The Ramones : Classic Or Dud

xp i think you're thinking of bill hader, lol

Yes, I was coming back to post exactly that. The SNL guy who likes R.A. Lafferty.

This is news, yeah? Saw it on Twitter a couple of days ago...

"JEFFREY HYMAN (JEFF STARSHIP ) (JOEY RAMONE) WITH HIS PRE RAMONES BAND, 'SNIPER' LIVE in THE UNDERGROUND TONIGHT SHOW in 1973"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQqGF8uW3Hw

Think so

Where are my safety pins? What'd you do with my safety pins, what is this?

Also, We're Outta Here just popped up in the play sequence and I am surprised at how much I am liking it.

i have ramones mania is good enough for me!

First four albums, the first live album and Too Tough to Die are all great. The rest have at least one or two excellent tracks.

I can agree with that except I never listened to To Tough to Die. Guess I will give it a try soon.

it's a good one!

yeah too tough to die is great!

First four albums, the first live album and Too Tough to Die are all great. The rest have at least one or two excellent tracks.

First five albums I'd say.

First 4 + Too Tough to Die otm

Their debut is by far their best. I'd say Pleasant Dreams has as many good songs as Rocket to Russia.

xxp The Spector album didn't live up to my hopes, but it's got great stuff, especially "Danny Says." Definitely worth checking out.

An argument for the '80s albums.

The ‘80s albums have to be argued for, the ‘70s ones speak for themselves

I love a lot of stuff the 80s albums. Animal Boy is what brought me into the fold, so that's the one that will always have my heart. I want synths in my Ramones! Mental Hell does not feel 2.5 minutes long to me. That song is epic. After that, I bought Brain Drain. When I then went back to get the first album, it was truly a different band that it took a few listens for me to understand, kinda like this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ybn8hqTj8s

I've been waiting for a while for a reissue of the 80s albums, and lo and behold this Record Store Day, there is a 7-LP box set (Pleasant Dreams, Subterranean Jungle, Too Tough To Die, Animal Boy, Halfway To Sanity, Brain Drain, and a rarities disc). But I definitely don't want to buy a 7-LP box set of the 80s Ramones records. I could make do with maybe half of them. Really hope they all get re-released on their own after this.

On my Ramones poll ballot, I didn't even have anything from the 70s until 9th place, that's where my head is at.

1. Poison Heart - I just want to walk right out of a world where Poison Heart didn't even place in a Ramones poll.
2. Howling at the Moon (Sha-La-La)
3. Pet Semetary
4. I Wanna Live
5. I Believe In Miracles
6. Something To Believe In
7. Eat That Rat
8. Love Kills
9. I Just Wanna Have Something to Do
10. Chinese Rock
11. 53rd & 3rd
12. Mental Hell
13. Loudmouth
14. Don’t Bust My Chops
15. Mama’s Boy
16. My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes To Bitburg)
17. Havana Affair
18. Judy Is a Punk
19. Apeman Hop
20. She Belongs to Me
21. We Want the Airwaves
22. Danny Says
23. Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)
24. We’re a Happy Family
25. Rockaway Beach

The Ramones’ career after the first couple of albums was one long continuous attempt to sell out, with no one ever buying. Doing 1960s covers didn’t work. Working with Phil Spector didn’t work. Doing a Roger Corman film didn’t work. Adding synthesizers didn’t work. Theme song to a Stephen King movie didn’t work.

Rhino's two-CD Hey! Ho! Let's Go! anthology does a good job of cherrypicking from the '80s, maybe even an amazing job if you don't think it's too generous. (It's in chronological order and the Spector cuts close the first disc.)

It's also my introduction to the Ramones. I knew OF them thanks to The Simpsons but I didn't really know who they were until I read an L.A. Times review for Rhino's set that explained their place in rock history. I found that set later at my library and it wasn't long before I got those first four albums.

Yeah, I had Hey Ho for a while back in the day. It's pretty solid.

I like Pleasant Dreams so much I wrote a whole thread about it. And yeah, TTTD is really good too. Animal Boy has some filler, but it also has Richie Ramone's great "Somebody Put Something in My Drink," plus "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg." (And "Crummy Stuff," maybe as close as Dee Dee got in the '80s to writing like it was 1976.)

"Somebody Put Something in My Drink" is actually the first Ramones song I remember encountering. I was a kid, somewhere in the single digits in age, and my parents took me to someone's home and it was playing in the basement where their kids were. Like pop music in general was still esoteric for me and it was such a weird song to me the title lyric just stuck. I never heard that song again but I always remembered it, and I was surprised to find it on Hey! Ho!, like "Wow, THESE are the guys who did that song?"

Because I am lolold it's fascinating to me that youngsters could have first encountered The Ramones via Animal Boy, or via The Simpsons. It's a whole different viewpoint than mine. Cool, actually.

Yes, exactly.

The first Ramones thing I ever heard was It's Alive - I remember thinking it was all the same song but that soon changed

The first time I heard the Ramones, it was Eat That Rat. When I was in elementary school, maybe 4th or 5th grade, I would just sit up in my room spinning the radio dial and taping whatever music I found. On this particular late 80s day, I landed on a station that may have been a pre-corporate WHFS. The songs I got that day were Eat That Rat by Ramones, Rise Above by Black Flag, Peek-a-Boo by Siouxsie and the Banshees, and a cover of Helter Skelter by Mighty Sphincter. Then they segued into a report on Orioles baseball. I really dug the first two and sought out their albums a year or two later; there was a lot I didn't understand about the Siouxsie song and she kinda scared me a little; and later that day when I asked my parents what "sphincter" meant, it was definitely an awkward moment.

Wish I still had that tape.

My sister-in-law had Rocket to Russia and Road to Ruin, which I don't remember playing but certainly did read the lyric sheet. My other brother had lots of English punk but no Ramones. My first encounter with them as a music fan would have been the "Something to Believe In" video, all of which gave me the impression they were a "funny" band, like Devo.

So many good cameos in that video.

The first album I heard was Leave Home, in maybe 1986 or '87. I definitely owned it, the debut, and Rocket to Russia before Ramones Mania came out in '88. I only saw them live once, in 1989 or 1990, and they were amazing — it felt like they played 50 songs in an hour and a half. (It was really only about 30, but they absolutely blasted through them.) The opening acts were GBH and Warzone, and I remember a lot of punk vs skin fights before the Ramones came on.

A friend saw them on the Escape from New York tour in 1990, where Chris Frantz of Tom Tom Club came onstage right after the Ramones begging people to stay for their set.

I saw that tour! Debbie Harry headlined. I still have the t-shirt.

Debbie Harry showed up recently in another context in a Commodore commercial with Andy Warhol.

There’s also this, which is read by AI Andy in the recent doc:

Monday, August 15, 1983

Cabbed to meet Jean Michel Basquiat at the workout with Lidija, he was doing it with us (cab $5). He’s in love with Paige Powell.

Got a call from Pia Zadora who said she wanted a Dollar Sign and she’d take it with her if it fit into her husband’s jet, so they were measuring it.

Oh, and one of the Ramones was having brain surgery yesterday because he was kicked in the head on West 10th Street in a fight over some cheap-looking girl.

Holy crap, I didn't even know that story.

Quick google search came up with an article published shortly after and a Dangerous Minds blog post. I knew about Joey and Johnny's fallout over Joey's ex/Johnny's soon-to-be wife, but man, not that.

I remember hearing about it on the rock and rollradio and maybe seeing it on the nightly news.

Should clarify, Joey and Johnny didn't fight each other, it was some other guy who thought Johnny was chasing after HIS girl.

The brain surgery unfortunately erased Johnny's impeccable mental storehouse of chord substitutions.

Wow, linked in that Dangerous Minds post is a really cool TV interview I've never seen before, when they played Minneapolis in 1978.

In '78 I lived in small town Minnesota. Disco was king. There was a big glitzy place that used to be a movie palace, but there was also a little subterranean bar where a friend was the DJ. He'd play hits from Saturday Night Fever, but also weave in oldies sets of Beatles, Beach Boys and Stones. I would bring my 45s of "Rockaway Beach" and "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" down and he would play them and I would jump around, although I'm sure everyone else in the place hated them.

Cruel lol, Htbfy

Another cruel lol at this from Dangerous Minds:

and then there was the 24/7 problem that was Dee Dee Ramone

That whole blog post was good, thanks. Bonus points for mentioning the film Get Crazy as discussed (by me, mostly) here: https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=7812536&boardid=41&threadid=15150

Hm. Wonder why it didn't do the link thing.

The Ramones’ career after the first couple of albums was one long continuous attempt to sell out, with no one ever buying. Doing 1960s covers didn’t work. Working with Phil Spector didn’t work. Doing a Roger Corman film didn’t work. Adding synthesizers didn’t work. Theme song to a Stephen King movie didn’t work.

This has generally been my view, but I don't see it as a crass sellout, in that within their circle (like the Lou Reed first impression unthread) they really were told they were the chosen ones. So why wouldn't they try to go for it? There was always just enough crossover hype to keep stringing them along. Unperson, really like your essay on the 80s records - I hadn't really considered that Johnny was trying to keep the band servicing the core audience that needed them while Joey wanted a bigger crowd.

Then there's the final tragic irony that right around the time Johnny dies, Ramonesy guitar pop become the mode of Disney Channel tween pop songs.

Yeah, that quote above came out more negative than I intended. The Ramones were always lovable whatever they were trying to do. I was always rooting for them to have a major commercial breakthrough. They really tried hard and always maintained some essence of Ramonesness through it all. And the live show was always punishingly punk in a wonderful way.

I wonder if Johnny would have tempered his purism if, at some point, they had actually managed a gold album or a top ten hit.

Had to revisit this - someone uploaded the HD version (albeit the cropped one):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MIYVamAiN8

Feel like maybe I spam this but you just reminded me of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_1sA0PVArw

I didn't know about Johnny's head injury. The first time I saw them was spring '84, which would have been the next tour after his recovery. (They were great, of course.)