Album: Too Tough To Die
Year: 1984
The cover of Too Tough to Die was an accident, a camera malfunction that led to one last iconic album cover, as well as obscuring the fact that Marky had been replaced by Ritchie, whose drumming was one of the key factors on my favorite track on the album, Joey’s soap opera pean, “Daytime Dilemma (The Dangers of Love)”
Kicking off with rolls and double backbeats over a droning lead guitar, and then settling into surf-rock riff, “Daytime Dilemma” featured some great vocals from Joey on the verses.
She came from a happy home
A very happy home
A very happy home
Miss personality, a grade ‘A’ student naturally
She had it all worked out
The repetition of “happy home” is sublime, as is his stretching it out on chorus, letting his voice slide from smooth to rough and back again while Ritchie just kills out throughout it.
The dangers
It’s the dangers of love
Yeah, yeah
The dangers
It’s the dangers
And because there were no more rules anymore, “Daytime Dilemma” had not one but two bridges, the first, featuring a Phil Spector beat breakdown, and the second one at full speed, but with a stop time piano glissando after a quick build. After that it was all chorus, Joey belting out “the dangerrrrrrrrs / it’s the dangerrrrrrrrrs” over and over again while a high-pitched backing chorus chanted “the daytime dilemma ahh-ahh” in the background.
It was glorious, and while it was the kind of song that was unimaginable for the Ramones in their heyday, it still killed me, and I played it all the fucking time on KFSR.
Why is this song different from all other Ramones songs?
At 4:32, it’s nearly the length of three “Judy is a Punks” (Judys is a Punk??”), and is the longest Ramones song that I’m writing about. Not to mention that it has two bridges which are completely different from each other.
“Daytime Dilemma (Dangers of Love)”
Did you miss a Certain Song? Follow me on Twitter: @barefootjim
The Certain Songs Database
A filterable, searchable & sortable somewhat up to date database with links to every “Certain Song” post I’ve ever written.
Certain Songs Spotify playlist
(It’s recommended that you listen to this on Spotify as their embed only has 200 songs.)
Support “Certain Songs” with a donation on Patreon
Go to my Patreon page
No comments:
Post a Comment