As hard as I try, I just don’t quite get The Ramones.<\/p>\n
Oh, sure, I love some of their songs. That’s what possessed me
\nto pick up their 1988 best-of
\nRamones Mania<\/i> in the first place. There are moments where
\nJoey and the boys are miles above their competition.<\/p>\n
But unlike other punk bands from the same time frame (Sex
\nPistols, Black Flag, etc.), with The Ramones, I guess you really
\nhad to be there. The hits are still incredible, but at times the
\ndisc sounds forced and aged.<\/p>\n
From the moment they “one-two-three-four”ed onto the scene in
\n1974, The Ramones became the godfathers of American punk – but I
\nthink this was the farthest thing from their minds. All these guys
\nwanted to do was to play rock ‘n’ roll the only way they knew how –
\nfast, loud and truthful. There is still nothing more exciting than
\nhearing the first chorus of “Hey, ho – let’s go” on “Blitzkrieg
\nBop,” though I now prefer Die Toten Hosen’s cover of the song. For
\n132 seconds, time stands still, and the fury of the instruments is
\na glorious noise erupting from your speakers.<\/p>\n
Early on, you also saw this was a band who didn’t take
\nthemselves seriously. Anyone who took the lyrics to “Beat On The
\nBrat” seriously needed their head examined; this wasn’t a serious
\ncall to “beat on the brat with a baseball bat.” And if you needed a
\nsign as to how “seriously” the band took themselves, just turn to
\nthe tracks from the Phil Spector-produced
\nEnd Of The Century<\/i> (the best example here is “Do You
\nRemember Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio”). True punks would have thrown
\nSpector into their amplifiers; The Ramones allowed him to utilize
\nhis “Wall Of Sound” to distort theirs. My opinion: it was nice, but
\nit wasn’t The Ramones.<\/p>\n
Okay, enough babbling about the history of the band – you wanted
\na review, and you’re gonna get a review. The tracks that stand out
\non
\nRamones Mania<\/i> are, more often than not, the ones that are
\noccasionally heard on the radio. “I Wanna Be Sedated,” “Blitzkrieg
\nBop”… the ones that have been burned into our brains. Two
\nexceptions: “Cretin Hop” (originally from
\nRocket To Russia<\/i>) and a damn-near-perfect cover of the ’60s
\nclassic “Needles And Pins.” While Joey Ramone’s vocals show their
\nlimits on this one (and I don’t think he’s ever pretended to be a
\ngood singer), he does an admirable job on the song. Another cover,
\n“Indian Giver,” is a flop from note one.<\/p>\n
The problem with the disc is that The Ramones are best if taken
\nin small dosages. This two-record slugfest ends up clocking in at
\njust over 50 minutes – and with 30 songs on it, no less. Still,
\nthere are times that one three-minute song seems to last hours.
\nCase in point: “Somebody Put Something In My Drink” off the Jean
\nBeauvoir-produced
\nAnimal Boy<\/i>. Cripes, if the whole album is like that one
\nsong, then I don’t think it’s worth my time checking it out. And if
\nthat’s Joey grunting out the vocals, then he needs to get back to
\nthe “New Yawk” style of singing he did so well.<\/p>\n
Other cuts on the album hold up okay on their own, like “We’re A
\nHappy Family,” “Teenage Lobotomy” and “Pinhead” – but the angst of
\na disco-infected ’70s world doesn’t hold the piss and vinegar
\ntoday. “Rock ‘N’ Roll High School” may have been fresh then, but
\nit’s so much fodder today. (The Ramones seemed to recognize this
\nfact, recently calling it a career, albeit an album or two too
\nlate.) Still others, like “The KKK Took My Baby Away,” were silly
\nthen, and they’re pointless now.<\/p>\n
And it’s not that the stuff sucks. “Bonzo Goes To Bitburg” is
\nactually a very well-written political criticism of then-president
\nReagan. Also working for the band’s behalf is they’ve often been
\nteamed up with excellent producers (Tommy Erdelyi, Spector, Ed
\nStasium) who knew how to use the studio to the band’s benefit. The
\ndrums on “I Wanna Be Sedated” are incredibly crisp, as is the
\nguitar work.<\/p>\n
It is an interesting picture of punk rock in its early stage
\nthrough the time period where “punk” was a four-letter word. And
\nwith the emergence of bands like Green Day who owe their present
\nsuccesses to bands like The Ramones, I think there will always be
\ninterest in the band. So,
\nRamones Mania<\/i> turns out to be a good starting point for
\npeople who are interested in seeing what the early days of punk
\nsounded like – bad pictures and all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7214],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-35706","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-ramones","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35706"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35706"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}