In 1976 the Ramones urged us all to beat on the brat with a baseball bat. Nearly 40 years later, the brats are now busy recording live shows on their smart phones, and Marky Ramone has just unveiled a new weapon against this plague*: the Cell Phone Swatter.
Made up of an old vinyl 45 tied to a trusted drum stick — do we spy a Madonna single being used here? — Ramone’s Cell Phone Swatter gets the PSA infomercial treatment via College Humor, which illustrates all the device’s proper uses. It’s only a matter of time before these bad boys start showing up at the Paradise, Great Scott, and other venue’s where views of the stage are increasingly obstructed by a guy or gal watching the show through a lens.
Check out the video below for a proper how-to, and hang around long enough for Ramone to plug his new autobiography, Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life as a Ramone. It just came out last month.
[*Note: We here at Vanyaland are very guilty of doing this, we’ll admit it. We try to not get in anyone’s way, and either stand up front with the device at our shoulder’s height or way in the back with the zoom on blast. #sorry. :/]