Brooklyn quartet, The Teen Age, have always felt an affinity for Queens neighbors, the Ramones, and with the 40th anniversary of their debut album arriving this month, guitarist Micah Weisberg and bassist Bill Dvorak have created a near shot-by-shot homage of a scene from the 1979 film Roger Corman film, “Rock & Roll High School”, starring the Ramones, in the video for “Backwards”.

On their reasoning for creating the video, The Teen Age stated…

One of our main influences is the Ramones. Their hard, faster take on the ’60s girl group sound and tongue-in-cheek lyrics informed both our approach to songwriting and the way we’ve presented ourselves as a band. The 1979 film was supposed to be a fun teen comedy along the lines of “A Hard Day’s Night,” but after Corman’s original choice to play the band, Cheap Trick, had to drop out, the filmmakers opted for the Ramones. The band’s hilariously inept performances and (at the time) tough, leather jacket-clad look pushed the film in a weirder direction. We specifically chose a scene where a high school student and Ramones super-fan (actress P.J. Soles) gets high and hallucinates the Ramones performing in her room. While it’s pretty clear the filmmakers intended the scene to be romantic and sweet, Joey Ramone’s awkward moves and Johnny Ramone’s obvious disinterest in being there resulted in a clip so bizarre that it’s endearing. We found the scene strangely relatable, and decided it would be fun and in keeping with our band’s aesthetic to remake it as a music video for “Backwards”.

“Backwards” is featured on The Teen Age latest EP, Bad Seed, which arrived last month on PaperCup Music – purchase via iTunes. Recorded at Converse Rubber Tracks studio in Brooklyn, the four-song collection was produced by longtime collaborator Jason Finkel (Hundred Waters).

After two nights in Brooklyn, at Rough Trade, The Teen Age will be announcing multiple summer festival dates around the city.