Blitzkrieg Press:

Preceding Joey Ramone‘s posthumous album Ya Know? (May 22), the digital presence of the iconic NYC club that launched the Ramones proper, CBGB, teased an awesome relic of the band’s glory days, in which then manager and now sole survivor of the band, Tommy Ramone, delivered a slice of sarcastic press ephemera only a Ramone could deliver. Leading with a denunciation of what the band was not: an “oldies group,” nor a “glitter group,” Tommy unleashed the witty side of his punk ethos from the get go in this one-sheet bio from 1975, claiming the group’s songs “are brief, to the point and every one a potential hit single,” which is something of a feat, explained later via the fact that all their other peers from Forest Hills “either became musicians, degenerates or dentists.” Also, Tommy clearly didn’t give a fuck about an Oxford comma before any of the members of Vampire Weekend were born.

Heartbreaker:

The Walkmen‘s previously mentioned follow-up to 2010’s Lisbon, the epic-titled Heaven (June 5) has two previews floating around the world right now, the title track and now the BBC-teasedHeartbreaker.” Both confirm the band’s sentiments that the “detachment you can feel throughout our younger records is gone,” but this new cut tips the scale a bit, with some brighter jangle guitar shakes and a slicked-back-50s achey “I’m not your heartbreaker” chorus. What do you think, is the detachment still there or not?

Robbie Robertson on Levon Helm:

Yesterday came the fight-the-good-fight sadness that The Band‘s percussion-vocal backbone Levon Helm is “in the final stages of his battle with cancer,” in which his daughter Amy and wife Sandy posted and penned, along with some thank-yous and a plead for prayers. While the world absorbed the news, longtime friend and bandmate, Robbie Robertson, buried a few storied inter-band hatchets over the years and chimed in with a Facebook sentiment today detailing a trip to New York to see Helm one last time and some heartwarming grateful statements about Helm as an “older brother” figure, how “extraordinary talented” he is and the “incredible and beautiful times” they had together (via American Songwriter).

One Last Rose From Axl:

Now that Cleveland’s annual Rock Hall of Fame ceremony is fully behind us, Axl Rose’s 1000+ word open letter explaining his absence, the Hall of Fame inducting him anyway, the current Guns N’ Roses frontman posted one last apologetical statement on his Twitter, Facebook and GNR social media front pages in attempt to, well, he doesn’t want the press to post any of it out of context, it states towards the end. And since we don’t have the space to post it here, simply head over to one of the aforementioned intranet handles and honor thy rocker’s words. And then buy yourself some soup, haters.

Lyricapsule:

So good ol’ Patriot main man Paul Revere, on this day in 1775, set out on his infamous ride with fellow Pat William Dawes to warn the Minutemen and the rest of the rebels that the British were indeed coming, making a move outside of Boston. The spirit of such a move has never really died, and is a key component, of course, to the start of the American Revolution a day later, the “shot heard round the world” and all thet. 200 years later it also inspired two bands come naming time, ’60s garage rockers Paul Revere & the Raiders and 80s punks the Minutemen, the former of which wrote a thrashy bar-gig staple about a girl called “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone,” that is pliable, metaphorically, if you go on and connect the dots to that horseback sprint sprint back in 1775. Go Amurrica.

I said, I-I-I-I-I’m not your steppin’ stone, (No, girl, not me!)
I-I-I-I-I’m not your steppin’ stone (No!)