See this thread on Hemingway; it got hijacked (with me playing an unfortunate role; sorry) by a reference to the Ramones.
One poster slags The Ramones as shit; another has fun with their lyrics. We get it - The Ramones were primitive.
But is there really much hate out there for them? I guess I’d be surprised if there was, but thought I would bring it over here to quit polluting the other thread.
So - The Ramones?
I liken them to Hemingway.
::sputters like Yosemite Sam::
Now, STOP that! 
Seriously - you don’t like them? Too stoopid?
I love(d) the Ramones. I think they were really under-appreciated while they were together and still now. I always thought they got gypped when the grunge scene hit big and everyone started getting into the harder music sung by grubby singers with bad haircuts and holes in their jeans. The Ramones had been doing that for almost 20 years by then!
The Ramones music wasnt hard nor grungy. They were a good power pop band. Like many things New York they were more about style than substance though.
I didn’t read the other thread, but that shit cracked me up!
Sorry man, I never got them (Ramones). I can’t say they were bad, `cause I never gave them much of a critical ear. I guess you could say that I don’t know what I’m talking about (and you’re probably right), but nothing they did ever grabbed and enticed me to listen to more of them. I wouldn’t say hate… more like a blender full of indifference.
Yep, you and the bulk of America when their albums came out. I just don’t think they occupy that mere-cult place anymore that they did at the time.
I always assumed the Ramones were a 20-year deliberate joke about style over substance. Which is why I loved them. That and their catchy little songs.
The Ramones were great. I saw them twice and they put on a great show each time. I consider them an iconic American band.
End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones is a good documentary about the Ramones.
Yeah, I don’t think there is any way to deny the rather significant impact they’ve had on music since their heyday.
Im sorry but The Ramones were never a punk band IMO even though some categorized them as such. Punk has a specific social/political context that The Ramones never manifested. Examples of punk bands would be The Dead Kennedys or Agent Orange.
You just might be right there. 
I also like their catchy little songs.
Just as the Ramones are synonymous with punk, hated of the Ramones is synonymous with hating punk.
The Ramones were a wonderful breath of fresh air to those of us who had to endure years of disco. Gaaaa, going to clubs in the early 70’s, my college years, was a horrible experience unless you were willing to do the disco look and the dancing and the hair products. Thank Joey it’s over.
Hmm, yes there seems to be only one type of punk rock and the Ramones never really excelled at singing angry songs about Reganomics (“My Brain is Hanging Upside down” notwithstanding) so they mustn’t be punk.
Dee Dee could have been a sad, tragic character from a Hemingway novel.
I love the Ramones. I like Hemingway a lot. I don’t understand why you shut down the whole comparison in the other thread. I don’t understand why you started this thread with the presumption that there’s a lot of Ramones hatred.
If it weren’t for the Ramones, pop music would still sound like fucking ELO or something. And if it weren’t for Hemingway, writing would have that Edwardian pseudo-intellectual voice like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Ah; here we go.
This is not a discussion about “Who/What is Punk?”; the OP in this thread is: given that to the "main, crossover population of today, “Punk” is pretty much synonomous to “The Ramones”* - their look, their musical formula. With that as context, how do YOU feel about The Ramones and their music? At this point, given their cultural influence, I assumed most folks accepted and even liked the Ramones. Open to hearing otherwise.
fwiw, I happen to think “What is Punk?” is one of the stupidest questions in music. Nothing good tends to come from it; just whiny chest-thumping.
*For the Political Punks, see “The Clash”; for The Snotty Punks, see “The Sex Pistols.” Most folks don’t look much past that, for better or worse.
It would require an idiosyncratic definition of punk to exclude The Ramones from the genre.
My taste in music has always tended more toward the melodic and polished (I’m more of a Beatles guy than a Stones guy), so The Ramones were never a band I listened to a lot. What I heard of them made sense to me; I think I got what they were aiming at and why, and I think they hit their target, musically. I have read articles that described them as “primitives”, and I think that’s accurate, but they were deliberate primitives. I thought they were great at what they did, and extremely influential.
I really enjoyed the way Dee Dee counted off songs at a different tempo than what they actually started the song with.
In small doses, the Ramones were a lot of fun, which is more than I can say for most of the bands broadly classified as “punk.”
:mad:
Beat on the brats.