They sound like a crap garage band, and their lyrics are uninspired. Seriously, what is the appeal?
Link?
Google gives me nothing but the Ramones.
Assuming you mean The Ramones, you need to consider them in context of their time. They were a reaction against the overproduced corporate rock product being spoon-fed to us in the mid seventies.
I actually thought there was a new band I’d never heard of called the Ram Ones
:smack:
Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock and roll high ewe!
A garage band sponsored by Dodge Trucks?
hehehehehe …
They sounded nothing like what we were hearing at the time.
The Ramones were and are the distilled essence of everything good about every garage band that ever existed before them. Plus they played fast: 3 chords, no waiting.
As for their lyrics being “uninspired”, they are no more and no less inspired than the shitty bubblegum pop that so permeated the airwaves in the 60s and early 70s. Joey’s songs ironically are the more socially relevant ones lyrically (Joey was a tremendous fan of bubblegum pop), while Dee Dee’s songs are more like what some twisted speed freak might have sung while walking to the drive-in movie concession stand.
Sorry for the typo, I don’t generally go in for cheap insults by misspelling names.
So ok, like the Beatles, Elvis and Air Supply, their music wouldn’t sell today. Can I get more detail about them as iconoclasts then? If I can put them into context I could grow to at least appreciate, if not like, their music.
WTF? The Beatles and Elvis would totally sell today. They might not rule the world, but they would be A-list.
Actually, The Ramones sell about as many albums in a year now as they ever did. Their live shows were the shiznit, tho, and they made a good bit of money off their merch.
What do you want to know about them? Johnny and Dee Dee met in high school and became fast friends in the way that only fellow outcasts can. When they were about 22-23 they were both living shitty lives and Johnny talked Dee Dee into starting a band. Johnny and Tommy had played together in high school, and Joey was a guy who sang for a local band that they knew. They recruited him and playing and writing songs.
Their image was deliberate, as was their last name (they all took it as a show of solidarity).
Their gigs were loud, fast, and fun just like their music.
I can highly recommend End Of The Century: The Story of The Ramones if you want to know about the band, hear some of their music and see first hand (if a little ex post facto) the complex dynamics involved in making a band work. People unfamiliar with the band, which performed and recorded for 22 years (virtually non-stop, too) may not know of all the in-fighting and personal dislike that existed.
This is one of my favorite bands, so if you have more specific things you want to know, feel free to ask; I’ll do my best to answer
Musical tastes are not bound by logic. One person hears a shitty garage band who couldn’t play their instruments and another hears “the distilled essence of everything good about every garage band that ever existed before them”.
I’m firmly in the second category; the Ramones were brilliant, though like a lot of bands that came up with a brilliant formula it wore thin over the years and their later work is pretty forgettable. Even so, their contribution to rock’n’roll was large and important, and at their best they were simply the epitome of what they did.
Now, there’s no way to make a person get that. If you’re the sort of person that doesn’t get raw and unrefined things like the dirtier end of rock music, then no amount of explanation will ever make you get it. It is, truly, something you either get or you don’t.
There’s no shame or failure in not getting something; nobody gets everything. There are fields of creative endeavour that leave me cold and unmoved. I have no idea why people listen to some of the things they do, but I am forced to acknowledge that some people get stuff that I don’t. Opera being a good example: I understand that it’s good and valuable music that is very rewarding to the people that like it, it just sounds like hideous caterwauling in foreign languages to me. That’s fine, I’m just not cut out to enjoy opera.
Where this becomes problematic is that there is a large percentage of people who believe that anything they personally don’t get is a scam. A lot of people think they’re very clever by pointing out that “the emperor wears no clothes” - “nobody really likes godawful unmusical rackets like the Ramones, hipsters just pretend to like them because it’s hip.”
When you run into that sort of opinion, you know you’ve met an idiot. The Ramones were great, but their greatness is not for everyone. Nobody pleases everyone.
I hope I didn’t come off as a hater. I’m simply not an understander in this case. They’re not my thing, but I’m curious as to what the appeal was over, say, any other garage band. In resoponse to Tim’s post above, I’d say they almost sound professionally underproduced. But I’ve not been to one of their concerts, and I don’t and can’t (now) know them within the context of when they were doing their thing. That’s what I’m wanting help with. Because it’s an individual aesthetics thing, maybe I could get a handle on it if fans could say what they like about what the band did.
I’ve been to more than a few of their concerts. What is most apparent is the tongue-in-cheek vibe going on. They are winking at the audience as they are flipping the bird at the record industry. Alas, the chance of any more Ramones concerts happening in the future is a very, very slim probability.
Along with the excellent documentary recommended by Snowboarder Bo, I suggest you check out a DVD of “Rock and Roll High School.” It is a fictional movie about them, but it does a good job of capturing the vibe.
Then you understand more than you think: they were underproduced as a reaction to the overproduction of the time, but this was partly visceral, partly a stylistic choice and partly at the start a simple lack of money (and, according to a paraphrased quote from I can’t recall which one, of skill “we played three notes because that was all we knew how to play”); once they started bringing money in, they could have gotten more “packaged” if they’d wanted to - but they didn’t. Playing like they did worked, they enjoyed it, so they saw no reason to try and sound like somebody else.
I think of Nirvana as “the Ramones, 30 years later”. Both of them were groups which opened a drawer of the music box which had previously been closed (that doesn’t mean they were the only ones doing what they did, but they were the ones the world noticed), and both of them did it partly in reaction to overproduction.
Since everybody but Tommy and Markie are dead, yeah, super-slim. 
Nirvana is the Ramones 13 years later.
For many bands, only the drummer is dead. For the Ramones, everyone *but *the various drummers are dead!
Okay, I’ll try and give you some things that we all (those of use who heard them in the 1970s) thought (& liked), and some things I personally thought (& liked):
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The songs were good songs. Standard, simple pop song form (verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus) with repetitive lyrics, but played ultra-fast with seriously raunchy sounding guitar and equally raw vocals.
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They presented a unified visual image, but unlike standard groups, it wasn’t suits or nice clothes; it was ripped jeans, Converse (Chuck Taylor All Stars) sneakers, t-shirts and leather jackets… it was pretty much the same clothes that they wore growing up, when they were outcasts/juvenile delinquents/lower middle class kids. It was something we all could relate to because we all had at least 3 of the 4 things in our own wardrobe. Gabba gabba we accept you we accept you one of us!
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It was obvious from the start that they weren’t any of them virtuosos. But, because their songs were so good, we all listened anyway. This led a LOT of people to realize that, hey, fuck, I could probably learn to play 3 chords; why the fuck aren’t I starting a band?
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Rock music at the time of their first album (1976) was moving into ever-more-pretentious territory as real virtuosos adopted rock and roll as their way to make a living. The Ramones cast all that aside and in both image and product reduced everything to it’s most basic level: 4 guys wailing because it was fun to do, regardless of how much money they were gonna make or whether or not anyone with “class” liked what they did. The Ramones just didn’t give a shit what you thought of them (unless you liked them, of course).
Those are the basics, anyway.
I know the first time I heard them, I laughed hysterically at the lyrics “beat on the brat with a baseball bat; what can you do-oooooooh?” because it was just so over the top. It was like somebody else doing a total rock and roll version of Mama Get The Hammer, There’s A Fly On The Baby’s Head. It’s mien was as raw in it’s limited lyrics as it was in it’s musical content and execution, and it grabbed hold and did not let go. So many of their songs are this way, with their simple but earnest melodies, that nearly half of every album was an ICE.
The flip side was the serious bubblegum stuff, the stuff that Joey wrote: I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend being the perfect example, in my opinion. Joey was a huge fan of Phil Spector and the girl groups he produced. I mean a HUGE fan; he liked everything about them: the music, the melodies, the Wall Of Sound production, the harmonies, the repressed sexuality, everything. And IMO, he nailed it right out of the gate; Joey had an uncanny ability to channel that same sound and feeling.
Now, keep in mind that back then, there was no way to see this band without actually physically going to a show. They weren’t gonna get invited on a TV show, ya know what I’m saying’?
Anyway, when you saw them live, what you saw were those same 4 guys from the album cover, only it seemed that every song, every single song, started with Dee Dee yelling “1-2-3-4!” and then the band would gleefully churn their way thru each 2 minute song at skull-crushing volume.
If you watch Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, you’ll see it during the concert part of the movie.
And over 22 years, none of this really never changed: every song started off with that same insanely fast “1-2-3-4!” count. Everybody wore the same clothes. Every song was simple, loud, fast, and fun. Most of all, tho, it was without pretensions and accessible on so many levels for so many of us, that we embraced the band because we knew deep down that they truly were (gabba gabba we accept you we accept you) one of us.
Fixed it.