Album: Rocket To Russia
Year: 1977
The first of a five song run in the middle of Rocket to Russia that is as good as five-song run on any album that you might care to name, “I Don’t Care” packs a big wallop in a short amount of time, opening with its call-and-response chorus, Joey sounding haughty and Dee Dee sounding, well, like Dee Dee.
I don’t care
(He don’t care)
I don’t care
(He don’t care)
The contrast between Joey and Dee is kinda hilarious, especially since Joey is louder in the mix, making Dee Dee’s “he don’t care” almost seem like an afterthought. Even funnier is the list of things Joey doesn’t care about: “this world”, “that girl”, and in the second verse, “these words”. After which he repeats “I don’t care” over and over and over so much that you suddenly think, heyyyyyyy, wait a second, I think Joey is protesting too much. Maybe he does care. But by that time, the song is over.
Why is this song different from all other Ramones songs?
Johnny’s opening riff, which is massive and bulky, and wouldn’t be so far afield on a Black Sabbath album, whose “Paranoid” was a precursor to if not an influence on punk. And as a huge Sabbath fan at the time — still am, of course, duh — it was definitely one of the songs that instantly grabbed me.
Oh, and one thing I just now learned was that the Ramones opened a couple of times for Black Sabbath, in 1978, on the Never Say Die! tour. This was just a couple of months after I saw Van Halen totally kill opening for Sabbath, and just prior to getting into the Ramones, so I now wonder what 15-year-old Jim would have made of that. I hopefully would have enjoyed them even as the Selland crowd was booing them off the stage.
“I Don’t Care”
“I Don’t Care” live in Germany, 1979
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