(Phoenix Books)

www.phoenixbooksandaudio.com

BY CHRIS PARKER

Oh to be a fly on the wall in the life of legendary punk rocker Dee Dee Ramone. Or maybe not. Despite extraordinary circumstances of his life - from the alleged experience hooking for a fix on "53^rd and 3^rd" to the mantle of primary Ramones songwriter to a post-Ramones career including brief stints as a rapper and as one of G.G. Allin's Murder Junkies - much of his life was as banal your own. Indeed, as anyone who's seen it will attest, a raging drug addiction is the epitome of mundane.

Like a train on its way to oblivion, occasionally some spectacle is spied from the window. But most of this trip is concerned with Dee Dee's petulant drug-addled narcissism, and its impact on his one-time wife King. Little is gleaned about his bandmates, other than Johnny's dictatorial tendencies, and no insight's offered into Dee Dee's atavistic songs. It primarily follows King's increasing frustration with Dee Dee's child-like attitude (captured perfectly in the song "I Want What I Want When I Want It"), and her enabling behavior. It's akin to witnessing an incipient smash-up from the inside, sitting beside a stereotypical Jewish mother bemoaning the heartbreak she's endured.

Absent a supporting structure or guiding theme beyond "look at this sweet, yet completely fucked-up individual," the book drags. King, clearly a neophyte author, fails at "Show, Don't Tell," frequently offering opinions of people and situations without backing description. While there are redeeming moments like a ‘70s Hollywood Hills party spent snorting coke with Jackson Browne and enduring Mick Jagger's passes, or recounting Phil Spector's controlling tendencies while producing End of the Century, most of this tiresome window into domestic abuse begs you to change the channel.