Is there anything better than kicking back, listening to some records, lighting up a joint, realizing you can’t smoke weed, and then driving yourself to the hospital in a panic? We caught up with Dr. Cooper Allen to discuss shortness of breath, impending doom, and whether or not we will ever feel normal again.
The Hard Times: Thanks for sitting down with us to discuss the heart attack I’m having. How long do you think I have before my oxygen supply is cut off?
Dr. Allen: I already told you, you’re not having a heart attack. It’s cannabis-induced anxiety. The high will wear off and your heart rate will return to normal in a few hours.
I hear you, and in no way do I doubt your expertise, but I think you should run an EKG just in case. Better safe than sorry, right?
You are one hundred percent safe. You can’t die from anxiety. It can only make you wish you were dead. The only way to get un-high is to wait it out at home.
I can’t go home. Too many mirrors. It’s like a disassociation dungeon there. My airway feels partially obstructed. Is it possible I’m having an allergic reaction to something in the weed?
It says in your chart that you’re only allergic to dander and tree nuts. Unless you were smoking a joint filled with cat hair and pecans, you should be fine.
Oh great, now it feels like there’s a hair stuck in the back of my throat. What if it stays there forever and slowly drives me insane? How am I supposed to live the rest of my life with that thing taunting me every time I swallow?
Jesus Christ, stop trying to dislodge it with your fingers. You’ll scratch your soft palate and cause an actual medical problem. This is just a psychosomatic manifestation of your anxiety. There is no hair. There never was.
You’re probably right. Maybe I should head out. I’ve been sitting here talking to you for over five hours and my wife is probably sitting at home worried sick.
You’ve only been here for 9 minutes and your wife is the one who drove you here. Don’t forget to see the front desk before you leave.
The Skiba experiment proved to be extremely adequate, and just when we finally got used to this lineup last year they went ahead and went back to normal. There were definitely worse options out there to replace Tom DeLonge. Just imagine Blink-182 with Rome or Blink-182 featuring the singer of Creed. Things could’ve been disastrous.
We like Matt Skiba and all, but he doesn’t do that thing where he pronounces “head” as “yead” like a certain DeLonge does and by golly, it’s one of the reasons we like Blink in the first place.
Don’t be fooled by the rough demo-like audio quality, there are a lot of bright spots on this album. From Tom’s slick guitar in “M+M’s” or Mark’s catchy bassline in “Carousel,” their musicianship is prevalent early on in their career despite their attempts to undermine it with edgelord humor that would only crush in a middle school setting.
A lot of good things are happening on this album, but it also has major Angels and Airwaves energy. Clearly, Tom is knee-deep in that era where he believes aliens, UFOs, and outer space are real. That being said, I guess an A&A vibe is sort of preferable to Travis Barker pulling them in an Aquabats direction.
If you’re someone who likes records to contain a skit about having sexual relations with a horse and another where a dog is heard audibly slurping Mark Hoppus’ urine out of a toilet then buddy, do I have an album for you. Solid from start to finish otherwise.
It’s never a good sign when a band’s fifth album is self-titled or worse yet untitled, but this one is an exception. It also somehow feels like their most adult one up to that point. They grow up fast, don’t they? And just like real life: When you finally put it all together, you take an eight-year break to focus on less lucrative hobbies.
Remember that brief moment of time during that summer just after you graduated high school but right before you had to choose between taking out crippling student loan debt that would take decades to pay off or else being disqualified from 85% of careers? That’s this album. Aggressively carefree even though shit’s about to get real any minute now.
Not exactly going against the grain with this pick. An intellectually savvy critic might subvert expectations and go with “Neighborhoods” or dare I say “California.” But we’re not real music journalists. We dropped out of community college. Anyway, this is the one.
The final Ramones album finds the band limping across the finish line—exhausted, depleted and seemingly short on ideas. Joey hands the mic off to Dee Dee’s replacement C.J. far too often here.
Too sick of each others’ shit to sit down and write songs together, the band recorded a covers album, which is generally as underwhelming as a sitcom clip show. That being said, some interesting choices and decent performances make this worth revisiting once every few years.
For the band’s first earnest bid at mainstream acceptance, they recruited psychotic hitmaking producer Phil Spector. The future convicted murderer pulled a gun on the band during recording, putting them in esteemed company alongside Leonard Cohen and future murder victim John Lennon.
The Ramones put out a lot of albums, and this is one of them. A mostly flaccid batch of regressive nostalgic paeans to 50s and 60s rock culture, with a couple of gems shining through. Some sonic experimentation and more complex songwriting add some interest, but not enough.
“My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)” is the most stirring, sentimental anthem you’ll ever hear about Reagan visiting Germany. They really ran with the animal theme on this one, with songs such as “Eat That Rat,” “Hair of the Dog,” and “Apeman Hop”.
More songs about “bopping” (“Bop Till You Drop”) and wanting things (“I Wanna Live”). Runs the gamut from schmaltzy 50s nostalgia (“Bye Bye Baby”) to flirting with hardcore (“I’m Not Jesus”, which was strangely covered by extreme metal band Behemoth). This is drummer Richie’s last appearance—his brief tenure with the mostly now-deceased band is probably the only reason he’s still alive as of this writing.
As the title implies, this is the boys at their “toughest,” featuring antagonistic songs like “Mama’s Boy” and “Warthog.” Of course, compared to other punk bands, the Ramones’ idea of toughness is pretty tame, sort of like a cute puppy with a switchblade in its mouth.
This is Dee Dee’s final album before leaving to reinvent/humiliate himself as rapper Dee Dee King. With their best songwriter gone, the band probably should’ve heeded a warning from the film Pet Sematary: “Sometimes dead is better.” They still had some good songs left in them, but it’s mostly downhill from here.
This is an unexpectedly decent release considering all the strife the band endured up to this point, including shifting lineups, addiction, poor sales and mental illness. Packed with more bangers than a British butcher shop, due in part to some super-solid contributions from now ex-Ramone Dee Dee.
It feels like the band said, “Okay, we’re not going to make it big, so we might as well try to have fun.” After their previous two albums failed to garner the band radio hits, the Ramones returned to their earlier punk sound with renewed energy. If I were some kind of lazy hack reviewer I’d say this album finds the band “firing on all cylinders” or some shit.
By their fourth album, the Ramones weren’t achieving the fame they felt they deserved. Drummer Tommy left in frustration, but the band were fortunate enough to find a replacement named Marky who incredibly shared the surname Ramone as well—what are the chances?
Here the band embarked on their Sisyphussian quest for the breakthrough hit which eluded them for their entire career. “Pinhead”, a song based on the obscure film “Freaks,” proves that some of the first punks were really just weird nerds in leather jackets.
Seemingly a conscious effort to recreate the magic of their debut, from the nearly identical cover to the opening “Cretin Hop,” an oblique successor to “Blitzkrieg Bop.” Joey blamed poor sales numbers on being overshadowed by the more sensational, wildly inferior Sex Pistols. Featuring what is possibly the Ramones’ greatest couplet, “Sittin’ here in Queens / eating refried beans.”
No stunt ranking here—obviously their legendary debut is at number one. The album was recorded with guitar and bass hard-panned left and right, so baby bassists like myself could omit the bass channel and play along, pretending to be Dee Dee (minus the heroin habit).