SEVERAL YEARS AGO, the Rolling Stones played the Oakland Coliseum on their awful Bridges to Babylon tour, and—weirdly—I found myself seated directly in front of Johnny Ramone. Needless to say, I couldn’t get over it. There, onstage, were five wizened old millionaires going through these plastic motions and raking in huge amounts of money, while behind me sat a guy whose band had, quite simply, really rocked my world. About three songs into the Stones set, I noticed Johnny leaving, so I grabbed him by his sleeve and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Ramone, I just wanted to tell you how much better you are than this.”It was kind of a retarded thing to say, I admit. I mean, “Mr. Ramone?” But it was genuine, and besides, when it comes to bad grammar, the Ramones would be the last people to squawk. Anyway, I thought of that moment last week upon hearing of Dee Dee Ramone’s death. It follows fairly close on the heels of Joey Ramone’s passing last April, and as my brother bemusedly offered, “It’s always sad when members of the same family die.”Yes, they were all “Mr. Ramones” to me, even if their mothers didn’t know each other—they were a family of four, and now two of them are gone. “The Ramones were our Beatles,” Eddie Vedder declared in March at their induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and it’s true. For most rock fans under the age of 40, the Ramones’ role in music—as the epitome of punk and keepers of its flame—mimics that of the Fab Four. Oddly, the very name “Ramone” was taken—by Dee Dee—from a Paul McCartney pseudonym, Paul Ramone. Now the two bands have something more in common: The original lineups of both have recently been cut in half.Dee Dee’s death, like Joey’s, was unexpected and tragic, and not just because they both died at fairly young ages (Joey was 49, Dee Dee 50). The really sad thing is how underappreciated the Ramones were by the public at large. Unlike Sir Paul McCartney, who has reaped every possible benefit from his Beatledom—from vast wealth to royal honors to the adulation of everyone he’s ever met—the Ramones struggled just to make ends meet, and none more than Dee Dee, who left the band in 1989, only to return to the fold years later. His death doesn’t mean the end of the Ramones—that happened when Joey died—but it’s a loss, nonetheless. Why the hell haven’t any of the darn Rolling Stones kicked it, instead? Then we might be spared their upcoming tour.Joking aside, that cuts to the heart of the question that the Ramones’ entire career raises. Why are some bands—the Stones, for instance—granted eternal fame and fortune, and others, like the Ramones, denied it? Although these days it’s possible to hear some of their riffs and choruses in baseball stadiums between innings, the Ramones never achieved the level of fame and fortune that far lesser lights—think Sugar Ray or Third Eye Blind—reach via crappy debut albums. Surprising, too, when you consider that the Ramones hardly represented the kind of high-art elitism that generally gets neglected in America; indeed, they were closer to The Simpsons or Beavis and Butthead in their merging of idiocy and genius than to, say, the Velvet Underground (who, legendarily, only sold records to highbrows who later formed famous bands).IN 1996, upon the release of their last LP, Adios Amigos, the Ramones scored a slot on Lollapalooza thanks mostly to the efforts of the band Rancid, who not only refused to tour without them but gave up half their bus and truck space to ship their equipment. I spent a week on that tour, and the Ramones were invariably the highlight of the show. Each day they played—usually around 3 o’clock—the collected members of Soundgarden, Rancid, Rage Against the Machine, and sometimes even Metallica would emerge and gather on the side of the stage to pay their devoted respects. Every show, the Ramones would pick someone from this group of musicians to wear the cretin head, and it was considered an honor to be given the duty. An honor? It was practically a beatitude.The Ramones were ageless and changeless, and having been on the road for 22 years and 2,296 gigs, they never lost that sense of wonder and enthusiasm that makes a good band into a great one. That spirit is what distinguishes them from peers and elders alike. And—along with the dearly departed souls of Dee Dee and Joey—it’s what I’ll miss most in the years to come.info@seattleweekly.com