Spazzys
Aloha! Go Bananas

Twenty years ago, if you walked the streets of Melbourne, you might have come across three young girls – the twins Kat and Lucy and their classmate Ally – and then you'd spontaneously ask them, but do you like the Ramones?

The answer, of course, you already knew.

Because just by looking at how they dressed, black leather jackets and proudly worn "Road To Ruin" t-shirts underneath, semi-tattered jeans, and tennis shoes, you didn't even need to know that those three had started a band – they were the Spazzys, Kat, Lucy, and Ally Spazzy – or even see Ally shouting one-two-three-four and marking the beat with her sticks, or Lucy showing off one Dee Dee pose after another, or Kat stringing together barre chords one after the other and singing about the romantic and comic-book adventures of three teenagers in some Melbourne suburb.

Today, those serious and clever music talkers roam the streets a little less and meet few girls like Ally, Kat, and Lucy, and so, since they can't ask them face to face if they like the Ramones, they've come up with this thing called Ramonescore.

Which I, adopted by mamma Roma forty years ago, love so much because it's as if it wants to say that the Ramones are nailed into my heart, and it's no use un-nailing them just because, at my age, Joey and Dee Dee and Johnny were already gone or because I dress like a grey employee of the land registry about to retire.

For everyone else outside the ring road, the Ramonescore thing is a blessed nonsense.

Because then Kat, Lucy, and Ally came to the Ramones bounced from a video on MTV of the Riverdales – a mediocre clone that, for some obscure reason, got two minutes of fame in the '90s – they nailed them in their hearts, grabbed the spade, and started digging in the fields behind their house searching for nuggets left by Saints, Radio Birdman, New Christs, Hoodoo Gurus, and Hard-Ons.

To say that, if you're content with little, the Riverdales' discography or someone else who recreates a Ramones album more faithfully than a sticker transfer will do.

Otherwise, you'll search for the Spazzys or those, like them, who put a heart as big as a house into it.

In truth, Ally, Kat, and Lucy did very little, that little scattered among singles, EPs, and local collections, occasionally compiled into something that could resemble an LP.

Around fifteen years ago, I instinctively grabbed "Aloha! Go Bananas" because I still indulged in the joy of picking through vinyls on the shelves of a store, because that cover was Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and Marky on the back of "Road to Ruin," because the title was half Ramones and half Radio Birdman, because there were songs called "Surf'n'Bird" and "I Wanna Cut My Hair Like Marky Ramone" and there were fourteen of them in total, because they were three Australian girls, because I had some crazy feelings but I trusted them.

I hit the jackpot, and so I brought home the most heartfelt and engaging tribute to the Ramones that someone has put on vinyl since August 6, 1996, concert no. 2,263. You see, on that stage, Lemmy also climbed up, and even today, when I feel like proving myself right when I say that the Ramones were the salvation of rock'n'roll and of many rock'n'roll soldiers, even today I play "R.A.M.O.N.E.S." or "Aloha! Go Bananas".

Besides other things, it's also a fun album, the kind you put on repeat at the parties you throw at home with school friends (if home parties still exist), with ultra-quick catchy hooks, hands full of scattered silliness, gum stuck under the good table, explosive and danceable rock'n'roll, ballads that would tear the heart even of the darkest killer, a scream-worthy remake of "My Boyfriend's Back" by the Angels and that "Paco Doesn't Love Me" that almost brings me to tears for how beautiful it is, lost there between a random "Blitzkrieg Bop" and "Judy Is A Punk". And so much more, always with the Ramones in the heart.

Ramonescore.

The Spazzys didn't last long, but the half-hour of "Aloha! Go Bananas" still resounds loud and clear after twenty years.