What was I gonna buy now? ZZ Top, for criminy's I had all the Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Moody Blues, AC/DC,Īerosmith, Yes, Beatles. I was about to start the 10th grade and I had Special introductory paragraph Five-Song Demo Ramones Boston 1976 Leave Home CBGB 2-2-77 Rocket To Russia Birthday Bash It's Alive NYC 1978 Road To Ruin You Don't Come Close End Of The Century Raisin' Hell Pleasant Dreams New Haven Agora Theatre 9/13/81 The Chinese Wall Subterranean Jungle Too Tough To Die Animal Boy Paco Ramone Pour Homme Halfway To Sanity Trenton City Gardens 8/29/87 (with Clem "Elvis Ramone" Burke on drums!) Weaselface RamonesMania Dallas Arcadia 11/11/88 Brain Drain Summer Of '89 All The Stuff (And More) Volume One All The Stuff (And More) Volume Two Loco Live Escape From Zagreb Mondo Bizarro Acid Eaters Adios Amigos! Greatest Hits Live We're Outta Here! (Jeff Wilder reviews) Anthology: Hey Ho Let's Go The Family Tree They might have saved my life. We are talking about the Ramones after all.The greatest rock and roll band of all time. It might miss some good songs ("Judy is a Punk," "53rd and 3rd," "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World"), but it's still perfect. While Rhino's Hey Ho Let's Go! anthology does justice to the CJ years, Mania is more consistent by concentrating on the band's best years. While Mania's second half grows increasingly keyboard-driven (making it sound more more dated than the Ramones' '70s material).Īt the same time, Mania came out in 1988, effectively cutting off around the time primary songwriter Dee Dee quit the band. Animal Boy and Too Tough to Die may not be as celebrated, but given that they provided the world with "Wart Hog," "Howling at the Moon (Sha-La-La)" and "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg," maybe they're due for a second life. Mania makes a compelling argument for the later records. From End of the Century on, opinions start to split. But given all the tunes chosen to open the set (the infectious "I Wanna Be Sedated," the blistering "Teenage Lobotomy," the thundering "Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment"), it's hard to criticize.įans can generally agree on the first four Ramones albums as being perfect. The band's earth-shaking debut doesn't get represented until track five, "Beat on the Brat." "Blitzkrieg Bop" does pop up until track nine. While there's a rough attempt at sequencing the set chronologically, it still skews history in favor of flow. Tommy, and later Marky and Richie, drove the songs to be as fast as possible. Dee Dee could inject darkness and levity, sometimes in the same song. Johnny brought the noise while Joey brought the hooks. Assuming perfection is a reality and not an ideal, the Ramones were perfect. They wrote a staggering number of catchy tunes, and even if they're not your absolute favorite band of all time, you certainly have an opinion on them. For a certain set of music fans, the Ramones are the Beatles. Modestly priced given its content, this the best possible entryway to the Ramones.īesides maybe Buzzcocks' Singles Going Steady, Mania has to be the most pop-conscious punk record of all time. Boasting 30 unfuckwithable songs on a single CD, it makes complete sense that Mania would be the Ramones' first (and until 2014, when their debut was finally certified, only) gold record. But for a band without any hit singles, the Ramones always really were a singles band, not so secretly students of top 40 bubblegum pop. Other compilations have sold more copies ( Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) by the Eagles has gone platinum so many times that the numbers no longer matter).Granted, none of the songs collected actually dominated the charts. Ramones Mania is the greatest greatest hits collection ever assembled.
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