Leave Home (1977)

I suspect the reason Leave Home is my favorite Ramones album is because it's the first one I owned and lived with extensively. Late in 1977, as Ramones product was already starting to pile up, a friend and I, economizing, agreed to take turns for awhile. No surprise, Rocket to Russia is the best of the lot according to him to this day. But Leave Home takes the rudiments of the debut and advances it with just enough confidence and flourish to establish the Ramones sound once and for all: simplistic three-chord rock 'n' roll, verse-chorus-verse pop song structures (with melodies), and calculatedly demented lyrical concerns ("Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment," etc.). The pleasure of it is palpable and infectious; the Ramones have always seemed to me so engaging, non-threatening, and spirited as to almost run against the grain of punk-rock. I still think their music is closer to bubblegum and the Ohio Express—OK, make that the Trashmen—than most of the angry mob across the Atlantic. Foundational tracks include "Carbona Not Glue," left out of the original release because of concerns about legal action from the manufacturers of Carbona, a stain-removal product offering a superior high (the song was quietly included in later versions and no lawsuit ever materialized). "Pinhead" is another significant milestone for the band, inspired by director Tod Browning's classic 1932 horror picture, Freaks. The "gabba gabba hey" chorus (modeled on the "gobble gobble, one of us, one of us" scenes from the movie) practically became the band's official motto and ambassadorial calling card. "Suzy Is a Headbanger" is nearly as fine a statement of purpose as Rocket's "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker." Song countoffs everywhere, of course. The cover song was the Rivieras' "California Sun," which is approximately perfect, and nicely furthered the persistent punk-rock/New Wave meme of the carefully selected signifying cover. There's a story that the track sequencing here is based on the order the songs were written in so perhaps it follows that "Commando" and especially "You're Gonna Kill That Girl," #s 12 and 13 of the original 14, are the best put-together here, with the kind of hooks and production touches on the chorus that start to unfold only when you get the right hang of how it's sung. But the whole thing is damn fine. Like a whole lot of punk-rock it plays best in the company of itself rather than within shuffle, where Ramones tracks tend to knock heads with almost everything else, so be sure to take the time to enjoy it as an album proper. That's my one piece of advice about the Ramones.

Ramones (1976)

Thought experiment: The Ramones self-destruct in 1977—much as they actually did 25 years later—before getting any more than a few demos of the second album in the can, while the Sex Pistols (no doubt under the direction of Glen Matlock) release annual albums well into the '80s that work variations on and/or weakly echo the historic first. Now which band and which album would we have made iconic to the point of fetish? I guess that question answers itself. Don't forget this Ramones debut! To me, it has come to seem almost absurdly monumental over the years—the big bang of punk-rock that produced an ever-expanding universe. I think it's impossible to understate how critically important it is. There should be prominent statues in public places and speeches every year. At the same time, and this is the real kicker of it, it's equally impossible to understate the vitality and pleasure of it, still, the more so when listened to as an album, all 14 shards blasted at once and in sequence. It is a rush of oxygen to the brain, lively and fun and goofy and strange. It is truly the ur-album of a wide swath of music that followed and is still implicitly following it. It cost $6,400 to record. The song count-off emerges as badge of pride and identity. The songs are short—six of the 14 under two minutes and the longest 2:35. The Ramones didn't invent the "the" style of band names but they sure helped bring it roaring back. The band lived in the middle of a huge city, wore shades, sneakers, blue jeans, and black leather jackets. And as for the sources of this—it was new, but often felt familiar—they weren't elaborating on them the way they would later, but somehow one sensed it all intuitively: too much TV, too many trashy B-movies, drugs, comic books, dysfunctional families, sketchy street scenes, and, of course, hangin' around with nothin' to do. The unholy alliance of '60s garage and Brill Building pop, the basic Ramones musical aesthetic strategy, was a revelation at the time and it is still. Simply for so imposingly inventing itself as if all at once, this album will always be on the short list of the band's best, and indeed at the top of many of those lists. It is certainly the place to start with them, and stop if you must. For me, it's just the beginning of a long, delicious, always fun-filled ride across many years and many albums. It stands within the Ramones catalog as a most emphatic "1-2-3-4."

Ramones, "I Wanna Be Sedated" (1978)

(listen)

Any of dozens of Ramones songs heard most recently could constitute my one favorite and that's the truth. So let's just call this heard most recently, even as I go ahead and say it is my favorite Ramones song. From their fourth album, Road to Ruin, it has several of my favorite Ramones features: it's about grim mental illness in a light-hearted way (cf., "Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment," "Teenage Lobotomy"), it's pro-drug in an anti-drug way (or maybe make that vice versa, viz., "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue," "Carbona Not Glue," and in general all mentions of glue, plus also "We're a Happy Family," which rhymes Queens, refried beans, magazines, and thorazines), and, more broadly, it rocks up the place in an unmistakable way—"1-2-3-4 clunk-LOUD," etc. Is there anyone anywhere who still denies that this groove is, as intended, a lot of F-U-N? No doubt. I recently heard that some now consider the Stooges and the Ramones as polar era choices, two sides of a coin but you have to pick one (you know, the way people pit the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Donovan, or the Sex Pistols and the Clash). That's one to think about! I still think "I Wanna Be Sedated" is about what top 40 radio should have sounded like, at least partly, from approximately 1976 to 1984: blasts of squalling attack out of which emerge lovely Brill Building verse-chorus-verse gestures, all lurching forward in a cosmic upside-down cake of Archie comics and teenage werewolf movies. The stovepipe jean legs, black leather, and hair in the eyes, that's just style. The most salient line here goes like this, approximately: "Bamp bamp, buh bamp, buh bamp bamp, buh bamp, I wanna be sedated." Sing with. You can do it.