In this ongoing feature on Psychobabble, I’ve been taking a close look at albums of the classic, underrated, and flawed variety, and assessing them Track by Track.
By 1976, Rock & Roll was in dire shape. The best work of the genre’s old guard—The Who, The Stones, The Kinks, The Beach Boys, Dylan, The ex-Beatles—was behind them. Pretentious prog rockers clogged arenas with their endless bluster. Crushingly dull soft poppers polluted the top twenty with “Dream Weaver” and “Let Your Love Flow”. Then up from the underground swooped a quartet of troglodyte supermen from Queens, wearing matching rags, sporting matching mop tops and matching names. Like John, Paul, George, and Ringo 15 years before them, and Kurt, Krist, and Dave 15 years after, Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and Tommy did not set out to rescue Rock & Roll. They were just righteously fed up with the noodling, pomp, and wimpiness pervading the scene and decided to play the kind of Spartan garage rock they dug.
As bassist, chief composer, and chief wack-a-doo Dee Dee Ramone was heard to crow, “I think Rock & Roll should be three words and a chorus, and the three words should be good enough to say it all.” This was barely exaggeration. The Ramones stripped away all of Rock & Roll’s pretenses that had accumulated since
Sgt. Pepper’s. No guitar solos; just fun. All tracks kick off in simultaneous fury (“1, 2, 3, 4!”), all have sing-songy choruses. Some are nothing but choruses.
Although The Ramones are famous— and were initially criticized— for their simplicity, Johnny Ramones’s neck-breaking down strokes require tremendous stamina and precision, as does the drumming of Tommy Ramone, who learned the instrument simply because the group he helped assemble needed a drummer. Speed, simplicity, catchiness, thunder. This music The Ramones invented wasn’t called punk yet, but it would be soon enough.
The Ramones didn’t just sound like the psychedelic era had never happened; they looked it too. Their jeans, leather jackets, Converse One Stars, and T-shirts could have been stripped off a ‘50s greaser. Johnny and Dee Dee's bowl cuts were strictly pre-psych Beatles.
Like John Waters, The Ramones collected the raw refuse of trash culture and defiant bad taste and molded it all into a monumental new art form. Horror movies, junk food, comic books, amusement parks, makeshift drugs, turning tricks, boneheaded agit prop, and sleazy violence all became pop fodder. Also like Waters, The Ramones paid tribute to a crime ridden, scuzzy city. What Baltimore was to the filthiest man alive, New York City was to the scuzziest band on the planet. Their debut album simply stinks of the city. Aside from the infamous “53rd and 3rd”, specific references are sparer here than they would be on subsequent records on which they’d praise Coney Island, Rockaway Beach, and the like. But
Ramones sounds like New York. The grinding gears of a subway train. The quick snick of a switchblade. The expletive shout of a passing cabby. The wicked giggle of a purse snatcher. These sounds fester between the lines of all 14 tracks that comprise the only record that mattered in 1976. And it couldn’t have been cut in a more appropriate place: Plaza Sound studio in Manhattan’s landmark Radio City Music Hall. The track line up was merely transposed from their set list at CBGB’s, the Bowery scum pit that spawned all of the American bands that would rearrange Rock & Roll’s face over the next few years. But without Television’s pretty flourishes, Talking Heads’ art school angularity, Blondie’s radio-ready polish, Suicide’s electro freakiness, The Dead Boy’s cock-rock strut, or Patti Smith and Richard Hell’s Bowery poetry, The Ramones embodied New York Punk’s essence the best.
The group cut
Ramones for just $6,400 over the course of 17 days. Johnny spent fifty bucks on the Mosrite guitar he played on it. It all sounded equally cheap. On subsequent albums, The Ramones sound opened up a bit, becoming less murky, less compressed… and losing some of its otherworldly magic in the process. Produced by novices Tommy Ramone and Craig Leon of Sire Records,
Ramones sounds like it was belched up from Rock & Roll’s primordial muck.
Brace yourself.
Ramones by The Ramones
Originally released April 1976 on Sire Records
Produced by Craig Leon and Tommy Ramone
All songs credited to The Ramones.
Track 1:
Blitzkrieg Bop
No opening guitar lick. No opening drum beat to ease the listener into the onslaught. Everything pounding out in simultaneous, militaristic fury. The first track on the first real punk LP defines the genre as well as anything that would follow. No New York Dolls swagger. No Stooges windiness. No Modern Lovers cleverness. It’s grooveless, it’s short, and it is dumb. “Blitzkrieg Bop” is also
