BASIC INFORMATION:
Joey Ramone recorded a tribute song to album entitled Caged/Uncaged - A Rock/Experimental Homage to John Cage. Song is The Wonderful Widow Of Eighteen Springs. There is CD and LP version of this.

When you listen different Joey Ramone's solo recordings, to the most people the strangest feeling happens when you first hear this Joey's performance, The Wonderful Widow Of Eighteen Springs.
Even though the song The Wonderful Widow Of Eighteen Springs is great, it is not what the type of song a Ramones fan would expect.

CD contain also tracks by David Byrne, Debbie Harry, Arto Lindsay, Richard Hell, John Zorn with Naked City, Chris Stein, Lee Ranaldo, Ann Magnuson and John Cale, Jello Biafra and Eugene Chadbourne, Lou Reed, Elliott Sharp, Amy Denio and Shelly Hirsch. As an added treat, John Cage himself appears sporadically throughout, in excerpts from a 1969 tape of readings from his book Silence".

John Cage was (1912-1992) was an American composer, philosopher, poet, music theorist, artist, printmaker etc. A pioneer of chance music, electronic music and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde.


INFORMATION OF VERSION RECORDED BY OUR JOEY:
CD booklet contains full notes and artist information. And following information of The Wonderful Widow Of Eighteen Springs is from LP version, how it is written on it's sleeve.
"Joey Ramone chose to record a Cage composition entitled The Wonderful Widow Of Eighteen Springs on a text from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Written in 1942, the piece was originally scored for contralto voice and prepared piano, with the piano lid closed and the written notes A, B, C and D representing four different places for the piano to be struck as a percussion instrument.
Joey Ramone's rendition, which features Don Yallach and Joe McGinty of the Psychedelic Furs on percussion and MIDI programming respectively, was produced by John Cale at his own studio and again engineered by Miles Green. Although MIDI drum pads were used instead of the piano, and the vocal part was transposed from a contralto to Joey Ramone's baritone, the integrity of the original composition is intact, and it imparts an unmistaken Queens "rock and roll" feel to the Joycean lyrics."


ORIGINAL VERSION BY JOHN CAGE:
And here is information of original version of The Wonderful Widow Of Eighteen Springs (song in general) by John Cage. This is from Wikipedia:
"The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs is a song for voice and closed piano by John Cage. It was composed in late 1942 and quickly became a minor classic in Cage's oeuvre. The text was a reworked version of a passage from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
The song was commissioned by singer Janet Fairbank, who later became known for pioneering contemporary music. Cage chose to set a passage from page 556 of Finnegans Wake, a book he bought soon after its publication in 1939. The composition is based, according to Cage himself, on the impressions received from the passage. The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs marks the start of Cage's interest in Joyce and is the first piece among many in which he uses the writer's work.
The vocal line only uses three pitches, while the piano remains closed and the pianist produces sounds by hitting the lid or other parts of the instrument in a variety of ways (with his fingers, with his knuckles, etc.) Almost immediately after its composition the song became one of Cage's most frequently performed works, and was several times performed by the celebrated duo of Cathy Berberian and Luciano Berio. Cage later composed another piece for voice and closed piano, A Flower, and a companion piece to The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, called Nowth upon Nacht, also based on Joyce's book.


RAMONES: LEATHERS FROM NEW YORK:
This song can also be found on the bootleg kind of release, Ramones: Leathers From New York (book and CD). The discography information contained in this book was stolen directly from my homepage (how I had discography when Leathers From New York got published in 1997). Those cheaters who put out this CD/ book did so without even mentioning me as a source of their information.