The Ramones – The Ramones

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

The Ramones – The Ramones

This week's Recommendation of the Week is one of the most iconic and groundbreaking debut albums of the last half century. The Ramones by The Ramones is their blistering, highly influential, self-titled debut, released 50 years ago this past spring! Its creation was the rebirth of young, energetic, defiant Rock and Roll! It was, symbolically, the birth of the American Punk movement.

The Ramones emerged like they were ghosts from the 1950s. Certainly not in appearance, as they looked like nothing that came before them. Dressed in denim and black leather and looking like a tough, fearless gang of “street dwellers”, The Ramones captured a style that was and is always quintessential New York. It takes influence from The Velvet Underground, and even a little of the “shock and awe” of The MC5 and Iggy and The Stooges, and fuses it with the simplicity of 1950s Rock N Roll!

To describe The Ramones and their sound, I feel like it would be best described as something like the reincarnated spirit of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and Eddie Cochrane. However, take that energy, crank it up on speed, add careless and reckless abandon, and light the short fuse which is about to detonate an explosion the likes of an atomic bomb!

In the aftermath of the power surge, you’ll see them rise, standing tall from the ashes of a decrepit, deteriorated wasteland. After all that, they’ll  just give you a tough, dead stare, with the slightest smirk.

That is the Ramones and their playland was the dangerous, lawless, exciting 1970s New York City!

Interesting fact: They took their name, The Ramones, from a made up band name that Paul McCartney would use with Wings when he wanted to play discreetly in small clubs. 

They were four kids from Queens, going nowhere, with each one having the look of every other “loser dropout from the neighborhood”. With their ripped denim jeans, black leather jackets, dirty Chucks, and ripped t-shirts, they came to define tough, early New York Punk attitude and cool!

Formed in 1975, they took aim at 70s Rock music, as it had gone too commercial and “big arena”. The Ramones took it and threw it back out into the streets, and with their undying love affair with 50’s Rock N Roll, they fused it with the passion of and drama of the music of early 60s girl groups. Then, with only three power chords, volatile energy, and a defiant attitude, they ignited a revolution, like an undeniable force rising from the gutters, the sewers, and the subways that still can’t be stopped.

Rock N Roll needed a rebirth and it took hold in a run-down club in the Bowery, on the Lower East side of Manhattan. The place was CBGB’s, and in 1975, something started that would influence music and culture all over the world and splinter off into music that is still fueling the power. This Rock reseurrection would ignite and The Ramones were lighting the fuse. Hell, they took a sledgehammer to the establishment! They were the remedy for the kids, bored and forgotten in post 1960’s America. New York was in complete devastation and these forgotten kids were living in it, fed up with nothing to do and no hope. On top of that, they were force fed homogenized, corporate Rock music against their will and with no identity.

Something had to give, something had to happen and The Ramones were the answer! With that, they came to define what every teen aspired to be and every parent’s worst nightmare!

Incidentally, we would see a similar thing happen with Nirvana’s ascension in the early 90’s. This is probably why us “90’s kids” elevated The Ramones, in a new rebirth of Punk Rock, raising their popularity to new levels!

Now, The Ramones didn’t sell a lot of records in the 70s, but they certainly made their impact. They would be a catalyst and influence for generations of loud, fast, energy driven music!

Looking at the album cover of The Ramones, it captures the Punk attitude and a gritty, dirty New York City iconically! It is one of the most legendary images in music history, having been imitated but never duplicated. It symbolically defines an era, one filled with the dangerous, seedy and exhilarating energy of 1970s NYC!  

On The Ramones' debut, the music and imagery capture a moment that is burned in the annals of music history. It is historic. Punk Rock did exist in spirit before The Ramones, but this album was the declaration! The iconic image on the front makes a fearlessly bold statement. That statement is a youthful defiance that the kids are sick and tired of the status quo, they are going to destroy it and they are not going to take it anymore!

Songs like “Blitzkrieg Bop”, “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”, “Beat On The Brat”, and “I Don’t Wanna Go Down To The Basement” pack a punch that can still be felt in your chest 50 years later!

Rock N Roll is defined in the dictionary as follows:

“A style of popular music that derives in part from blues and folk music and is marked by a heavily accented beat and a simple, repetitive phrase structure”

When you think of it that simply, I think you can really only draw to one conclusion:

The Ramones are the perfect definition of Rock N Roll in its purest form. I think that they, more than anyone and with their debut The Ramones, best symbolize what Rock N Roll is and was always supposed to be!

Essential Track: “I Don’t Wanna Go Down In The Basement”