Plucking just 10 songs out of their enormous catalog is definitely a challenge, but for now I’m just going to focus on the following ten. With all my respect, appreciation and love for their one-of-a-kind sound and enormous impact, I decided to prepare a list of 10 favorite Ramones songs. When the Ramones started work on their fourth album, Road to Ruin, in early 1978, they were in something of a bind.
“The band’s first four albums set the blueprint for punk, especially American punk and hardcore, for the next two decades.” (Erlewine, Stephen Thomas, “The Ramones: Biography”) They also never stopped producing music and touring – their whole career was a concert, after concert, state after state, arena after arena… Until, they disbanded in 1996. Their music was so effective, powerful and durable. Their sound inspired artists such as Blonde, The Strokes, The Misfits, Nirvana, Arctic Monkeys and many many more. Their music and image marked the beginning of the 1970s and 80s punk rock movement in the USA, as well as in the UK and all over Europe. Many people are unfamiliar with the immense influence Ramones had on the music scene and the rock musicians back in the day (believe me, they still do). They were simply rock ‘n’ roll! The oddness of their lyrics is what actually attracted me to Ramones – I mean, at some point you just get sick and tired of listening to music about love and you just want “to be sedated”. What I really liked about Ramones was the fact that they were not so strict anti-politics extremists, like Sex Pistols, for instance. Then, I fell for the whole concept and movement of punk rock – the style, the fashion, and of course the ideas behind it. At first, I fell for their music, their easy to sing-along lyrics, speedy guitar riffs and hard-edge melodies. Needless to say, Ramones are one of my favorite bands of all time. I remember my friends asking me why do I enjoy listening to this “noise” and how come all of their songs sound exactly the same…Probably, to many people they do, however to me, their songs, as well as their style, image and influence were (and still are) so different, so unique, so hardcore, so dangerous, so me… I started listening to Ramones when I was in high school and since then, they have been an inseparable part of my life. 7.I present to you guys, the fathers of punk rock and the ultimate rockstars, without which the history of rock ‘n’ roll would have been completely different – the Ramones. It didn’t make them any richer, but it did make us happy. Do You Remember Rock N’ Roll Radio? was one of the rare nuggets, a perfect combination of sepia-tinged nostalgia and teenage rebellion.
And then there were the guns, By the end of it all, the Ramones were scared, Spector had shuffled a little further into lunacy, and the album was a mess. As if making Johnny play the same chord for 12 hours straight wasn’t enough, he ended holding the band hostage at his house and separating Joey from the rest of them. Whereas the Ramones were spontaneous, Spector was a perfectionist. As writes, masterpieces of yesteryear were Spector’s specialty, and the Ramones build their songs on those same structures. More specifically, Phil Spector was meant to. Their fifth album, End of the Century, was meant to make them that. As points out, they might have been punks, but the Ramones didn’t like being poor misfits.
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