![]() ![]() Top 40 hit "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker," the Ramones released their third album, Rocket to Russia, in the fall of 1977. By the summer of 1977, the Sex Pistols and the Ramones were seen as the two key bands in the punk rock revolution, but where the Pistols imploded, the Ramones kept on rolling. charts, Leave Home became a genuine hit in England in the spring of 1977, peaking at number 48. By the end of the year, the group released their second album, Ramones Leave Home. Throughout 1976, the Ramones toured constantly, inaugurating nearly 20 years of relentless touring. On July 4, the band made their debut appearance in Britain, where their records were becoming a big influence on a new generation of bands. The resulting album, Ramones, was released in the spring, gained some critical attention, and managed to climb to 111 on the U.S. By the end of 1975, the Ramones secured a recording contract with Sire discounting Patti Smith, they were the first New York punk band to sign a contract.Įarly in 1976, the Ramones recorded their debut album for just over $6,000.00. All of the Ramones sets clocked in at about 20 minutes, featuring an unrelenting barrage of short, barely two-minute songs. For the next year, they played regularly at the nightclub, earning a dedicated cult following and inspiring several other artists to form bands with similar ideals. By the end of the summer, the Ramones had earned a residency at CBGB. Two months after the show, Joey switched to vocals and Tommy became the band's drummer. The group played their first concert on March 30, 1974, at New York's Performance Studio. All of the group's members adopted the last name "Ramone" and dressed in torn blue jeans and leather jackets, in homage to '50s greaser rockers. Originally, the band was a trio consisting of Joey Ramone (vocals, drums born Jeffrey Hyman, May 19, 1951), Johnny Ramone (guitar born John Cummings, October 8, 1951), and Dee Dee Ramone (bass born Douglas Colvin, September 18, 1951), with Tommy Ramone (born Tom Erdelyi, January 29, 1952) acting as the group's manager. From 1980 onward, the Ramones recorded a long series of albums in which they often toyed with their formula in an effort to attract a larger audience (working with legendary producer Phil Spector on 1980's End of the Century, adding keyboard accents on 1986's Animal Boy, recording a batch of covers on 1993's Acid Eaters), though their best work of this era (especially 1984's Too Tough to Die) was usually their most elemental, as they focused on what they did first and best.īased in the Forest Hills section of Queens, New York, the Ramones formed in 1974. ![]() ![]() Their first four albums - Ramones (1976), Leave Home (1977), Rocket to Russia (1978), and Road to Ruin (1979) - were defining works for the band and the movement they helped inspire, and songs like "Blitzkrieg Bop," "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue," "Pinhead," "Rockaway Beach," and "I Wanna Be Sedated" would become anthems even if they were never embraced by radio. The Ramones were tuneful, aggressive, and challenging in their embrace of minimalist fury, and while bands from the Clash and the Sex Pistols to Rancid and Green Day would build on their formula, it's essentially impossible to imagine any of those bands, or punk as we know it, without the Ramones' guiding example. They were informed by the thunder and flash of the Who and the MC5, the speed and primitivism of Iggy and the Stooges, and the alternately sullen and goofy musings of '60s garage rock, but the Ramones synthesized their influences into something raw and revolutionary, a fury of pounding rhythms and downstroked guitars married to rudimentary melodies and comically absurd lyrics that both mocked and celebrated popular culture and teenage life. The Ramones may or may not have invented punk rock, but they were inarguably the most important band in punk history, creating the stylistic prototype that would be followed by countless bands who emerged in their wake. ![]()
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