Death of Tommy Ramone - the passing of an era

Well that's it - the last Ramone died today. Joey, Dee Dee, Johnny and now Tommy - all four original members of the Ramones - the incredibly influential New York punk rock band - have shuffled off this mortal coil. One. Two. Three. Four.

Tommy Ramone, born Tamas Erdelyi in Budapest, died today aged 62 of bile duct cancer. He was predeceased by Joey, aged 49 (2001), Dee Dee, aged  50 (2002) and Johnny, aged 55 (2004).

The cultural and historical significance of the Ramones is such that Tommy's death was the third news item on the BBC this morning.

I've been thinking about the Ramones of late - maybe its because the coffee machine in our office sounds like the intro to Chain Saw - maybe its because so many young people around Warsaw of my children's age are wearing Ramones T-shirts. When I was their age, these guys changed the way we looked at music for ever. Bye-bye triple concept albums by Yes and Pink Floyd warbling about albatrosses.

And I've been listening to the Ramones a lot in recent weeks - mainly the first three albums - with the band's original line-up. All of my favourite Ramones songs are from the first three albums. Below: the cover of the band's first album, Ramones. From left to right: Johnny (John Cummings), Tommy (Tamas Erdelyi), Joey (Jeffrey Hyman), Dee Dee (Douglas Colvin). Straight-leg jeans, sneakers, leather bomber jackets - and these guys played their first gig 40 years ago! [To this day, black leather bomber jackets in Poland are called ramoneski.]

Below: the Ramones logo, based on the Seal of the President of the US. Today shopping at Auchan I spotted a grey-haired man my age wearing a red T-shirt bearing  this logo. We exchanged sombre nods - acknowledgement that an era has come to an end.

I'm proud to say I saw the Ramones in concert twice - once on the legendary Rainbow New Year's eve show (31 December 1977), recorded as a live album (It's Alive) and in this YouTube clip, below:



The second time was the day after my 21st birthday at Warwick University, Coventry, where I was studying. I happened to interview the band for University Radio Warwick (photo below - that's me on the left, with Johnny Ramone, right) - photo by Nick Morris. By October 1978, Tommy Ramone had been replaced by Marky on drum duties; he stayed on to manage the band and work co-producing their fourth album.

The Ramones made little impact on the mainstream at the time they appeared in the mid-70s, their first album, Ramones, released in April 1976, only reached no. 111 in the Billboard charts. In Britain, however, this 12-inch vinyl platter changed a generation for good.

They inspired the punk rock bands with the message that not knowing how to play more than three chords was not actually an obstacle if you had something to say and could say it with conviction and energy. The Sex Pistols, Clash, Damned and indeed the nearest thing West London had to the Ramones, the Lurkers, would not have got going in the direction they did were it not for the Ramones leading the way across the Atlantic.

I remember cruising up to the polling station on the Argyle Road in May 1983 in my big black GAZ M-21 Volga, intending to vote for Mrs Thatcher. I switched on the car radio. Radio 1 was playing the Ramones - Sheena is a Punk Rocker. The song changed my voting intentions. I could not vote for Mrs Thatcher, thus betraying the very essence of punk rock. So minutes later, I placed my 'X' against the name of the Liberal candidate for Ealing North (wasted vote, as it happened).

Mr Dembo's Ramones Pick-List (grab these off YouTube). Hardly any song exceeds two and half minutes. An asterisk after the track name suggests essential listening.

Ramones (April 1976)

Blitzkrieg Bop*
Beat on the Brat
Judy is a Punk
Chain Saw*
I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement
Loudmouth*
Havana Affair*
Listen to My Heart
53rd & 3rd*
Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World*

Ramones Leave Home (January 1977)

Glad to See You Go*
Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment
Sheena is a Punk Rocker*
Suzy Is a Headbanger
Pinhead
Commando*
You're Gonna Kill That Girl

Rocket to Russia (November 1977)

Cretin Hop*
Rockaway Beach*
I Don't Care
We're A Happy Family 
Teenage Lobotomy* 
I Wanna Be Well
Ramona

And of course, It's Alive (if you have the double live album, check out the gate-fold - you'll see me down in the front row, I'm uh, I'm down there somewhere... This performance was amazing for the speed, the adrenaline - each short song played even faster - averaging about a minute and half - and no pause between songs. After the last beat ONE TWO THREE FOUR and we're into the next one. One of the greatest live rock albums of all time ever.

This did not happen accidentally. Johnny was the disciplinarian, demanding long rehearsals, building up the band's incredible stamina. Dee Dee and Joey provided the comic-book schlock teen lyrics, the speeded-up surf sounds, the stripped-down harmony. Total heaviosity combined with sing-along melodies. And Tommy held the whole thing together.

Coencidentally, Tommy in his pre-Ramones days worked as assistant engineer on Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsies album, which contained Machine Gun, which features as the soundtrack of the greatest moment in the Coen Brother's greatest movie, A Serious Man (The Goy's Teeth sequence).

This time three years:
Midsummer evening, Jeziorki

This time four year:
Feininger in Kraków

This time five years ago:
Agricultural notes from Jeziorki

This time six years ago:
Stormy Sunday - lightning photos

This time seven years ago:
Peacocks wow tourists in Łazienki Park

"Buy BEST Bacon from POLAND" - British ad from 1968

Looking through a book called Ealing, Hanwell & Greenford by Richard Essen, part of a series called Britain in Old Photographs, I came across this picture, below. It is remarkable for a number of reasons. The caption reads: "A bus on route 65A in Argyle Road, Ealing, on 16 November 1968. Its destination was the Copt Gilders estate near Chessington." The location not actually Argyle Road, but around the corner on Cleveland Road, a stone's throw from the house into which my family would move on 1 May 1970. For several years, I'd take the 65 or the 273 bus home from Ealing Broadway station on my way home from school.

What caught my eye in this photo was the advert on the side. "Buy BEST bacon - From POLAND" it says, with a picture of a slice of back bacon.

Wow. Amazing. This is 1968, you will understand. Władysław Gomułka is leading the Polish United Workers Party as communist Poland staggers from economic crisis to economic crisis, whilst, proszę Cię bardzo, Polish best bacon is being advertised in London. And note that this is back bacon - a slice of pork loin and pork belly held together with a strip of fat and rind. Back bacon is a traditional British cut, unknown in Poland to this day. And yet here it is, competing in a British market (outside of the European Economic Community at that time) with bacon from Britain, from commonwealth Canada or from fellow-EFTA member, Denmark.

Back in Poland, people are struggling to buy meat while the state-owned export agency Animex is busy promoting the sales of its PEK and Krakus brands in free-market Britain. Why advertise on the side of a 65? Could it be that the route runs through some of the densest populations of Poles in Britain - the roads off Cleveland Road were full of houses owned by Poles, as were the streets off the South Ealing Road? Was advertising that sophisticated in those days before the introduction of the postcode and highly-focused target groups?

In those days, there were only three Polish shops serving Ealing's large Polish community, one on Ealing Broadway ('Parada', still there), one on The Avenue near Gordon Road, and the other one on the corner of Northfields Avenue and Elers Road run by Pan Rozwadowski. A visit to either was a childhood treat, not least because of the chance to buy Krówki - Polish luxury cream fudge.

On another note, the bus in the photo is an AEC Regent (RT 2492, KXW 121, built in 1950) with route-number in a roof box. This bus was the predecessor of the more famous AEC Routemaster; the RT continued in service with London Transport until the late 1970s. On the 65 route, the Routemaster replaced the RT in 1975. [Information from this brilliant site.]

This time two years ago:
Work on the S2 continues
(over a year before it finally opened)

This time five years ago:
Sunset across the tracks, Nowa Iwiczna

This time six years ago:
The storm the forecasters missed

This time seven years ago:
Peacocks in the park

Rustic retreat rained off

July days in Poland are similar; you wake to brilliant sunshine and a crystal clear sky; throughout the day the clouds build up, from innocent fluffy things in the morning to threatening dark giants by the evening. And so it was today. But of a whim a decision to head out to the country, to catch a Koleje Mazowieckie train to Czachówek and to take a walk around deepest rural Mazowsze. [Click 'Czachówek' label below to see more from this enchanting place.]

The ticket machines on W-wa Śródmieście are brilliant. Within a minute or so I'd bought a return from W-wa Jeziorki (from the edge of my travel pass area) to Czachówek Górny using my credit card, a mere 14.24 (less than a fiver). This ticket would take me beyond Piaseczno, the Slough of Warsaw, beyond the posh(ish) dormitory of Zalesie Górne where the insecure rich live behind fenced compounds with snarling hounds (how 1990s!), beyond Ustanówek, the first village proper south of the Warsaw agglomeration, and out of Warsaw's Zone 2 (Warsaw has but two zones).

Further south, the train arrives at Czachówek Górny (below), one station in a village noted for its many railway stations. Sadly, Czachówek Środkowy (what would have been the village's fourth station) has been liquidated, the station building demolished to make way for an ersatz car park (to the right of the pic)

Below: a freight train rumbles westward along the Skierniewice-Łuków line, now used exclusively by freight trains - and they run frequently. This railway line crosses the line above at right angles to the one pictured above.

Below: halfway between Czachówek Górny and Czachówek Wschodni. The latter is not actually in Czachówek but in the next village-but-one, Czarny Las (lit. Black Forest).

I observe a huge, towering thundercloud rising above Góra Kalwaria to the east (below). It's moving my way, I'm moving towards it. The wind picks up, snapping branches off trees in the woods that surround me. The cloud rumbles and emits lightning flashes. It's hot. Nearly 30C. The deluge cannot be avoided, nor is there any escape...

Suddenly the heavens open - a massive deluge that instantly turns the road to Czarny Las into a flowing river. My first thoughts are for my camera and phones - all safely stowed into my excellent Samsonite rucksack. I get soaked to the skin - shoes squelching as I walk - but it's not unpleasant, despite the sudden plunge in temperature to 22C. Like being under a refreshing, intensive shower. Sadly no photos - maybe an excuse to buy a waterproof Nikon - the AW1...

I walk through the downpour, utterly drenched, on to Czachówek Wschodni station, from where I catch a train to Góra Kalwaria. The train waits there for 40 minutes before turning back to Warsaw.

Time for a snack and a beer from the local shop, in which I'm the only customer not buying a bottle of vodka(!). Góra Kalwaria isn't a nice place. Bolesna dziura ('painful hole') is how one grafitto on the train shelter describes the place. I wonder how much it would change were it to be brought into Warsaw's Zone 2. Below: another freight, this one an eastbound PKP Cargo train about to pass Góra Kalwaria station hauling a rake of empty coal wagons.

Although the train from Warsaw was packed all the way to Czachówek and beyond towards Warka and Radom, few passengers took the branch Czachówek to Góra Kalwaria. I'm convinced that good public transport to the nearest city is the best way to turn such sad Polish small towns into bustling, vivacious outposts of civilisation.

Below: the north apex of the Czachówek diamond. My train has joined the Warsaw-Radom line from the east; to the right, another track branches off to the Skierniewice-Łuków line line.

Although my walk was interrupted, I managed my daily 10,000 paces (a million per quarter so far this year). City folk should visit the countryside more often. Me included.

This time two years ago:
Thunderstorm over Jeziorki

This time three years ago:
Getting lost on top of Łopień

This five three years ago:
Regulatory absurdities in Poland

This time six years ago:
Czachówek and Alignment

This time seven years ago:
Joy, pain, sunshine, rain

Ukraine's not gone away

It looks like the middle way is winning. Barack Obama, criticised by the hawks for being too soft on Mr Putin, and by the doves for getting involved where the US has no business, seems to have quelled Russia's neo-imperialist ambitions for the loss of zero American lives. For the time being, anyway. Mr Obama's strategy, focused very tightly on financial and economic outcomes, is working much better than any show of strength by the Seventh Fleet in the Black Sea would have ever achieved.

Crimea might have been lost to Ukraine, but the cost of keeping it is beginning to hurt Russia. Unable to get water to Crimean fields or tourists to Crimean beaches, its economy is crumbling.

And finally Ukraine has shown it has the resolve and the muscle to oust the pro-Russian separatists from its eastern towns and cities. The separatists - who have been using Russian-supplied military hardware to wrest control of eastern Ukraine away from Kiev - have been pushed back to Donetsk and Luhansk.

What are the separatists' leaders after? Probably some kind of bandit quasi-state, recognised by no one, like Transdniestria, run by renegade Soviet officers as their own little mafia fiefdom, nevertheless desperately poor economically and with dismal human rights.

Petro Poroshenko, who won the Ukrainian presidential elections outright less than six weeks ago, has shown himself to be a statesman and nation-builder - although these are early days, and Ukraine has a track-record of electing leaders that turn out dodgy. But so far so good. The Ukrainian armed forces have got themselves together as a fighting force.

The separatists are on the run, a turning point has been reached. Voices in Russia are calling Mr Putin to step in and support the pro-Russian fighters; but Mr Putin is reluctant to do so. He may yet intervene militarily from across the border, but the likelihood diminishes with each passing week. Russia risks ostracism from the global economic system. The sanctions imposed on Mr Putin's wealthy associates by the US and (more reluctantly) by the EU have hit them where it hurts. Within weeks, their net worth was reduced by several billion dollars per head. Visa and Mastercard have shown that the US can turn off the life-blood of the Russian financial system at a single keystroke, and I'm sure Microsoft and Google have some nasty things they can infiltrate into Russian citizens' PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones.

A further defeat for Mr Putin is that the West has raised its guard against the Kremlin's disinformation warriors feeding lies and half-truths to gullible readers of comments sections of its online media. No longer are readers of the Guardian, Telegraph, Independent or Mail likely to come across dubious diatribes about Ukrainian Fascists conducting genocide on Russians in Donetsk.

And a victory for the balanced, intelligent approach. A defeat for those who say "sit back and do nothing", and a defeat for those who say "nuke the bastards to kingdom come".

The balanced way is hardest because its subject to attacks from all corners. In the case of Ukraine, it is shown to be working, despite the doubts from the West's left and right.

And all of this good news hiding below the headlines. Let's just hope Mr Putin skulks back to lick his wounds having learned his lesson - that all his nationalistic bluster and bare-chested bravado, does not get you far these days, especially when his mates' fortunes are at stake.

This time two years ago:
More about Modlin airport

This time five years ago:
Get on your bike and RIDE!

This time six years ago:
Moles in my own garden
[Before I discovered the Secret: Mr Dembo's special sauce]

Thoughts on brewing and investing

The big brewers are in retreat, globally, because all they are doing is trying to pinch market share off one another, spending millions to push their brands. In the meanwhile, small artisan, or craft brewers, are brewing beer with enthusiasm and passion; they brew because they love what they're doing, not because they have to provide shareholders with a good quarterly set of figures.

The other week in Auchan I heard a woman asking her husband: "Łomża or Perła?", a question unthinkable five years ago, when the question would have simply been "Żywiec, Lech or Tyskie?". Choice now runs deep. Five years ago, I was despondent about the state of Polish brewing. Now, I can see (at Warsaw at least) huge improvements. They've not come from the Big Three - Heineken, Carlsberg and SAB-Miller, but from small breweries intent on creating great beers for consumers who care about taste and quality.

In recent weeks, Auchan has been selling a beer called Lubuskie IPA from Browar Witnica, an India Pale Ale with a taste I remember from my youth, massively hoppy, and unlike Witnica's Chmiel (Hops), it's not sweet. Unless I'm in a specialist beer shop where the choice also includes micro-breweries like Pinta and Ale Browar, the appearance of Lubuskie IPA has wholly satisfied my craving for a hoppy, unsweetened beer.

What's this got to do with investing?

Beer can be made by a small, local company. So can cheese, ham and pork pies. Which makes stock-market listed brewers and food processors susceptible to competition from small, local brewers and makers of quality foodstuffs. Without expensive managers, advertising companies, and other corporate overheads, your money that pays for those things can instead go on quality ingredients.

Lots of things can be made by small, local companies. Furniture, bicycles and clothing for example.

But there are things that can only be made by global corporations - such as airliners, pharmaceuticals and microprocessors.

These are the companies in which you should invest - because they only have to compete against one another, and not have to worry about losing market share to an artisan.

So then - buy locally, from people you know to be passionate about what they do and only invest in companies that make things that are the product of huge research and development budgets and global supply chains.

If you have got any shares in big global brewers - start thinking of divesting yourself of them. Better buy shares in, say, Airbus or Boeing, because while a start-up entrepreneur can brew you a beer, he'll never build you a 500-seat airliner.

This time last year:
Cruisers and low-riders - cycle fashion

This time This time four years ago:
Gone is the threat of Państwo Smoleńskie

This time six years ago:
Bike ride to Święty Krzyż

Making Poland's railways safer

The difference in health-and-safety culture between the UK and Poland is clearly visible, nowhere more so than on the railway. Things which in Britain would be deemed unacceptable are normal in Poland. In Britain, railway tracks are fenced off, straying onto a main line - or indeed a branch line - is not easy. The costs of keeping rails secure from trespassers must be huge - but the costs pay off.

It's worth referring to the European Rail Agency's latest safety report, which puts things into perspective. Let's start with level crossings. In Poland, the number of fatalities in level crossing accidents is nine times higher than in the UK (61 deaths compared to seven in 2012). Poland has around 14,000 level crossings, the UK 6,100. Yet the UK's rail network is larger (31,000km compared to Poland's 29,000km), more than twice as busy and with much faster trains.

The photo above, taken today on ul. Baletowa, shows the problem. Gamblers and chancers taking a risk with their lives and their passengers' lives. The coal train gave several loud hoots as it approached this unguarded level crossing (which lacks even signal lights). And yet until the very last moment, cars continued to cross. 

Another category of rail accident is unauthorised persons on track hit by a train. In 2012, 180 people were killed this way in Poland, nearly six times more than in the UK where the death toll was 32.

Below: passengers crossing the track at W-wa Służewiec station to get to the tram loop. A footbridge has been provided (left), but that means walking up and then down a flight of steps.

It would seem from the statistics that Poland has to spend much money on infrastructure improvement and on changing people's attitudes. Polish railways are the second-most dangerous in the EU after Latvia (in terms of deaths and serious injuries per million passenger kms). The UK rail network is the EU's second safest after Luxembourg.

But despite the relatively poor performance of Polish railways as seen in the context of other European networks, Poland's railways are vastly safer than roads. As this document points out, your chances of dying in a car crash are 50 times higher than in a plane crash, and 25 times higher than being killed on the railways.

Poland's rail network is under-invested; I trust that EU funds from the 2014-2020 financial perspective will make their way to where they are most needed to improve the speed and safety of Polish railways.

This time last year:
Along mirror'd canyons

This time three years ago:
Mad about Marmite

This time four year:
Komorowski wins second round of Presidential elections?

This time fiver years ago:
A beautiful summer dusk in Jeziorki

This time six years ago:
Classic cars, London and Warsaw

First impressions of Jeziorki's new Biedronka

A week after Biedronka opened its doors to Jeziorki, I ventured into the new supermarket on my way from work. I must say, my first impression was favourable. Seven and half out of ten. The new shop will give our local Lidl a run for its money.

The Biedronka chain is run by Jeronimo Martins Distribution, a Portuguese-owned chain now registered in the Netherlands for tax reasons. JMD is Poland's no.1 retailer, ahead of Tesco and Carrefour.

Interestingly, Biedronka is exactly the same distance from our house as Lidl - 1.1km on foot. Both are 300m from the nearest bus stop, both of which are just one stop from Trombity.

The layout is similar - you enter to the left of the store, past the bakery department, then tinned groceries, fresh fruit and veg with the refrigerated meats, fish and cheeses at the far end. Like Lidl, Biedronka sells some non-food items, including stuff not seen at Lidl such as bicycles and TVs. One little difference - the baskets. These have extendable handles and wheels, and can be pulled along, encouraging you to buy more as you're no longer limited by how much you can carry.

On my first visit I bought beef carpaccio (Beefmaster by Biernacki, 140g - as at Lidl, premium meat), own-brand pesto, 190g jar at half the price of Auchan's Gran Italia - and not bad at all; some 'Światowid'-brand 14 month-old mature cheddar cheese* - made in Great Britain for (na zlecienie) Lactalis Polska for Jeronimo Martins Polska; some stir-fry mixed sprouts; and a fillet of smoked salmon**. These five premium items came to just over 32 zlotys - around £7. Excellent value - and excellent quality.

Where's the alcohol, I hear you asking. Indeed a question I intended to ask one of the staff myself. I feared the following answer: "Because the shop turned out to be less than 100m as the crow flies from a railway station, we were denied a licence to sell alcohol, even though it's actually a 400m walk to get here from the platform".

Fortunately, my doubts were misguided. I asked and yes, there will be a licence - in three weeks time. Eight months it takes to build and fit out the shop start to finish, nine months to get a licence to sell alcohol. Hey-ho.

So I look forward to some refreshing vinhos verdes and some robust ruby ports from Portugal for when the nights get longer.

How will Biedronka fare against Lidl? It will be a tough fight for the affections of shoppers. Lidl seems somehow lighter, brighter; more daylight from the south-facing windows. Biedronka seems cheaper. Time will tell which car park is fuller at the weekend.

But unless Biedronka can sell me something that Lidl and (in particular) Auchan can't, my shopping habits won't change much. It'll still be Auchan for me of a Sunday morning.

One unanswered question: the road sign as you leave the Biedronka car park and approach the junction to Karczunkowska. It says 'end of cycle path'. What cycle path? Where did it begin? Will one be built? If so, where from? And only in one direction?

* The 14 month-old matured cheddar is excellent value for 7.49zł for 200g. It tastes better, and is 4zł cheaper, than the Kerrygold mature cheddar sold at Auchan.

** I was hoping also for bacalhau - dried cod-fish, a Portuguese staple. No such luck. Nor indeed Queijo de Serpa, a hard goat's cheese. Maybe one day, as the the tastes of Warsaw consumers become even more cosmopolitan.


This time last year:
In the highways and the hedges

This time two years ago
How Warsaw's public transport authority communicates with passengers

This time three years ago:
Farewell to separate alcohol tills at Polish supermarkets

This time four years ago:
Twin turboprop cargo planes at Okęcie

This time five years ago:
To the countryside, Czachówek

This time six years ago:
Why I feel freer in Poland than in the UK

This time seven years ago:
Stormy summer night

Judging Mr Guział by his works

The local government elections are not till 16 November. And yet, for the past few weeks, the innocent, juvenile face of Piotr Guział, mayor of the Warsaw district of Ursynów, has been staring down on the capital's voters. For Mr Guział has ambitions to replace Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz as prezydent miasta (mayor) of Warsaw.

So I welcomed the opportunity (thank you Neighbour for the reminder) to pop by the school on ul. Kajakowa on my way home for a public meeting with Mr Guział about matters pertinent to Jeziorki (and indeed the whole of Zielony Ursynów, the part of the district to the west of ul. Puławska).

Impressions? Rather than the angelic youth beaming down upon the people of Warsaw, an older, street-fighting political operator, in his element among a crowd of disgruntled voters. Educated at SGH (Warsaw School of Economics) where he majored in local government finance, the 39 year-old has spent his life in public administration and local politics. A man of the Left, he drifted in and out of several left-wing formations before allying himself and his localist Nasz Ursynów group with PiS (Law and Justice) in attempting to oust Ms Gronkiewicz-Waltz last October.

Positives - Mr Guział knows his patch. Whatever street was mentioned by people at the meeting - he knew where it was, and what the issue was. Very good grasp of detail.

Negatives - Mr Guział is not the best orator I've listened to; his diction is garbled, telescoping one word into the next. But above all, it's spychotechnika or buck-passing. While we understand that sewers are the responsibility of MPWiK, buses of ZTM, main roads of ZDM etc, he should be more proactive in supporting local residents in their fights to get good drainage and roads.

[Sadly, I wrote a longer post but I must have pressed the wrong key, because when I returned to this page, the second half had disappeared; I don't have time this morning to recreate it. Suffice to say I'll vote for Ms Gronkiewicz-Waltz again in November on the basis of the vast improvement the city's enjoyed on her watch. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.]

Follow-up Friday 11 July, 9:30am. Less than two weeks after this meeting, Mr Guział honoured his promise to visit residents of ul. Achillesa about asphalting the two bits of ul. Nawłocka together.

Click here for an account of this meeting in Polish from the Halo Ursynów website

This time last year:
Communication breakdown

This time two years ago:
Getting ready for the opening of Modlin airport
[Amazing to recall that it opened, closed for nearly a year, and has been functioning normally since last October...]

This time seven years ago:
Maybugs in July - a plague of cockchaffers