One of the most interesting footnotes in rock and rap history is the first solo album by Ramones bassist, Dee Dee Ramone. While he made a positive impression on rock history with both his bass playing and songwriting for the Ramones, he followed the trajectory of many musicians in that he lost his magic overtime. Unlike most musicians, his trajectory fell off a cliff to rarely ventured levels of career rot.
It’s hard to describe the sense of “what is this” when looking at the name of the first track, “Mashed Potato Time”. What kind of rap album has a song called “Mashed Potato Time”? What does that mean? It’s the type of thing a child would come up with for their rap album. These feelings don’t dissipate when you start playing the record and are greeted with the out-of-key, “It’s time to rock, it’s time to rap.” The vocal sounds like a dad trying to impress his son by singing a rap song without any sense of what makes rap, or even singing, good. It’s coarse and tone deaf to the rhythm of the song or any song. Often, a line of the lyrics aren’t long enough to fill a bar, so words are awkwardly stretched or spaced weirdly. Did someone else record the backing track and then Dee Dee improvised over it without having heard it before? The female backing singer is better, though very stock. She has an average voice with no spice… except that’s not true. That singer, Debbie Harry, is an excellent singer for her band, Blondie. Any soulfulness or intrigue you could catch on a Blondie song is missing here. She certainly can sing upbeat and fun songs very well, though here she sounds like she’s in a pop song without any rock edge. Just like Dee Dee and every backing vocalist, she sounds like she doesn’t know what she’s doing.
The next track is a slight improvement. “2 Much 2 Drink” comes from a real place in Dee Dee’s life. He had a pretty bad alcohol addiction, which this track is an expression of. It’s not quite as bombastic as some other tracks, which makes it more competent, though the singing by Dee Dee and the male backing vocal are very rough around the edges in all the wrong ways. The writing and production are directionless and lack any feeling for the subject matter of Dee Dee’s addiction.
“Baby Doll” and “Poor Little Rich Girl” are not rap songs. It’s jarring jumping from rap to rock and afterward back to rap like the non-rap cuts belong here. These feel like they came from a rock project and were stuffed on this album to make it longer. That being said, there are other tracks that aren’t rap or are only kind of rap, thus muddying the whole point. What is this album supposed to be? Just record rap versions of these songs if you want to put them on the album! “Baby Doll” even has a ballad-y, lowkey guitar solo. The miniscule range in Dee Dee’s voice can’t at all carry a ballad, as he tries to on Baby. He is slightly better on the more upbeat songs, because his voice doesn’t need to go as far or have an emotional depth.
The best song of the lot is, “The Crusher”. It still has all the same problems as the rest of the album, but its big-headed rock runaround can manage with the incoherent yelling and annoyingly hooky riffs. The guitar work isn’t too bad. As a side note, Wikipedia calls this one a punk song, but there’s no loving punk spirit here. It’s such a mess. This mostly-rock song does inject a rap twang. If the intention of this album is to be a rock-rap fusion album, this is one of few times that blend is present. “I Want What I Want When I Want It” goes for a bass-baritone vocal that is awfully uninspired. Why change it up on this one song? The backing vocal replicates the rough and sour sound. The song peters out and with that the album. It’s so anticlimactic that I expected more songs afterward.
OVERVIEW
The sheer audacity of this album’s existence is something to behold. Did no one ever think about what they were doing or how it sounded or what impression this would leave on Dee Dee’s career? It seems so obvious that this would go down as one of the most interesting failures from a beloved musician. Other rock pioneers, Brian Wilson and Mike Love can safely call themselves better rappers. Co-songwriter Daniel Rey later said that the boldness of Dee Dee making this and calling himself things like, “the master of hip-hop” is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. While that doesn’t come across, you can at least appreciate the intent to have fun. Some people, such as Dee Dee himself, have a good time with this record and it’s good that they do.
The most mind melting track is “Mash Potato Time”, which sounds like a joke song from Saturday Night Live, only it gets sadder as it continues for nine more tracks.
The Filme Diary 