Dee Dee King

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This record has undoubtedly been on tons of blogs, and chances are you’ve already heard it (and probably hated it) years ago, but I love “Standing in the Spotlight” (though I didn’t when I bought it for $2.99 20 years ago), so I’m posting this goddamn golden turd, like it or not.

By 1989, I had lost interest in what the Ramones were doing. I did buy Brain Drain and liked their cover of Chuck Barris's "Palisades Park". A couple other tunes were OK to me, like "Zero Zero UFO"…but in general, I only played their old stuff. Around this time when MTV filmed Dee Dee on a shopping spree trying on suits and talking about his rap career, and it was like a knife was plunged into my very own “poison heart”. Rap? Fashion? In retrospect, I think that it was pretty rad.

According to his book, Dee Dee got turned on to rap from people at his AA meetings, and decided to take a crack at it. Why not? It would piss off Johnny! He admits in the book that he wasn’t a good rapper…but he gave it a shot, right? Only a guy like Dee Dee would think that “The Mashed Potato” would be good as a rap song...and we’re talking 1989 here, not 1983. Bands like the Geto Boys, NWA and Black Sheep were the rage, and Dee Dee is trying to make a Grandmaster Flash-meets-the-Ramones Do-Wop record. So we should at least applaud him for that.

Actually, why this record has grown on me is that for one, it’s a very personal record. It’s almost like a diary of Dee Dee and Vera’s life together (if I assume correct that she’s the “baby doll” he sings about). Some songs are pretty catchy; the chorus to “Emergency” is hilarious, and “Poor Little Rich Girl” sounds like a Ramones outtake. Plus, Dee Dee raps in German!

Calling Mr. Dee Dee

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