![]() ![]() In many ways, the Ramones were the Spider-Man of rock n’ roll bands. They even, at least on the cover of the 2nd Elvis album (my favorite), have a fondness for cameras. It might be a coincidence that Elvis Costello looks an awful lot like how Steve Ditko drew Peter Parker. See? Peter was always a little out of step with the musical zeitgeist. But it’s worth noting there was a period in the ‘80s when it was established, without question, that he was a big Elvis Costello fan. Not that Peter’s musical taste has ever been explored in great detail in the comics. Which would you believe Peter listens to, that stuff, or those miserable fucking “songs” that were inflicted on us in his first two movies by the likes of Dashboard Confessional or a Nickelback and Saliva “supergroup?” The interlocking lead guitar lines of Television still sound appropriately spidery too. Of course he’d be into The Talking Heads, because he’s a smart, weird kid, and there were few bands as smart or weird as David Byrne and friends. Of course Peter Parker would be a Ramones fan, they’re all a bunch of misfits from Queens. It didn’t take me long to imagine a Spider-Man movie with a Rushmore-esque soundtrack, one that utilized punk and new wave to get into its jerk-ass hero’s head the same way Wes Anderson used obscure British Invasion tracks to illustrate Max Fischer’s frustrations. Late night dial-up internet sessions were set to that soundtrack, as well as bands I was discovering thanks to Please Kill Me, namely Television, The Talking Heads, and full Ramones albums (as opposed to their ubiquitous greatest hits collections). But it was that film’s eclectic soundtrack, which utilized no music less than 25 years old (other than Mark Mothersbaugh’s score), that really stood out. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in seeing some of Ditko’s Peter Parker in the overachieving, awkward, and often creepy Max Fischer of Rushmore. Instead, Peter is a brooding, often resentful jerk, and his attitude towards the women who don’t have much time for him isn’t exactly great, either. He hasn’t met his years of being bullied with the kind of good natured “aw shucks” attitude we’re accustomed to. Go back and read the first few years worth of Spider-Man comics, and you’ll see that Peter isn’t a terribly nice guy. To this day, its tone reads a little more like Stan Lee and especially Steve Ditko’s original, not-so-nice vision for Peter Parker. The James Cameron treatment for Spider-Man, despite the howls of early internet outrage that accompanied it, felt pretty revolutionary at the time, and not just because we had yet to actually get a big screen version of Spidey. Well, all but one, which was that any Spider-Man movie should prominently feature at least one Ramones song. Around 1999, I discovered Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, and James Cameron’s infamous “scriptment” for his Spider-Man movie. Being young, and with entirely too much time to think, I made some connections that didn’t necessarily need to be made. ![]()
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