Sire Records, UK 9103 253
Genre: Rock, Pop :: Style: Punk
Today I am officially a senior citizen. It’s my 55th birthday. No big deal. People have been calling me sir for many, many years. Although, it has begun to come more often with a tone that says “are you o.k. Old man”. Not when they call you sir to be nice, but to acknowledge that you might pass out or die in their company. It’s the point when you truly accept that you are just not going to get younger, better-looking or healthier - EVER.
Exactly 40 years ago I heard the debut Ramones record. I was 15 years old and saw their picture in an advertisement for their upcoming 1976 debut in Rolling Stone Magazine. I knew nothing about them or their music, but I sure thought that they looked exactly the way I felt at that time. They looked like these “I don’t give an f, sloppy, fried, bad-asses”. It turns out that I wasn’t so much a bad-ass, but an uninformed, uneducated, whinny, broken product of a horrible family and education system. Yet still, the Ramones were just what I needed!
I first saw the Ramones live in 1980 which was well into their descent to the lame and mediocre version of the Ramones. Not bad, but not great. By this time, they were intentionally trying to become a commercially successful band and their records just got increasingly and increasingly worse and worse. They never achieved that degree of success and I for one think Kurt Cobain would agree that that is a very good thing. I think kids that now get into the Ramones 40 years later are not going to listen to much past the 4th record.
I think the bands that put out great 2nd records end up saving the fresher, yet well-played songs from where they are at that time. The debut is generally the groups earliest crop of songs. I am into debuts because they are generally the heart and soul of what a band has worked years for until they achieved the means to do a recording – after that, they get more full of themselves, and eventually lamer.
I love the sound on this - low-fi, raw, loud and noisy!
Ramones were a major label fringe group. It was a different ”pre-digital” world were the record companies dominated everything and they could afford to take risks with such bands. Often these bands would sell a lot of records.
It’s funny how watered down and tame something that 40 years ago seemed like the wildest record ever, now sounds. As I listen to this stuff now and realize that it really is just pop music only at the time it seemed really heavy, raw and mind-blowing. I recall in the early 1990’s when I heard Blitzkrieg Bop on the local classic rock radio station in Cleveland. That’s when I realized that all my rock n rock roll rebel dreams were all bullshit. I cried that day. I’m better now (of course I’m not – it still hurts).
Anyone that is into old-school music especially rock music from 40 years ago (which was never specifically teen oriented that may have really begun with the boy bands Menudo and similar groups from that time) should look up the top records of 1976 and see the plethora of top tier modern popular music that were released.
There really is no reason to go through any of the song titles and comment on them individually. If you take any song on this record and turn it into a one-sided single, you would have one of the best early punk records ever.
Some people say Ramones were the first punk band. Some say it was the sex pistols. I see much earlier stuff like the stooges as being pretty freaking punk, or Seattle’s Sonics. There are really so many others that it’s always going to be debated. Someone is always going to find some single or recording from some earlier more obscure band that was doing something kind of similar. Who knows, who cares. I like the record and that’s all that matters to me.
DARRYL OUT! I just made that up. I know it sucks.
**That’s it. Please do not waste your time following this stupid blog/podcast about old records – go do something important for the world**
