your Oblique deck.

First, do nothing. Then something. Then stop.

Make a list in reverse order.

Third things eighth.

Let the Wookiee win.

Lunch break.

Start a fight. With silence.

RUN

Take off all your clothes except one.

Do this all day.

Cry laughing.

Pretend to care.

What seems to be the problem, officer?

Writer’s block is for pussies.

Do the best thing you ever did.

Drink.

Put it out. But first, set it on fire.

Why can’t they appreciate your genius?

Turn left. THE OTHER LEFT!!!!!

Give up.

Never, ever do that again.

Don’t get caught.

Make out with the person to your right.

Find a parking lot with only one handicapped space. Park in it.

Get lost. Not in any metaphorical sense – go away.

Abuse your power.

You were doing better, like, three Oblique Strategies ago.

4, 23, 5, 395. What number comes next?

Fire yourself.

Is this the card you were hoping for?

Accept all substitutes.

Wrong again. -sigh-

Spend more money.

Why is this taking so goddamn long?

Whoever is worst at this, let him do everything.

NOblique Strategies! HAW HAW!

Lock your bandmates out of the studio.

maybe

You’re on a roll. A SHIT roll!

What if you woke up retarded?

LIAR

Stop taking your meds.

Plagiarize without shame.

Don’t listen to anyone, including yourself and me.

Did you leave it in your pants? Where are they?

You’re the problem.

The glass is ONLY half full.

Play only wrong notes. Yeah, sounds fucking awesome.

Ennui

Spray-paint a record gold. Hang it on your wall.

You can probably do this.

Fried ice cream. WHOA

Put it away. On second thought, throw it away.

What exactly IS a vitamin?

Be really annoying.

Do the same thing you just did, except standing on one leg. Now both. Now grow a third and stand on that. Only that.

You’re just gonna have to work this one out on your own.

Goonies never say die.

What’s something you would regret for the rest of your life? TOTALLY do that.

Don’t accept responsibility for anything.

If the solution doesn’t come to you in a dream, go back to sleep.

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* “Exhaustive” because Cage only used it one way – in conjunction with sectors of numbers on a grid – but I had to fill 10 pages.