"Beat on the Brat," Ramones (1976)

In my early years teaching, on particularly bad days, after school, no more students, the coast more or less clear, I'd shut the door to my classroom and blast this and feel like slam dancing off the walls as I angrily straightened desks and stack books and papers, trying to restore some order to my chaos before heading home. 

The habit reminds me of this anecdote about the early years at Creem magazine. Several summers, pivoting around 1970, some staff members shack up outside the city of Detroit. Lester Bangs, Dave Marsh, and, the publisher, Barry Kramer, were the regulars, I think, but at any rate the house they were sharing was owned by Kramer. Bangs and Marsh were there possibly to escape the city heat in summer but definitely to save on rent. They get along okay but all cooped up like that for weeks on end they need some escape and downtime. Bangs said he found his solace by regularly retreating to his small room, closing the door, and blasting Black Sabbath at full volume. 

I was doing something like that with this Ramones song. I remember at least one time when a student walked into the room on afternoon when I had this song on and the volume turned up to eleven. Initially there was incredulous shock at how loud I was playing the music. But I turned it down quickly, although not off, and helped them. The song continues to play in the background, like a runaway subway train, if now muted, the student, a nerdy boy, into video games, standing around while I find some paper they need. Finally, the student exclaims almost quizzically, "beat on the brat with a baseball bat"?!  

"Of course, I would never," I chuckled nervously. 

Two seminal forms of pre-'77 punk anger: The Stooges were angry punk and dangerous; and The Ramones were angry punk and funny. Unsuspecting students were lucky I didn't play "Search and Destroy"!