"I remember the bass player [the late Dee Dee "Ramone" Colvin] and the guitar player [Johnny "Ramone" Cummings] standing in the hallway with their amps in separate rooms, and the drums in a booth way at the back of this immense studio. You could crank it up and still get isolation, which is why it sounds big and dry at the same time."

The Ramones first album is a roaring minimalist icon - the first real American punk record. Layers and layers of accumulated bloat and sheen were stripped away to reveal the basic energy, drive, and primitive melodicism of rock 'n' roll. The Ramones' sound was blazing early-'60s surf music played through the overdriven distortion of Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath. Yet, according to Leon, the Ramones saw themselves as a pop band. "In our naiveté, we thought they were going to be bigger than the Beatles. They had even named themselves after Paul McCartney's early stage name, 'Paul Ramone.' In retrospect, it is almost miraculous that an album as radical as the first Ramones record - on a label, Sire, that was a small indie at the time ('76) - charted at all (it reached No. 111).

"The whole New York music thing was seen as an extension of the art scene, so we thought we were doing something cultural. It might have been pretentious, but what the hell, we were having fun. We really thought we were doing something groundbreaking and new. A lot of that is missing today."

No shit.

Article Author: Eric Olsen

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