The Ramones : Classic Or Dud

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/19/arts/music/ramones-the-story-behind-a-debut-album-from-punk-pioneers.html?ribbon-ad-idx=3&rref=arts/music&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Music&pgtype=article

40th anniversary and exhibit at Queens Museum in NYC

I've been listening to the 40th anniversary mono mix of the debut and it's fantastic.

I've been on a big listening binge on The Ramones for the past few months. Their sound was so streamlined and perfect. Thinking about how it all went, I am curious to find out what the best biography of the Ramones to check out? I have read "From the Velvets to the Voidoids" and "Please Kill Me", but I know there have been a few Ramones biographies that have come out in the recent years.

Having a mono LP of the debut would be cool.

Their sound was so streamlined and perfect

yeah the first album in particular is one of the great formal breakthroughs IMO. just a remarkable synthesis that seems obvious in retrospect but required a real leap.

so sad that the ramones story turned out to be a tragedy.

i just read marky's book and was surprised to learn that they all could barely tolerate each other as early as when he joined the band. it's amazing they lasted as long as they did.

i've read a bunch of books about them and, while i'd be hard-pressed to name a "best", i'd recommend the books by everett true and tour manager monte melnick.

And while not a book, the End of the Century documentary is well worth your time.

Marky's book gives the best insight and is the best autobiography by quite a way. Dee Dee and Johnny's books were cool but much more limited and personal in completely different ways. Fans should read all three.

Watching the Anthony Bourdain episode called Lower East Side where he had a meal with Danny Fields has me listening to "Danny Says" (both the original and demo versions).

What about the documentary of the same title?

Yes, that too

stumbled upon 'the job that ate my brain' from mondo bizarro the other day. a 1992 gem! huge production!

Their sound was so streamlined and perfect.

Those first four albums are amazing. I may be alone in thinking Leave Home is the best of them (Leave Home > Ramones > Road To Ruin > Rocket To Russia), but they all sit together as a set, too. I recently came back to them after not having listened for years, and even their '80s stuff - albums like Too Tough To Die and Animal Boy - is shockingly strong.

The 70s set being topped off with "It's Alive", which also kicks ass.

For a band that had such a focus, they had more range in production and guitar sounds than one might expect. I love the first albums sound with the bass all up in the mix.

There are definitely lots of good nugget tunes on all of their records.

I loved and still love Acid Eaters which was their current LP when I saw the band. They have quite a few really ace covers. I think they do the best "Surfin' Bird" this side of the Trashmen original.

I didn't get to see them live until 1989 or 1990; CJ had just joined the band. They were amazing, though; I swear they played 40 songs in 75 minutes. The show was crazy violent, though, because the opening acts were GBH and Warzone. Lots of fights between old-school punk types and NYHawdCoah knuckle-walkers.

that they produced those four albums (plus It's Alive and End of the Century) in the space of barely more than three years is astounding, such a great hot streak, it rivals any other run of consistently great material in the ~history of rock~

1987 Ramones show I saw was the most crazy violent gig, too. They drew in a large array of outcasts with different expectations and altered states, not the typical HC pit.

HI DERE

No more of your fairy stories
Cause I’ve got my own worries

“Dad what’s turn a trick?”

1974 performance kills

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwsVWZ-c8Eo

I always wonder what that sounded like to people in '74.

It sounded like a joke or novelty act to a lot of people, from what I've read.

Good to see the onstage arguing between songs was not just a myth.

We do know for sure what it sounded like to Lou Reed in 1975.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-f2rz2G9AI

there’s also the “covers album” phase.

Good to see the onstage arguing between songs was not just a myth.

Ha, exactly

I love that Lou Reed reaction so much...

Classic or dud: Pete Davidson as Joey Ramone

We really should take a stab at rounding out the rest of the cast

It's like they took the Adam Driver model of an awkward and gawky guy who is not considered traditionally handsome but has legions of female fans anyway and tried to map it onto Davidson but without the part about actually being good at acting.

Last (x) Movies you are going to Avoid

Joey's hard to cast, he's so tall! That's probably Davidson's best attribute in terms of casting, he's only a few inches shorter.

Rami Malek might make a decent Dee Dee, with the right bangs.

Ideal casting for Dee Dee would be a younger Michael Shannon. Honestly he might still be able to pull it off.

I love the Marones but have no interest in some shitty movie about them

They should do it all CG.

OTM

The first shot should be the cover of Road To Ruin.

I hope, a la the Taxi stuff in Man on the Moon, that there's a few scenes of them shooting Rock n' Roll High School with PJ Soles and Clint Howard reprising their roles as high school students.

And Mary Woronov, of course.

(This is where I reveal that I was shockingly old when I learned just now that PJ Soles is a decade older than Clint Howard, how is that even possible)

Some kind of time loop, maybe?

I've long found it comical that they were trying to pass off the balding and clearly almost middle-aged Howard as a teenager in movies such as RnRHS and Evilspeak but...he was actually in his early twenties at the time?!?

Everything I thought I knew to be true...

The Pate on the Edge of Forever

Sorry

*ducks*

lol, yeah, I should've been able to put two and two together and realize that the kid from Star Trek didn't somehow age forty years between then and the late '70s but my brain, she does not always work so good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7MOseipVc8

He's some kind of ageless wonder, really, nothing to apologize for.