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That was one of the few serious songs we\'ve ever done. Like, Reagan\'s a good guy and everything, y\'know, I don\'t wanna knock him. but I thought it was pretty disgusting what the Nazis did. It was really awful--Dee Dee Ramone.
So, let\'s be clear about this. This is not actually a promo tee for \"Bonzo Goes to Bitburg\" by the Ramones, released officially on Animal Boy, 1986--but it may as well be. Incidentally, this song is one of my favorite Ramones tunes (covered quite competently, years later, by MxPx). It was a Dee Dee composition (as most of our favorite Ramones songs were); and it was a direct response to then-president Ronald Reagan\'s visit to Bitburg, West Germany. Ostensibly, Reagan was there to pay tribute to the German victims of Nazism; he made a photo-op out of it. Gingerly laying a wreath at the Bitburg military cemetery, he gave a sentimental (and notably jingoistic) \"address.\" But, unacknowledged by the PR team, there were also a number of slain members of the Nazi Party buried there as well. It was a rather tone-deaf affair. Protesters, of which there were many--internationally--derided the event by calling it \"Bonzo Goes to Bitburg\": a reference to the chimpanzee who \"starred\" in one of Reagan\'s many corny films (prior to getting into politics, Reagan was a third-rate Hollywood actor). Dee Dee commented at the time, \"What the hell did he go over there for? You can\'t go over there and do that stuff; that\'s really nasty.\" Now, Dee Dee Ramone may not have been \"word smart,\" but he was always candid and unapologetic about his views. Dee Dee was born in Germany, raised there as a kid (he remained fluent in the language), but he\'d always harbored a certain cynicism for the rather \"fast-tracked\" alliance between the US and the Germans after World War II. How, he wondered, had the newly-formed democracy in Germany \"risen from the ashes\" so quickly and so completely after Hitler? Call him a cynic, but now--as clearly evidenced by the resurgence of right-wing extremism in Germany with the \"AfD\"--Dee Dee had been right all along. See, Dee Dee Ramone is an example of someone who had both intellectual competence and street smarts--even though he did not possess the articulation required to fully unpack the former (we can\'t all be punks who become college professors who run an store on the side, so let\'s cut him some slack). The point is, Dee Dee nailed it with this song (eventually retitled, \"My Brain is Hanging Upside Down\"--likely at the behest of Johnny Ramone, who was a diehard Reagan fan: a right-winger to his dying day). So, all of the musical and political stuff aside, what we have here is an indisputably awesome tee: a vintage 80s FOTL that hangs like you wouldn\'t believe--it just coalesces around your bod like it was born to be there. Thin without being sheer, it\'s an absolute banger (a couple of very small brown \"spots\" notwithstanding: see pics). I absolutely love it--and it\'s a Ramones shirt as far as I\'m concerned, hands down. One of the greatest singles by one of our pioneering punk bands of the 20th century. And it\'s as relevant as could be. Presciently dope!
