The Ramones at their best in London, 1977

[Video Link] Marc Campbell of Dangerous Minds writes:

If you’re a regular reader of Dangerous Minds, you’ve probably noticed that I’m a huge Ramones fan. One of the reasons I started my own punk band in 1976 was a result of hearing The Ramones’ debut album and my love for the group hasn’t diminished over the years. As far as I’m concerned, they’re the best rock band to appear in the past four decades. They were essential in the re-birth of rock and roll in the Seventies and their influence has been enormous on virtually every hard rock band to arise since the boys erupted on the Bowery in 1975.

Today is the seventh anniversary of Johnny Ramone’s death at the far too young age of 55. Without question one of the best rock guitarists of all-time, Johnny never really got his due during his lifetime. Fortunately, that’s changing.

Here’s some of my favorite live footage of The Ramones. Performing in London, where they were far more appreciated than in their home country, the band tears it up at The Rainbow in 1977. 26 minutes of pure unadulterated R&R.

The British punk bands could only dream of being this great.

Johnny Ramone died seven years ago today: here’s something to remember him by

• [Derico G]

  I died on the 15th, not the 16th you jerk. -Johnny Ramone

  • [Comrade7]

    psst…. I don’t want to rain on your snarky parade but the original post referred to was written on the 15th

• [Derico G]

  My favorite rock guitarist of all time

• [jgk1971]

  Johnny was one of those guys I was conflicted about.  He always came across as a nice guy and was a hell of a guitarist but then I’d see and interview where he would start spouting some right-wing nonsense and my brain would go into shutdown mode.  I guess I should just be glad that he wasn’t a full-on nutjob (see “Ted Nugent”).

• [scifijazznik]

  The British punk bands could only dream of being this great.

  Uh…The Damned?  Uh…Crass?  Uh…Wire?  Uh…The Buzzcocks?  Uh…The UK Subs?  Uh…GBH?  Uh…The Clash?  Such a shame the best any of them could do was to dream of being as great as the Ramones.

  • [Mark_Frauenfelder]

    The Buzzcocks and The Clash are right up there with Johnny, Joey, and Dee Dee, I’ll give you that.

  • [Crunt]

    All great bands, but whose songs are most remembered? The Ramones had tons of catchy tunes and even casual listeners would recognize at least a dozen of them. They also had a great look, logo, and they gave us Clint Howard’s best movie ever, Rock and Roll High School. Besides, all the bands you listed took themselves too seriously. The Ramones had a sense of humor and were FUN.

    • [Nylund]

      At least a dozen from a casual listener?  Maybe a half-dozen, but once you get past I Wanna Be Sedated and Blitzkrieg Bop, for the casual listener it drops off pretty quickly.  90% of Romones songs sound pretty damn similar.  Casual listeners would indeed be able to peg any one of them as Ramones songs due to that fact alone, but play a “casual lisener” Sheena is a Punk Rocker, Judy is a Punk, Cretin Hop, Rockaway Beach, etc. and eventually that casual listener will say, “Didn’t we already hear this one?”

      I’d think a casual listener would probably be more familiar with Rock the Casbah, Should I Stay or Should I Go?, Train in Vain, London Calling, etc. not to mention their covers of I Fought the Law and Police and Thieves.  And with M.I.A.’s heavy sampling of it, possibly even Straight to Hell.

      None of the Ramones studio albums ever even went gold, much less platinum.  The only one to go gold was the compilation Ramonesmania.   The Clash, on the other hand, had two studio albums go gold, one go platinum and one go double-platinum.

      We all know album sales don’t mean squat in terms of quality, but if I had to guess what a “casual listener” was more familiar with, I’d go with the band with the platinum albums, the one that opened for the Who at Shea Stadium.

    • [Itsumishi]

      I quite like the Ramones and have listened to them on many occasions, but off the top of my head I’d struggle to name even 5 of their songs. True, I’d almost certainly recognise a song on the radio as The Ramones, but that’s only because they wrote one good song a couple of hundred times. It is a great fucking song though… 

• [Bubba73]

  This is wonderful

• [bruceburbank]

  I know it would be difficult if not impossible for somebody like Marc Campbell to be objective about such a topic, but there’s no way in hell Johnny Ramone was “without question one of the best rock guitarists of all-time.”

  No doubt The Ramones were one of the greatest rock bands ever, and Johnny was a rock solid rhythm guitarist and songwriter, but the rock world is littered with so many other better guitarists that this statement is laughable.

  • [Cowicide]

    but the rock world is littered with so many other better guitarists that this statement is laughable.

    Arguing about matters of taste is even more laughable and fruitless.I mean, have you really heard Conway Twitty motherfucker?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

  • [Mark_Frauenfelder]

    Johnny might not have been a technical virtuoso, but he was a great rock and roll guitar player. I went to a Halloween party with Johnny Ramone (he was good friends with my sister in law) about 10 years ago. Slash was at the party and when the two were introduced, Slash nearly kowtowed to Johnny. 

• [jkg]

  this article seems just the teeniest bit slanted

• [Cowicide]

  Gotta give some props to National Lampoon who put the Blitzkrieg Bop song in the original Chevy Chase Vacation movie around six years later.

• [Clemoh]

  If you have not already seen it, the excellent documentary about Ramones ‘End Of The Century’ is available  on google video, albeit with Spanish subs:
  http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=1148507796479876506&ei=Jp8LSp3FN4bQ-wH7qp3CCA&q=end+of+the+century+ramones&hl=en&client=firefox-a

• [Haroun]

  The Ramones are the Beach Boys of Coney Island

• [Crunt]

  I was lucky enough to run into the Ramones at a New Jersey Airport about 20+ years ago, when they were heading for a Scandanavian tour. I tried to walk that fine line between being a fan and a douche when I saw their manager filing away a stack of signed photos. I sheepishly asked about getting one and he told me they were all spoken for. Johnny then said to me, “We don’t have any more pictures, but I can give you this”. He pulled a Ramones guitar pic out of his pocket and said, “I used this when we played Long Island last night.” I was blown away and still have the pic, of course.

  As an aside, Joey was cruising around the magazine stand, hunched over, tall, and conspicuous. He didn’t look very happy or approachable. I intuitively knew not to bother him.

• [rob_cornelius]

  Now that was a hell of a new year party…. Got to love the shell shocked hippy in the front row with the glasses…