Ramones Event to Honor Joey, Dee Dee

By Stephen M. Silverman

06/11/2002 at 08:45 AM EDT

Last Wednesday's death of rocker, artist and author Dee Dee Ramone, 49, a founding member of the trailblazing '70s punk band the Ramones, will not pre-empt a combination Ramones tribute/record release party/fund-raiser taking place Wednesday in New York City, reports the Los Angeles Times. "Now it's more of a tribute than we'd ever planned," event co-organizer Johnny Chiba told the paper. The aim of this week's event at Don Hill's Nightclub (located in SoHo) is to raise money for the Joey Ramone Lymphoma Research Fund, established at New York Hospital Cornell Medical Center, following last year's death of Ramones frontman Joey Ramone. Additionally, reports the Times, the show -- whose acts are slated to include Type O Negative singer Pete Steele, vocalist Mike Blank from punk band Blank 77 and punk drag queen Jayne County -- will commemorate the American release of the album "Ramones Forever -- An International Tribute," which was originally issued last year in a slightly different form in Belgium, with covers of Ramones songs performed by several Belgian bands as well as musicians from Peru, the Netherlands, Hungary, Germany, Greece and the United States. "We're celebrating the Ramones, we're celebrating Joey's life, and, in that respect, now we're going to be celebrating Dee Dee's life as well, as opposed to memorializing them," Chiba told the Times.