If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that we’ve had punk in various flavours around for a while, from The Sonics and Monks back in the Sixties, through to The Stooges and New York Dolls more recently; simple beats and raucous tracks with a garage band feel are nothing new. Ramones (like Eagles, no definite article) are building on top of what has gone before, and distilling it further into a particular musical genre.
Comprising of Joey (vocals), Johnny (guitar), Dee Dee (bass) and Tommy Ramone (drums) - these are stage names of course, but the concept of them being a family group is part of the aesthetic, look them up if you want the real names, I’ll be sticking with the stage names while they feature.
Like New York Dolls before them, Ramones give a modern take on the Fifties-style teen anthems (even covering Let’s Dance), replacing the beat with power chords at double or triple time (up to around 180 bpm), and each track is short and sweet. Or short and sour, as the case may be. Rarely do they last beyond 2 minutes apiece, which is what you want from this kind of punk. The lack of interest in long drawn-out songs is a pretty much an “up yours” to the elaborate and often overblown proggy tracks, and even the state of heavy metal.
While they still sometimes tackle the old school teen problems of getting a girl – I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend, Listen To My Heart, they also tackle darker lyrics. Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue is obvious from the title, and the lyrics are little more than a repetition of this sentiment. 53rd And 3rd is about a young man reduced to prostitution who kills his first client through self-loathing. Horror films are a favourite topic – Chain Saw pays homage to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, while I Don’t Wanna Go Down To The Basement pays homage to pretty much every horror film ever (as well as, according to Debbie Harry, denouncing the state of the toilets in the legendary New York punk-scene club CBGB).
As with some other forms of harder rock, listening to a whole album of this is a bit samey and wearing (although the short tracks means the whole album is less than half an hour). But smashing through the ponderous pretentiousness of other contemporary rock is always a good thing. I noted how Kiss are as much about the characterisation as the music, and to some extent the “family Ramone” concept falls under the same category, but in a more street punk sense.
In the immortal lyrics of Blitzkreig Bop – "Hey Ho, Let’s Go" (shame ao.com used that for an advertising jingle).
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