Joey's Knees (None New Wavier part 173)

How did Joey Ramone come up with this strange stage stance - left knee flexed and thrust forward, right leg straightened and tensed? It looks kind of athletic - like the starting position of a sprinter or hurdler - and creates this effect of him almost poised to vault into the audience.  But it's also like a freeze-framed stride. His incredibly long legs and praying mantis physique accentuate the startling effect of this stance.  He also angles the microphone stand dramatically so that it spears towards the audience. Or perhaps it's for support, like those sticks that hikers carry.... 

Somewhere I saw a TV studio clip or promo that shot the Ramones from the side, so Joey's stance looked really aberrant - you could see what the right foot was doing, at times it was tensed at tiptoe. This below is not the video in question  - the camera is shooting the band's front - but it has the best footage I could find of the stage stance, especially around 34 seconds when Joey leans in for the chorus, and again at 2.15.

There is a good view of the leg stride-splay in this Top of the Pop clip at 2 mins, and passim. 

Oh and this one has some good knee-splay shots - seen switched angles from 44 seconds - and nicely accentuated by the holes in his jeans at the knee

I should imagine long term the strain on the left knee and the tendons and muscles in the right leg might have led to problems.

Then again he doesn't seem to have kept it up for the whole of the set - sometimes he'll jump up for more perpendicular stances. 

Johnny Ramone is notable also for extremely widely splayed legs and a low-slung guitar posture. 

Combo of splay and squat 

Here Johnny has semi-adopted the left knee forward thrust and tensed right leg of Joey - whereas Joey is in a more perpendicular mode, really using his gangly height, with a stance that somehow seems to combine correct posture and slouch

My one sighting of Joey Ramone in the flesh is from when he was quite decrepit, in the late '90s. He used to live near a well-regarded cheese shop in the East Village. I remember being in there one time and he shuffled in, looking a bit disoriented, still dressed in pyjamas. I think he was looking to get a bagel (they had other stuff apart from cheese - the bagels were good and incredibly cheap).  Or did I see him on the sidewalk immediately outside, while I was queuing inside? At any rate, he definitely looked worse for wear and a little dazed and confused.

Strangely, not five minutes later, striding purposefully down the street past the cheese shop, wearing some kind of rock'n'roll-flavored cowboy hat, came another CBGB-era legend: Marty Rev.

The Ramones - an odd one for me. If I hear them on the radio, which would be a vanishingly rare occurrence these days, I'll always turn it right up. But I can't imagine ever listening to a whole Ramones album. Their music has a combo of basic undeniable excitement and shallow inanity. Historical importance versus purpose-served-so-why-would-you-listen-now?

I seem to remember liking End of the Century. And "Don't Come Close".  Those seemed to have a bit more feeling behind them.

This is the Top of the Pops performance I can remember from the time - first time I ever did hear the Ramones.

There's a bit of the leg-stance going on here but because it's shot from the front, you can't see the back leg and it looks like he's crossing his legs like a 4 year old who really really needs to do a wee. 

One of the songs on End of Century where the team-up with Spector really works 

Daniel Clowes video! From the '90s! With knee-stance displayed from multiple angles

I don't know why but on this turf I just find The Descendents more affecting

Not so much this song but Milo Goes To College era

One of the great anti-suburbia songs, all the more amusing for being so generic and pro forma in its complainage