Tony Reflex Reflects

Tony Reflex

My name is Tony Reflex and I am, besides a Ramones fan, the former singer of The Adolescents, Flower Leperds, Abandoned, and current singer of ADZ. I compiled a tribute double album in 1987 called Gabba Gabba Hey, and did liner notes for a German compilation called Blitzkrieg Over You in 1995, which has a pretty funny story in it about my early Ramones experiences. I am terribly bummed about the news I got last night regarding Joey. Anyway….here’s some stuff.

“jr5”

I bought my first Ramones album at a swap meet in the seventies for a dollar. The guy that sold it to me tried desperately to talk me out of it and offered me a Black Sabbath album at the same price. He really thought he was doing me a great disservice by selling it to me. When I got it home, I studied the black and white cover carefully and then put on “Blitzkrieg Bop” on this archaic portable turntable that I rigged to have pseudo-quad sound. It was exactly what my teenage head had been searching for, and immediately resulted in my losing most of my friends and ostracizing me from the rest of the community when I tore out the knees of my jr. high school Toughskins and dyed my golden blonde hair in its bowl cut a shade of black.

My mother spent a better part of her life at the corner bar. She heard “Beat On the Brat” blasting out of my room while she pissed in the adjoining bathroom, and told me that she was finally hearing something out of my stereo that she could marginally relate to. She had a true talent for hitting me in the face with telephones, pans, and her fists, so I don’t doubt it for a moment. The Ramones came through town in 1978 or so, and played at The Golden Bear, off the Huntington Beach pier. I couldn’t get in, and thus spent the night throwing garbage into the ocean. I got to see them the following year in Garden Grove, and they did not disappoint. The Ramones always have been, and always will be the yardstick for which I measure all rock and roll. It’s Alive is the only live album I have ever heard that I think is superior to a studio album. Every Ramones show I saw was brilliant, and I never tired of watching and listening to them. Gabba Gabba. ◼