The Ramones
The Ramones were an American punk rock band that formed in the New York City
neighborhood of Forest Hills,
Queens, in 1974. They are often cited as the first band to define the punk rock sound. Despite achieving only limited
commercial success, the band was a major influence on the 1970s punk movement
in both the United States and United Kingdom.
All of the band members adopted pseudonyms ending with the surname
"Ramone", although none of them were related. They performed 2,263 concerts,
touring virtually nonstop for 22 years. In
1996, after a tour with theLollapalooza music
festival, the band played a
farewell concert and disbanded. By 2014, all of the band's original
four members — lead singer Joey
Ramone (1951–2001), guitarist Johnny Ramone (1948–2004), bassist Dee Dee Ramone(1952–2002) and drummer Tommy Ramone (1949–2014) — had died.
Recognition of the band's importance built over the years, and they are
now mentioned in many assessments of all-time great rock music, such as the Rolling Stone list of the "100 Greatest
Artists of All Time" and VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of
Hard Rock". In 2002, the
Ramones were ranked the second-greatest band of all time by Spn magazine, trailing only the Beatles. On March 18, 2002, the original four
members and Tommy's replacement on drums, Marky
Ramone, were inducted into the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2011,
the group was awarded a Grammy
Lifetime Achievement Award.
One of the most known song is:
The Ramones recorded their debut album, Ramones, in April 1976. Of
the fourteen songs on the album, the longest, "I Don't Wanna Go Down to
the Basement", barely surpassed two and a half minutes. While the
songwriting credits were shared by the entire band, Dee Dee was the primary
writer. TheRamones album was produced by Sire's Craig Leon, with Tommy as associate producer, on an extremely
low budget of about $6,400 and released in April. The now iconic front cover photograph of the band was taken by Roberta Bayley, a photographer for Punk magazine. Punk,
which was largely responsible for codifying the term for the scene emerging
around CBGB, ran a cover story on the Ramones in its third issue, the same
month as the record's release.
The Ramones' debut LP was greeted by rock critics with
glowing reviews. The Village Voice 's Robert Christgau wrote, "I love this record—love it – even
though I know these boys flirt with images of brutality (Nazi
especially) ... . For me, it blows everything else off the
radio". In Rolling Stone, Paul Nelson described it as "constructed almost
entirely of rhythm tracks of an exhilarating intensity rock & roll has not
experienced since its earliest days." Characterizing the band as
"authentic American primitives whose work has to be heard to be
understood", he declared, "It is time popular music followed the
other arts in honoring its primitives." Newsday 's Wayne Robbins simply anointed the Ramones as
"the best young rock 'n' roll band in the known universe.”
However, despite Sire's high hopes for it, Ramones was
not a commercial success, reaching only number 111 on the Billboard album chart. The two singles issued from the
album, "Blitzkrieg Bop" and "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend",
failed to chart at all. At the band's first major performance outside of New
York, a June date in Youngstown, Ohio, approximately ten people showed up. It wasn't
until they made a brief tour of England that they began to see the fruits of
their labor; a performance at the Roundhouse in London on 4 July 1976 (second-billed to
the Flamin' Groovies), organized by Linda Stein, was a resounding success. T-Rex leader Marc Bolan was in attendance at the Roundhouse show and was
invited on stage. Their Roundhouse appearance and a club date the
following night—where the band met members of the Sex Pistols and the Clash—helped galvanize the burgeoning UK punk rock
scene. The Flamin' Groovies/Ramones double bill was successfully reprised
at the Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles the following month, fueling
the punk scene there as well. The
Ramones were becoming an increasingly popular live act—a Toronto performance in
September energized yet another growing punk scene.
Their next two albums, Leave Home and Rocket to Russia, were released in 1977. Both were produced by Tommy
and Tony Bongiovi, the second cousin of Ion Bon Iovi. Leave Home met with even less chart
success than Ramones, though it did include "Pinhead",
which became one of the band's signature songs with its chanted refrain of
"Gabba gabba hey!" Leave Home also included a
fast-paced cover of the oldie "California Sun", written by Henry Glover & Morris Levy, and
originally recorded by Joe Jones. Rocket to Russia was the band's
highest-charting album to date, reaching number 49 on the Billboard 200. In Rolling Stone, critic Dave Marsh called it "the best American rock &
roll of the year". The album also featured the first Ramones single
to enter the Billboard charts (albeit only as high as number
81): "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker".
The follow-up single, "Rockaway Beach", reached number 66 – the
highest any Ramones single would ever reach in America. On December 31, 1977
the Ramones recorded It's Alive, a live concert double album, at the Rainbow Theatre, London, which was released in April 1979 (the
title is a reference to the 1974 horror film of the same name).
This is their web site_ http://ramones.com/