Ramone, Joey
Don't Worry About Me

This story begins at the end: "Don't Worry About Me", the title track of an album as intense and beautiful as it is melancholic and sad, the only solo album by Joey Ramone. A long piece (almost 4 minutes, a lot by genre standards), intense and beautiful, the best of the entire work. This is how a story that had already ended closed, just less than a year before with the passing of the legendary singer, but in reality, it never truly ended and never will, beyond rhetoric.    

Joey Ramone already knew about his illness, he had been unwell for some time when he recorded this eagerly awaited first solo album, which unfortunately would be, as mentioned, the only one. Before this last track, there's an entire album, short and intense. A fresh and highly enjoyable sound, a record absolutely on par with the best works of the great Joey's parent band. One could talk about the tracks, the cheerful and almost carefree "Mr Punchy" and "Maria Bartiromo", the pure punk of "Spirit In My House", the great but less inspired "Venting (It's a Different World Today)" and "Like a Drug I Never Did Before", the wonderful ballad "Searching For Something", the nice cover of "1969" by the Stooges, but everything pales in comparison to that title track. Always reaffirming the overall very high value.    

Almost everything, because the heartrending "I Got Knocked Down (But I'll Get Up)" catches you and leaves you petrified and laid down in front of its immense dramatic nature. Oh, I forgot the historic cover of "What a Wonderful World" which indeed opens the record, what to say? Thanks to this track, millions of Italians discovered a unique character and, consequently, a legendary band. It seems (it is) paradoxical, but we know how it is: an ad can be more valuable than an entire discography.    

This album had been in Joey's head for a while, even in the months prior to the announced dissolution of his celebrated band, he was thinking about a solo project that he would then postpone for several years, until its unfortunately posthumous release. And it is precisely this status as a posthumous album that gives an overall feeling of desolation mixed with melancholy and sadness to this record which simply is wonderful in every sense and all aspects. And at times perhaps surprising too, certainly demonstrating definitively who was always the true soul of the Ramones.     

To end this story or review, it's up to you, let's go back to where we started: the track that gives the record its title: "Don't worry about me, oh oh oh/ I want you baby, but you always lie/ Always complaining or contemplating suicide/ I want you, baby, but you even try/ Always complaining, said a bye, baby, bye, bye, bye". Nothing else to add.   

With this beautiful and poignant piece, the last testament of the great Joey Ramone closes: a character, an artist, a musician who left an incalculable mark and at the moment of his passing, left us with an irreplaceable void that even today, 9 years later, we terribly feel his absence.    

When this album came out, the story of the man Jeffrey Hyman had already concluded 10 months prior, and to leave a better memory of the artist Joey Ramone, he could not have done better, beyond rhetoric and the inevitable feelings that the record cannot help but convey.    

Thank you, Joey.