SMALL FACES: Step aside rock critics--Joey Ramone...

SMALL FACES: Step aside rock critics--Joey Ramone has taken up the word processor. The punk kingpin has signed on as a regular correspondent to the computer on-line rock magazine Addicted to Noise. Ramone will make weekly reports, including missives from the road with the Ramones and reviews of bands he’s seen, starting with the May issue, which will also feature a cover story on Primus, accompanied by “quick time” video clips from the interview sessions and rehearsals. . . .

The Ramones are also one of the groups set to be featured on an as-yet-untitled punk rock Christmas collection from the same folks who brought us the recent “Cupid’s Revenge” set of punk love songs for Valentine’s Day. Among the others represented with their season’s bleatings will be the Damned, Fear, Stiff Little Fingers and El Vez. . . . L.A. punk band Pennywise has a new album due from Epitaph Records titled “About Time” and due June 13, with a tour set to follow. . . .

Henry Rollins, with a featured role in the cyberpunk movie “Johnny Mnemonic,” also has a featured slot on the accompanying soundtrack album with “I See Through,” a Rollins Band track composed specifically for the movie. The album, due May 23, also features a new track from Helmet and “Alex Descends Into Hell for a Bottle of Milk,” a number by U2’s Bono and the Edge that had only appeared on a rare EP, plus cuts by Orbital, Cop Shoot Cop and Stabbing Westward.

AND ONE MORE THING: William Wegman--the photographer who’s become famous for putting his sad-eyed dogs in various fairy-tale settings--vowed he’d never do an album cover shot after one bad experience some years ago. So why would he break that vow for Nelson, the pop group known more for twins Gunnar and Matthew Nelson’s long blond hair than for any artistic credibility?

It took some persuading and a promise from Geffen Records that he would have total artistic freedom, but the result is that Wegman dolled his doggies up in blond wigs and the Nelsons’ old flashy stage clothes for the cover of the group’s second album, “Because They Can,” due in stores June 6.

“I thought this was the perfect way for the twins to show that they don’t take themselves as seriously as some people might think,” says Robin Sloane, the Geffen vice president of creative services who came up with the idea. “If I had my way, I’d put animals on every cover we do.”*