My All-Timers: 1. Ramones — Ramones

I have written throughout 2017 about my 50 favorite records of all time. As I’ve done this, I’ve been able to tell stories about lots of firsts. The first time I picked up a guitar .The first time I heard punk. The first time I heard rock music at all. The first time I performed music in public. The first time I opened my eyes to metal, or to hardcore, or to hip-hop, or folk music, or just the first time I realized that there was more to the world than my limited experience.

Not only have I used up and written about most of the formative events of my life already, but as I get to the end and I can finally talk about Ramones, I realize that I don’t really have a “first” to talk about here. Ramones was not the first punk record I heard. I had already started playing guitar and had even started a band by the time I heard it. It wasn’t even the first Ramones record I heard (my band’s drummer had been playing their greatest hits CD Ramones Mania at practice). There was no “a-ha” moment when I first put in All the Stuff and More, Volume 1, the CD compilation that included Ramones and Leave Home.

But Ramones is Number One on My All-Timers because I realized then, as I declare now, that it is the most perfect music ever created.

Of course, I need to say that’s in my opinion (not IMHO, because I will not be humble about this). Everyone has a different idea of what music should be. There’s a guy out there who probably thinks like, Staind is the pinnacle of recorded artistry. Is he wrong? Many of us would say yes, with great conviction, but in no way can we definitively, objectively say yes. Anyone could do what I did and put together a list of the 50 best records ever. That list would be as good as mine. In fact, everyone reading this should do it. Go. Do it now.

Now that you’ve returned from that exhausting task, I suppose I should explain why Ramones is perfect. It opens with “Blitzkrieg Bop,” one of the most recognizable punk rock songs ever, thanks to “Hey, ho, let’s go.” That chant that was tailor-made for a room, or stadium, full of people to scream along to, and even if we don’t know where exactly we’re supposed to go, the feeling is shared all around. “Blitzkrieg Bop” would set the template for most Ramones music to follow, and for the somewhat rigid nature of future punk rock. It basically has just three chords, it doesn’t have a lot of fancy tricks, but it somehow conjures up all the intensity and emotion of every rock song that preceded it.

Everyone in the band, Joey in particular, was raised on rock’n’roll almost from its inception in the mid-1950’s. They wanted to do something that paid homage to all that stuff, and make music much more simple, yet infuse it with a new type of aggression and anger. Listen to “Come On, Let’s Go” by Richie Valens (most famous for “La Bamba.”) That’s the exact same chord sequence as “Blitzkrieg Bop” — A-D-E, with a couple variations throughout the song. I think the reason why adults and mature music lovers in the mid-1950’s were so pissed off about songs like “Come On, Let’s Go” was because they didn’t want to admit that all the stuff that had come before — Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington and almost anything you can think of — had been made to look silly and overindulgent. You didn’t need to be a virtuoso, and you didn’t need lots of studio magic. You just needed to plug in a guitar and sing your heart out.

I got into Richie Valens a few months after I bought Ramones, but none of my friends really dug him. Probably because Valens and his ilk appealed to a very specific crowd at a very specific time. In 1998, he didn’t sound cool to my friends. But The Ramones? Oh, they sounded cool as hell.

The closest they get to oldies rock’n’roll subject matter is “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,” but the rest of it still has a cool, bad boy edge that hasn’t lost an ounce of its menace over 40 years. “Beat On the Brat” may or may not advocate child abuse, “Loudmouth” may or may not advocate domestic abuse, and “Chainsaw” may or may not advocate murder by chainsaw, but it should be obvious that nothing here is meant to be taken that seriously. “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” should be a giveaway that The Ramones were trying to be outsized, ridiculous personalities. They gave themselves a fake last name and pretended to be brothers, after all. Their act was funny enough and bold enough that the questionable subject matter is forgiven. It’s meant to let people be silly morons without actually doing the silly, moronic stuff.

When Joey Ramone died in 2001, my band at the time, Lost Cause, had a show scheduled just a couple weeks later. We decided to play three Ramones songs at the show. Two of them were easy picks — “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “Rockaway Beach,” but I insisted we dig deep and play “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue.” On its surface it’s a dumb song, especially if you only consider the title. But the second half of that line, pretty much the only other line in the song, is, “Now I wanna have something to do.” Joey then sings, “All the kids want something to do.” The song has a musical choice that I don’t think happens in any other Ramones song, where everything drops out but Joey and Tommy’s hi-hat, keeping that 4/4 beat. There was something about belting out that monotonous refrain, with nothing other than our drummer Jason’s hi-hat and my untrained voice, that filled me with more overwhelming feelings than I had expected.

The Ramones had come to stand for everything I held dear, and they had validated all of my life choices up to that point. The desire to do something, to find some excitement in an Iowa suburb, drove me to finding punk rock, learning guitar and starting a band with my friends. At that moment, when I was 14, nothing was more important to me, even if hardly anyone in my life truly understood it. And then I discovered The Ramones, and here they were, telling me that it was normal to want something to do, and that the tribe to which they belonged was always open for new members.

There is a certain comfort, a safety, to identifying The Ramones as my favorite band ever. There are millions of people in every corner of the planet who would say the same. I’m not going out on a limb here. But it’s pretty meaningful that a band who started from the most humble of origins, with seemingly little talent and a gimmick that made them a mockery to most in the music industry, was able to speak so directly to the hearts of so many people who don’t even speak English. Their message of freedom, both musical and personal, resonated with all types of human beings, and it continues to do so generations after their inception.

Ramones is my favorite album because it’s the summation of everything good about rock’n’roll. It’s my favorite album because it convinced me that being in a band was what I was meant to do. And it’s my favorite album because it is eternal. It will never die, even if everyone who made it already has.

RIP Joey, Dee Dee, Tommy, and even Johnny, that racist Republican. They all made magic.