Joey Ramone: Don't Worry About Me

Swan songs don't get much more bittersweet than this. The first, and last, solo album from Joey Ramone, Don't Worry About Me finds the late punk godfather easing into life without The Ramones with an album that could easily pass as a late-period Ramones disc. A mix of high points and low, it would have worked as a thoroughly acceptable solo debut, had Ramone lived. Now it sounds like a tribute to the punk-rock old age he never got to enjoy. "It's a different world today / I just don't understand," Ramone sings on "Venting," after unrolling a laundry list of complaints about politicians and "kids killing kids." It's strange to hear such grumpy-old-man sentiments accompanying Ramone's signature sound. Stranger still, and funnier, is "Maria Bartiromo," a mash note to the CNBC market analyst that namechecks some of Ramone's favorite stocks. ("What's happening with Yahoo / What's happening with Ay-oh-ell") It's a long way from "Beat On The Brat," but Ramone has the charisma to make the change endearing. Musically, he found a signature style in 1976 and never let it go, but it's tough to argue with an approach that so easily accommodates silly ghost stories ("Spirit In My House") and "I Got Knocked Down (But I'll Get Up)," a defiant chronicle of his battle with cancer. As with most Ramones-related releases since 1980, Don't Worry About Me may be little more than a pleasant footnote, but as such, it's quite good, with a great cover of "What A Wonderful World" serving as a fitting final encore for a brilliant career and a much-missed pioneer.