" 'Thanks for making an old man happy,' " she reported him as saying.

"He's not old," I scoffed. Joey could never grow old. Joey would be there for us forever. Screw Dick Clark. Joey was the real eternal teenager.

About three thousand of us crammed into the Hammerstein last night to pay the largest shiva call in history. We didn't know what bands would be playing when we forked over the ridiculously low amount of fifteen bucks (not including TicketBastard service charges) for tickets; we just knew that we had to be there. All kinds of people showed up: old-school punks with Mohawks glued in place, balding guys in their 30s and 40s who looked like pudgy, out-of-place accountants, seven-foot-tall transsexuals, mothers with children, 14-year-old kids from Long Island with green hair, Japanese punks with magenta hair, bikers with shaved heads-it didn't matter who or what you were. Everyone belonged. Everyone was family. The music was mind-blowingly great, but it was the crowd that made the show.

"Damn, when the lights go on, you can see just how ugly everyone is," my friend Vinny said.

"Beautiful people listen to Britney Spears," I said. "Real people listen to the Ramones."

The real people didn't go home disappointed, either. The show, ably MC'ed by Little Steven of the E Street Band, was a full four hours of one great band after another. To keep us entertained while the roadies were changing the equipment between sets, there were speakers, sing-alongs with Ramones videos, and pre-recorded birthday messages from various celebrities (noteworthy moment: the crowd yelling "sell-outs!" at the members of Metallica).

The opening band was the Independents, whose cause Joey had long championed. I had never heard them before, but as soon as they took the stage, their energy and obvious muscial chops really blew me away. Why this band has not achieved commercial success is probably due to the fact that they look like real people, instead of like N'Sync. Contemporary music seems to have entered its Mannerist phase: Artifice is admired above soul. As a punk rock pre-Raphaelite, I consider it my cultural duty to support this band by buying their entire discography as soon as Ken pays me for this damn article.

Joey's brother Mickey Leigh and his band Stop played next. Mickey looked as if he was about to cry as he gave a heartfelt rendition of the Ramones' "Outsider," Hell, I thought I was going to cry. Charlotte Lesher must be a proud woman indeed to have raised two talented sons. I can imagine the conversation around the mah jongg table:

Mrs. Leibowitz: "I'm so proud of my Harold! He just got accepted to medical school. Such a son!"

Charlotte: "Well, my Joey is a Ramone, and my Mickey has a band called Stop."

Mrs. Leibowitz: "Your son admitted to you he was a Ramone? And I thought his name was Jeffrey. . ."

Next: Punk Philosophy and Blondie