Your Tuesday K-101.7 Song Of The Day!

Hey, Ho/He had to go. This one was particularly harsh. The last surviving member of one of the greatest, dumbest rock and roll bands of all time, passed on this weekend. Tommy Ramone, original drummer and the man who believed first, is no more.

John Flansburgh, of They Might Be Giants, writes in his memorial article, "The influence of the Ramones is certainly musical—as much about reintroducing the charm of a short song as the power of a barre chord—but it goes far beyond music. A Ramones song cannot be unheard. The Ramones changed the pH balance of rock music’s pond water. Their existence challenged everyone else’s. They’re not part of a school. They built the building."

"It wasn't just music in The Ramones: it was an idea. It was bringing back a whole feel that was missing in rock music – it was a whole push outwards to say something new and different. Originally it was just an artistic type of thing; finally I felt it was something that was good enough for everybody." - Tommy Ramone, 1978

Back in the radio studio we built on Fort Hood, up on top of the sound baffling on the wall, I had placed all the Ramone's c.d.'s I owned at the time, right in a row, mainly because the work we were doing in that studio made me feel like a kindred spirit: upstarts, renegades going where nobody had gone before. Wacky and sentimental, sure.

And now the original Ramones exist only inside the grooves of those first five slabs of vinyl. Right where they'll always belong.

And they are your K-101.7 Song Of The Day.