Punk rock has come a long way from the scuzzy punk clubs and the gutter of downtown New York to what it was this early afternoon on Day 1 of Fuji Rock 2013 — a bucolic entertainment for thousands in camp chairs on a grassy lawn. Perhaps we should call it “Punk in the Park.” The event was CJ Ramone, the last Ramone, or at any rate the last one to join the famous punk band and adopt Ramone as his performance surname. He was dressed in black, wearing a black New York Yankees cap, and greeting the crowd with the accent of the New York working class. Behind him was a giant banner that read: CJ RAMONE AMERICAN PUNK. The tunes were all Ramones songs, played in their three-chord, two-minute long perfection. It was almost as interesting to see the transformation of “punk” into “oldies”  as it was to speculate about what is going on with the Ramones’ legacy.

It is most certainly a contested legacy. There are currently two touring Ramones bands, playing all those classic songs. CJ Ramone joined the band as its bass player in 1989 and stayed on for the final seven years. Marky Ramone is also still touring as Marky Ramone’s Blitzkreig. Marky is not an original member either, but his claim to the Ramones tradition is older, dating to 1978, when he first joined the band and punk was certainly still in its heyday.

But this was CJ’s day, and he repeatedly referred to Johnny, Dee Dee and Joey, the original Ramones who are now all dead as his “fallen brothers”. He also thanked the Ramones Japan Fan Club, saying, “They’ve been going for 20 years now I think, and they give me the strength to endure.” This was also of course a lead in to the song “Strength to Endure.” There were a lot of song intros like that, bits of punchy if artless wordplay. After “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend”, he shrugged, “Yeah, I wanna be your boyfriend — but we all know how that ends up, right?” Then he shouted the next song title: “Glad To See You Go.”

As “punk in the park”, it was still plenty of fun. The sun was breaking through the clouds, and joined by Social Distortion guitarist Jonny Wickersham and a drummer, the songs are still golden. The opener was “Judy is a Punk”, which was immediately followed immediately by “Blitzkreig Pop.” There was a very big rise mid-set for “Commando”, even bigger than for “I Wanna Be Sedated.” The closing song was “Gabba Gabba Hey”, at which most of the pit shot placards into the air bearing the song title. Presumably this was the Ramones Japan Fan Club.) They waved them ecstatically for the full two-minutes of the song, and someone who may have been their leader went on stage in a Mt. Fuji costume with the biggest GABBA GABBA HEY placard of all.

If so much of this is about legacy, maybe there is also another way of looking at it. CJ, like Marky, is just another guy who played in all those shitty clubs for all those years for no money. Now he is keeping some great music alive, and if his claim is contested, it is hardly hotly contested. After all these years, he just a guy still fighting to play this music. Punk could have a worse legacy. Though if it goes on another couple of decades, who knows, it could give a whole new meaning to that lyric from “I Wanna Be Sedated.” You know the one I mean… “Just put me in a wheelchair and get me to the show” ?