A couple weeks ago, I was at a dinner party held by a buddy's girlfriend. During the course of the meal, the husband-and-wife DJ team to my left found out about my record collection and started quizzing me about it. The husband-and-wife artists to my right were busy tuning us out talking of the new David Lynch film, so we launched into a detailed discussion of our own.

We hit the usual routes whenever I have this conversation (favorite album, favorite artist, favorite blues song that Led Zeppelin eventually ripped off) until the wife asked me: "What's the worst record you own?"

I didn't even need to think. "I own a copy of Dee Dee Ramone's rap album," I said.

This seemed to be new information for a good chunk of the table. The David Lynch conversation suddenly stopped, and I started talking about Standing in the Spotlight, the god-awful record Dee Dee Ramone released under the name Dee Dee King.

Standing in the Spotlight was one of the great disasters of modern music, and makes for a good cautionary tale. Though the album was released shortly after Dee Dee quit the Ramones in 1989 (after the Pet Semetary album), it was not his first foray into the hip hop; two years earlier, he had released a 12-inch single called "Funky Man" under the name Dee Dee king. As Dee Dee told the story in the Ramones documentary End of the Century, he started rapping after meeting people in rehab. As a lower-class outlander (Dee Dee was born in Germany), Dee Dee probably understood rap to a degree that his bandmates couldn't:


The problem was, the rest of the Ramones weren't interested (at all) in his diversion. After showing up for concerts in a tracksuit and gold chains and calling himself "one of the Negroes," things blew up and Dee Dee left the band to pursue a full-time career in rap.

There was, however, a hitch in his plans: he sucked at it.

Dee Dee's decision came about the same time that the Beastie Boys released Paul's Boutique, Public Enemy brought out It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, and N.W.A. hit the big time with Straight Outta Compton. Even a talented artist would have some stiff competition, but Dee Dee's "Funky Man" and Standing in the Spotlight were released to almost universal ridicule.

Today, you almost have to give Dee Dee credit. After all, he saw that new generations of music fans would eventually drift away from punk and rock to rap. Hindsight, however, is 20-20; he may have been one of the first white rappers on the scene, and his backing music may have been original recordings instead of samples, but at the time, it wasn't enough to stop critics like Matt Carlson of the All Music Guide from passing some harsh judgment on poor Dee Dee:

"Dee Dee Ramone's 'Standing in the Spotlight' will go down in the annals of pop culture as one of the worst recordings of all time. ... Dee Dee plumbs the depths of stupidity for this record, musically (hip-hop done in some sort of off-rhythm samba beat) and lyrically."

Most of Carlson's review is apt, but I am loathe to call the album an all-time worst. Believe it or not, despite that critical consensus, Standing in the Spotlight is not only one of my most cherished LPs, it's also one of my favorite albums to listen to.

It is my belief that one day in the not-so-distant future, people will look back at the first decade of the new millennium as "The Ironic Age," a time when people despised anything not created within the last five years. To signify this disapproval, they would buy DVDs of bad TV shows and wear t-shirts of bands they hated because the only way to safely like anything was to pretend you liked it, even though it obviously sucked.

My love for Standing in the Spotlight is not at all ironic. True, the record is almost a complete artistic disaster, but every second of it is a testimonial of Dee Dee's love for the genre. The more I think about it, I own the album for the same reasons that I own a box set of Ed Wood films; every frame of his movies drips with enthusiasm for filmmaking. Today, such fervent passion for art is frightfully lacking in the world.

Of course, I'd be lying if I said this was the only reason the record is such a gas. The fact that Dee Dee had not an once of talent in led to one of the biggest bombs the recording industry has ever seen, but at least it was a bomb that was fun to listen to. Right off the top of my head, I can think of five albums (as well as five movies) that are just as god-awful, but are also an absolute chore to sit through. Standing in the Spotlight might be the Titanic of musical disasters, but the up-side is you'll likely be laughing as the ship starts to sink.



Funky Man




Commotion in the Ocean (Standing in the Spotlight)




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"Funky Man" 12-inch
Side A: Funky Man
Side B: Dub remix of Funky Man
Released in 1987 by Rock Hotel/Profile Records.

Standing in the Spotlight
1.Mashed Potato Time
2.2 Much 2 Drink
3.Baby Doll
4.Poor Little Rich Girl
5.Commotion In The Ocean
6.German Kid
7.Brooklyn Babe
8.Emergency
9.The Crusher
10.I Want What Want When I Want It