Ramones: Ramones

Ramones

Best song: Blitzkrieg Bop of course!

Worst song: whatever. I’ll say ‘Havana Affair’ but who can really tell those middle songs apart?

Overall grade: 5

Anyone who knows even a little bit about the history of rock music has heard of the Ramones. Like them or not, they’re an essential part of the landscape. But in 1976 when they released their first album in New York, nobody bought it, except in Sweden where it reached number 48 on the charts for unknown reasons. Most of the world has the excuse that in those pre-Internet days, they had no idea it existed, but New York City residents of the time do not have an excuse. The CBGB nightclub that launched the band was right on their doorstep, and must have heard the word of mouth about the Ramones’ exciting, energetic live shows. However, most of them still didn’t buy the record, and the upshot of this is that many people went for years without ever hearing ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, which I find very sad indeed.

Luckily, this has been corrected in more recent years, and now most music fans have that song in their lives. Now, there are a lot of people who are huge Ramones fans and basically think the band could do no wrong, and I don’t count myself among them. First time I listened to them, I actually didn’t like them. But they’ve grown on me a LOT, to the point where I can honestly call myself a fan – from Joey’s first line, ‘Hey! Ho! Let’s go!’ that kicks off a whole musical movement and a fast-paced, action-packed career of tempestuous band relationships in rock history, right up to… well, it’s actually just their Seventies output I play regularly, but you get the picture. Basically, if you like the sound of a band who has no idea what they’re doing but clearly has so much fun doing it (and actually comes up with pretty good melodies) this band is for you.

I always wonder, what would have happened to rock music if the Ramones had never happened. Would music have continued getting more and more complex and inaccessible the way it was going? Would another band, playing the same ‘take an aspect of prog and do the exact opposite’ music as the Ramones? Or would another band have changed things, but in a different way, and taken music in a completely different direction? We’ll never know.

Oh, yeah, I guess I’m supposed to talk about songs and that kind of thing. Well, I’ll start by talking about ‘<Ramones Song Title>’ which is a particularly lively number. The melody is poppy and easy to sing along to, yet the guitar and bass riffs combine to give the song a slightly heavier style. The lyrics do not have any real depth, yet are not offensive and do fit the general attitude of the song. Although in many ways it seems like the band plays it fairly safe, keeping the songs to a conventional length or even shorter and sticking to tried and tested chord sequences, they manage to come up with a distinct sound that draws on many influences but does not seek to emulate any one of these in particular.

If you want to read that paragraph lots of times over replacing a different song every time, feel free, but before you do, exceptions: ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’ and ‘53^rd & 3^rd’ are especially good, and break up the monotony a little by trying something slightly different, and they’re well placed for this by being the beginning of each side. And ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, of course. Forget ‘Good Vibrations’, THIS is a perfect pop song.

Overall evaluation: If you’re interested in the band from a historical standpoint because they invented punk music, get this first. If you’re interested in them because you just like punk and don’t care about the context; they did make better albums than this, but this is still up there with the best of what punk has to offer.