Happy Birthday, Joey Ramone! Tribute Concert, NYC Tonight

Above: Punk hero Joey Ramone meets superhero Spiderman. It was bound to happen eventually.
Below: The catchiest song ever written about baseball bats.
Ramones–”Beat on the Brat” mp3

May 19, 1951 was an important day in rock’n'roll history: It was the birthday of Jeff Hyman.

Hyman is of course better known as punk-rock icon, Joey Ramone. (Yeah, we should’ve mentioned this sooner, but we were too busy trying to bake a cake in the shape of the Ramones’  logo.)

Joey, who would’ve turned 58 today, passed away in 2001 after a battle with lymphoma. He may be gone, but his impact on the music world will never be forgotten. Pretty much any rock band that has picked up a guitar in the past 20 years owes a debt to the Ramones, who made writing perfect pop/rock songs seem deceptively simple. Earlier this week, Ramone was officially inducted into the Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame, after an earlier technical error left  him out in the cold.

Tonight in NYC, Joey’s brother, Mickey Leigh, has organized a Joey Ramone Birthday Bash at the Fillmore/Irving Plaza, with proceeds from tickets set to support the Joey Ramone Foundation for Lymphoma Research.

Hosted by former MTV VJ Matt Pinfield, the show will feature bands like the Supersuckers, Fishbone, Uncle Monk, Death, Rough Francis among others.

The night is set to wrap-up with an all-star band dubbed The Friends of Joey featuring Richie Ramone, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Jean Beauvoir, Ivan Julian, George Tabb, Al Maddy and Mickey Leigh.

We still miss Joey, but on a bittersweet note, Brooklyn Vegan reports that a new collection of Joey’s unreleased songs is scheduled to be released by the end of the year. Happy Birthday.