Ramones

 "ONE TWO THREE FOUR!"

Genres: Punk rock
Recording decades: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s

Classic lineup:
Joey Ramone - vocals
Johnny Ramone - guitar
Dee Dee Ramone - bass
Marky Ramone - drums

Favorite album: Ramones
Quintessential album: Ramones

After taking in all the bombastic, overproduced art-rock music that came before the Ramones’ 1976 debut (and all the even more overblown schlock that came in the 80s and 90s), listening to that album is like considering a sort of rock-and-roll Ship of Theseus – that is, how many elements of conventional rock music can be stripped away before the “rock” moniker is no longer applicable?  When does rock cease to be rock?  When the big-budget production is gone?  When the lyrics no longer have anything to say?  When the guitar solos and complex drum patterns are gone?  When all the years of training and experimentation and honing of the craft are skipped over and forgotten?

As it turns out, one can strip away an awful lot.  The Ramones’ approach was one of raw, simplistic, bare-bones songwriting, never involving more than a few power chords, a simple 4/4 drum rhythm, and some nasally sneering vocal lines about making out, watching horror movies, and sniffing glue.  There’s no meaning beyond that - at least, not within the songs themselves.  The real meaning is on the outside: that is, a summary rejection of social burden and of artistic meaning itself.  Postmodernism and all that – who’d-a thunk that word would come up when discussing a braindead band of leather jackets and sneakers?  Could it have been a product of its time, in the wake of the failed Sixties, the corruption of Watergate, and so forth?  Who knows— I’m only here to talk about the albums, and the early years are outstanding in their efficiency.  

Forget that these guys could hardly play.  There’s nothing more that professional musicianship can add to a song when it’s centered on “Beat on the brat with a baseball bat, oh yeah, oh yeah”.  There’s no way you could improve on the frantic chainsaw buzz of Johnny Ramone’s guitar when Joey is yelping about the ridiculous degeneracy of “We’re a Happy Family”.  It’s pure 60s pop and surf rock, shoved through a meat grinder and distilled into pure essence.  Harmony?  Solos?  Production?  Piss on all of it – just “1-2-3-4” and off they went.

Trouble came, perhaps inevitably, when the novel approach failed to sustain the necessary momentum for more than four albums.  The ruse couldn’t last forever, and eventually the songs came to demand a level of technical ability that the band just couldn’t deliver, especially as the annoying trends of the Eighties drove the production to a bigger sound that’s really hard to prop up on just C5-F5-G5.  After a brief stint with Phil Spector, of all people, to try to refresh the sound, The Ramones turned into a revolving-door outfit of dysfunction, essentially churning out the same album every few years with some superficial changes in production here and there.  The form remained mostly consistent until the end (as if they could do anything else), but the magic was largely gone, and the band’s small but devoted fanbase could only do so much to keep the guys in the studio and on the stage without killing each other. 

Now, after the band’s dissolution in the mid-90s and the subsequent death of all the main members, the Ramones are much more fondly remembered, if only for the t-shirts and the reemergence of “Blitzkrieg Bop” on classic rock radio.  Sure, the punk genre owes a lot to the Ramones, but after the first few years, it largely evolved without them: indeed, the Clash went ahead with all sorts of stylistic changes and experiments into the Eighties while Joey and Johnny were still buzzing on with the same three power chords – not that I mind, of course, but a one-trick pony is a one-trick pony.

In spite of it all, though, I’m an eternal sucker for the minimalistic, hyper-accessible style that conjures up every image of my 19-year-old self bumming around for a chance at some kind of cheap thrill on a hot day, spitting on everything that could have some sort of meaning, because there’s a great catharsis in that that will never die.  Not with hooks like these, anyway. 

Albums:

Ramones
Leave Home
Rocket to Russia
Road to Ruin
Edge of the Century
Pleasant Dreams
Subterranean Jungle
Too Tough to Die
Animal Boy
Halfway to Sanity
Brain Drain
Mondo Bizarro
Acid Eaters
Adios Amigos