11/21/2022 0 Comments Ramones best song![]() They were the coolest looking, hoodlum street gang in the world and turned their ugliness into something stunningly attractive. Those Lewis leather jackets, battered blue denims and sneakers topped off with all that drilled long hair- the most perfect band as four headed animal since the Beatles. A drilled military machine with Dee Dee melded to his bass copping the coolest moves ever from a bassman whilst his cohort Johnny was doing his bowl cut, thug shapes- in the middle there was Joey, turning his introverted discomfort into something really powerful. I remember seeing the band live at Lancaster University in the late seventies and they were stunning. On stage he looked incredible- seven foot of flapping limbs and long hair and those impenetrable sun glasses- it just shouldn’t work but somehow he was pure charisma, a wackoid crane fly who gripped his mic stand for comfort in the maelstrom of Ramone sound. Whilst the rest of his brothers were doing their utmost to do the simplest and most perfect thing musically, Joey’s singing was a sophisticated and powerful and totally original thing. Joey sounded introverted, hurt and wounded - all the right sounds for a great pop voice. The way he chewed the words up into shapes, his Brooklyn accent to the front wringing all the humour and emotion from the songs made the band. It was all you needed from music- stripped away of all artifice- just the chords hammered out for the trump card, which was Joey’s voice- which sounded like a duck on helium for the first listen but was actually an emotional, powerful, idiosyncratic tool that was rock n roll perfection. The Beach Boys made great records with a sophisticated arrangement of instruments, the Ramones got the same result with that infernally brilliant guitar drone, those tough bass lines and the amazing simple drums that thumped their way through the songs with no drums rolls! There was also no guitar solos- how perfect is that? card to the hilt were total pop genius- the distillation of all that was great about pop. Odd now that it sounds like pure pop- at the time it sounded like a chainsaw of avante garde sound- it took a bit of time for your ear, tuned to the seventies post glam, to get a grip of this fantastic sound but once you were in there you realised that the Ramones, who were playing that d.u.m.b. He had long hair, a greatcoat, drainpipes and brothel creepers – the whole bus stared at him whilst I stared at the Ramones album – the band’s picture on the front looked like four more versions of the school freak – gonzoid, strange and somehow cool as fuck. I still clearly remember this freaky long haired guy called Mad Ted who went to my school walking down the road clutching that debut album. The record was bought by a clutch of dysfunctional pre-punk youth across the UK. The band, who formed in Forest Hills in the early seventies, hit first gear in 1975 and were the ultimate fresh breath of air when their first album was released in 1976. When they played the Roundhouse in London in the summer of 1976 every punk band in London speeded up and nicked their image. The Pistols changed so much and their cultural impact is enormous, but the Ramones provided the ultimate template for every garage band on the planet and have been copied endlessly for years. Tony said the Sex Pistols, I said The Ramones – the argument raged through the programme we were recording, over the ads and back live on the air on the other side. I remember once having a really heated argument with the late, great Tony Wilson over who was the most influential band in punk. The most unlikely frontman of all time succumbed to the cancer that he’d been fighting for years on April 15th 2001, it was ironically just before his band got the mass acceptance that he so rightly craved. ![]()
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