RRRR: Real Ramones Regret, Really

In my earliest days as a Ramones fan I'd somehow heard the rumor (how the fuck did we do these things before the internet?!!?!?) that Sheena is a Punk Rocker had replaced a song on their Leave Home album, and the song it replaced was called Carbona Not Glue. Also somehow I'd come to understand  (how the fuck did we do these things before the internet?!!?!?)  that this song was a great song, and had been robbed of its spot on the album because Carbona was the name of a brand of glue kids used for sniffing and the company was threatening to sue the band if they released the song.

So by the time I finally got to hear the song I had a lot of baggage about it to carry along with me, so it being one of my favorite songs I'd ever heard - and still a Top 5 Ramones song to this day - was an orgiastic relief. Its incredible 1977-era Ramones melody along with their signature catchy guitar rhythms were intoxicating, and I was furious it was left off an official release for reason so foreign to me - I had no idea kids were out there sniffing glue (other than The Ramones' first album including a song literally titled Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue, of course) so I felt doubly cheated. As the decades flew by and The band never had a massive hit that would deliver the galaxy-wide fame they so richly deserved, I chalked it up to "ugh, can you BELIEVE their bad luck??", shaking my head at their misfortune. The whole "drop this name or we'll sue!" furor was so real that when they put out their live album in 1991, Loco Live, they included the song (which is amazing because I've never heard of them playing it live any time before or since) but it wasn't included on the track listing (gabba gabba sneaky sneaks!).

So I'm slightly embarrassed that it's taken 35 years for it to occur to me...why didn't they just change the name in the title? It's just 5 syllables, and it could be anything, any other word or any other name; as long as you keep the incredible melody & playing on it, nobody would have noticed or cared. They could pretty much be any other words and it wouldn't have changed how much I loved the song, and I'm 100% certain that just about 100% of other Ramones fans would feel the same way. Bummer.

POSTSCRIPT: ever since 2001, all releases of Leave Home have included the song where it was originally intended, between Oh Oh I Love Her So and Suzy is a Headbanger. But by then it didn't matter, The Ramones would always sell more t-shirts than albums after that since they'd missed their best opportunity (a window that probably closed after they starred in their own feature film that came & went without them breaking through to the general masses). And it's really a shame that such an incredible shoulda-been hit single that pops just as much almost 50 years later as it did back then wasn't allowed to help make that happen.