Road to Ruin (1978)

 

Road to Ruin

Artist: The Ramones
Release Year: 1978

Rating: 8/10

Track Listing: 1) I Just Wanna Have Something to Do; 2) I Wanted Everything; 3) Don't Come Close; 4) I Don't Want You; 5) Needles and Pins; 6) I'm Against It; 7) I Wanna Be Sedated; 8) Go Mental; 9) Questioningly; 10) She's the One; 11) Bad Brain; 12) It's a Long Way Back.

Here they are again: The Ramones, slamming ahead with their signature style for the fourth album in three years, which makes one think: given their iconic but very limited bag of tricks, wouldn't the well be running dry by now?  Well...kinda.  See, on here, the good stuff is really good, but the "meh" stuff is starting to creep in as well, and this is where we first start hearing the band slide into generic territory.  Sadly, that polarization would slump more and more toward the latter category as the years went by.

But!  This isn't 1986; this is 1978, and the Ramones are still operating at high capacity.

The slow, swaggering opener "I Just Wanna Have Something to Do" is about as close to a "luxurious epic" as one can get from the Ramones, so it's fitting that the whole song is about boredom-- though you'd never guess it in the midst of all those "Wait!  Now!" chants and the repeated "tooo-niiight" that promises such great things to come.  It's a contrast to the frantic "She's the One", which pulverizes us with that crunchy riff while Joey winds through sunny-but-sneering verses, chorus, and bridge with hardly a breath between.  Of course, the big hit "I Wanna Be Sedated" is on here, and it hasn't aged a bit.  Later on, "Questioningly" gives a surprisingly vulnerable look at what happens fter a punk's glory days, and that bare-bones but emotive solo is a high point on the record.

Then, there are the throwaways, which seem to hammer ahead with the same energy as the great songs, but there's just something missing from tracks like "I Don’t Want You" or "Bad Brain"…almost like they're bashing us on the head with the style but forgot to include the melodic twists that made the style work in the first place.  Most of these songs are fine by themselves, but not up to the standard set by the better half.  The Searchers cover "Needles and Pins" was a good choice, though, and at least there's only one song ("Go Mental") that constitutes a total, sludgy, hookless mess.  

Still, what helps this album stand out the most is the subtle shift in production that brings us a little farther away from that grungy alley seen on the cover of the band's debut, and a little further into a bustling commercial thoroughfare.  The world of the music widens just a little-- not so much as to self-sabotage by highlighting the band's technical shortcomings against a backdrop of "higher" culture, but just enough to draw some more "respectable" other characters and settings into the picture, to bring the Ramones' harsh, simple irreverence into greater relief.  I mean, what good is the satirical "I'm Against It" if they haven't already mentioned the suburban yuppie, so-called "enlightenment" that they're against?  Unless they're just another band of rebels without a cause, as it were, but hell - if we vilify the Ramones for that, we'd have to vilify most of their followers, and I'm not prepared for that.  Yet.