Monday, February 21, 2022

Song of the Day: ''Bonzo Goes to Bitburg' by the Ramones


For Presidents' Day I thought it would be fun to share a song about, well, a president. I really couldn't think of any, but a Google search took me to a list of 10 that included "Young Abe Lincoln (Make a Tall, Tall Man)” by Johnny Horton, “James K. Polk” by They Might Be Giants, “Eisenhower Blues” by J.B. Lenoir and not one but four about Ronald Reagan, including songs by Violent Femmes, Prince and this one by Johnny and the boys, none of which I had heard of contemporaneously.

Needless to say, none of the Regan songs remember the the Gipper fondly.


"Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" directly responds to President Reagan’s 1985 visit to the Bitburg cemetery in Germany, where Nazi soldiers were buried. He was criticized for this decision because those soldiers fought against the U.S. during World War II and participated in the holocaust. The Ramones came out with this anti-Reagan tune as a protest, and it also reminds listeners about other issues like AIDS.

2 comments:

Blobby said...

I gotta say, we are around the same age and have an eerily similar taste in music (which is totally a compliment), but I have NEVER understood the appeal of the Ramones - or their alleged influence.

Kenneth M. Walsh said...

@Blobby: I don't entirely disagree!