Memorial for Joey Ramone’s 50th Is a Smash

NEW YORK — A hailstorm of cream-filled cupcakes brought a fitting end to a celebration for one of punk rock’s most mischievous minds.

In a night that featured rock-world heavies such as Blondie and Cheap Trick, the most poignant moment may have come when segments of the 3,330-member audience for “Life’s a Gas--Joey Ramone’s 50th Birthday Bash” began pelting each other with devil’s food Yankee Doodles cakes.

The treats, a stand-in for actual birthday cake, had been tossed to the audience to close Saturday’s memorial tribute in Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom. But revelers came up with the idea of removing the wrapping, turning the final moments of the four-hour show into a high school cafeteria war.

Ramone, who died of lymphoma at age 49 on April 15, would have been pleased--especially since his “Blitzkrieg Bop” was blaring in the background at the time of the frenzy. It was just one of the more offbeat scenes on a night that featured “Joey Ramone” infant wear selling at $15 a pop and aging 40-something punk rockers nodding to songs in balcony seats rather than moshing near the stage.

Punk music is now a quarter-century old, and nothing underscored this more than the attendees, who seemed to fall into two generational camps: middle-aged peers of Ramone and mid- to lower-20-somethings hungry for rock history.

“Get crazy, but remember,” joked Ramone’s brother, Mickey Leigh, “Joey’s mom’s here!”

Throughout the evening, Leigh, Ramone’s mother, Charlotte Lesher, and others regaled fans with stories about a quiet kid from Queens whose musical style arose from his outcast status as a teen. Video footage of Ramone, taped odes from fellow artists and asides from the night’s master of ceremonies, Steve Van Zandt of “The Sopranos” and Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, showed how isolation would evolve into unwieldy innovation.

Ramone, who was born Jeffrey Hyman, helped bring punk to the masses in the mid-’70s. The group’s loud and pared-down style inspired English bands such as the Sex Pistols and the Clash and more recent groups such as Green Day and Nirvana--a point made with a bit of redundancy during the show.

The night’s highlights came, expectedly, with Blondie’s run, including a show-stealing cover of the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,” and Cheap Trick, which performed a set of its own hits.