Ramones debut single3/6/2023 ![]() ![]() The slightly glossier Leave Home is cut from the same cloth: another Ramones’ dozen (fourteen hits) and under a half-hour in length. ![]() Like all cultural watersheds, Ramones was embraced by a discerning few and slagged off as a bad joke by the uncomprehending majority. Since the no-frills production sacrifices clarity for impact, printed lyrics on the inner sleeve help even as they mock another pretentious convention - although the four-or-five-line texts of “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue,” “I Don’t Wanna Walk Around with You” and “Loudmouth” are an anti-art of their own. ![]() Joey Ramone’s monotone is the perfect complement to Johnny and Dee Dee’s precise guitar/bass pulse. The fourteen songs, averaging barely over two minutes each, start and stop like a lurching assembly line. The result not only spearheaded the original new wave/punk movement, but also drew the blueprint for subsequent hardcore punk bands, most of whom unfortunately neglected the essential pop element. Their genius was to recapture the short/simple aesthetic from which pop had strayed, adding a caustic sense of trash-culture humor and minimalist rhythm guitar sound. With just four chords and one manic tempo, New York’s Ramones blasted open the clogged arteries of mid-’70s rock, reanimating the music. Through two determined but uneven subsequent decades, singer Joey Ramone (Jeff Hyman), guitarist Johnny Ramone (John Cummings), bassist Dee Dee Ramone (Douglas Colvin, later replaced by Christopher “C.J.” Ward) and either Marky Ramone (Marc Bell) or Richie Ramone (Reinhardt) on drums attempted to reclaim, revitalize, revise or reinvent the spirited joy of those primary masterstrokes. Coincident to its first lineup change (the departure of drummer/co-producer Tommy “Ramone” Erdelyi), Road to Ruin led the New York quartet off the tracks it had so brilliantly laid. The undisputed punk-pop classics that form the group’s must-own triptych are the collective blueprint for a distinct and sublimely original rock’n’roll sound and vision that have been copied endlessly (sometimes literally) since the albums were released in the 1970s.īut perfection, even moronic cartoon perfection, is unsustainable.
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