Title:Anthology By: The Ramones Released by: Warner Bros Records Released on: 2001 Rating (out of 10): 10 Date: 06/07/2002
Gimme Gimme Flawless Compilation!
If you’re looking for a heartfelt tribute to Dee Dee Ramone, look elsewhere. All I can say on that subject is that hard drugs fucking suck and that it is one of popular music’s main curses that almost all of your idols will die before you. Not pleasant words, nor perhaps the words that Dee Dee deserves, but I do not possess enough passion about the topic to say anything else. The Ramones changed the lives of many writers, and I’m sure they will provide the heartfelt tributes that this situation demands. To me, The Ramones were just another room in the wonderful house of Pop, and it is in that way that I will describe them.
The Ramones, as we all know, were the perfect bridge between the Proto-Punk of The MC5 (metallic), The Stooges (dirty) and The New York Dolls (trashy) and the Britpunk of The Sex Pistols (nasty), The Clash (righteous) and The Buzzcocks (insecure). Playing the CBGB’s in New York City, this cartoon band brought back a lot of Rock’s energy, gut and humour in a time when music was dominated by the pretension of Pink Floyd, the metallic sludge of a way past their prime Led Zeppelin, the perky Pop/Rock of Wings, the harmless tedium of Neil Sedaka, the teenybopper obnoxiousness of Olivia Newton John and the brainless dance pap of The Bee Gees. Thus, they started the third greatest movement in Rock history (there’s no beating Early Rock or Psychedelic, I’m sorry), and paved the way for a whole lot of great bands, which ultimately led to the great, enlightened music scene of today, dominated by the pretension of Radiohead, the rapmetallic sludge of the never-had-a-prime Limp Bizkit, the perky Pop/Rock of Toploader, the harmless tedium of Travis, the teenybopper obnoxiousness of Britney Spears and the brainless dance pap of Faithless. Boy, we sure learned our lesson!
All sarcasm aside, no Rock record collection is complete without a bit of Ramones. Notice, however, that I said a bit. The Ramones were enormously influential and important, but at their heart they were a bit of a one trick pony, and you’d have to be either a fanatic or a fool to actually buy all of their albums.
Essential purchases? Alrighty then. The first four albums—The Ramones, Leave Home, Rocket To Russia and Road To Ruin are all excellent must haves, even though Leave Home tends to drag a bit. You can buy these in a newly re-released, remastered form from the always excellent and soulful Rhino Records label, with lots of nifty bonus tracks added (and you don’t have to feel guilty of exploitation of the dead a la “Candle In The Wind '97,” either—both these re-issues and the anthology I’m reviewing had already been planned before Joey Ramone’s tragic death, let alone Dee Dee’s). For those on a tighter budget, you could instead seek out All The Stuff & More, Vol. 1 & 2, a series that combined their first four albums on two CDs with a few demos and bonus tracks (though not as many as on the Rhino re-releases).
But what to do when you’ve already worn out these four (or two, depending on your choice) CDs and are still craving for more D-U-M-B pogoing material?
Most music experts will tell you that you shouldn’t waste your money—those four albums contain everything good about The Ramones, and everything after that is just uninspired filler. I beg to differ—while The Ramones never did release another album as consistent as their debut, there’s enough stray gems around to make for a highly listenable compilation.
And this is where the Anthology comes in—it includes a high number of tracks from their first four albums (meaning you’ll have to count on having some duplicate songs in your collection, as well as shelling out $ for a lot of stuff you already have), but the real reason to buy this is because it gives you all the killer tracks of The Ramones’ subsequent career with only very little of the enormous amount of filler present therein.
After you’ve gone through the tracks from the first few albums (which isn’t a chore by any means—“I Wanna Be Sedated”! “53rd & 3rd”! “California Sun”!), at the end of CD1 you’ll find two songs from Rock & Roll High School—fun stuff, but only an appetizer for the wonders to come.
End Of The Century, The Ramones’ collaboration with master eccentric producer Phil Spector, is known primarily as one of Rock’s biggest jokes...you know, one of those legendary awful albums like Dylan’s Self Portrait or The Clash’s Cut The Crap which never cease to delight fans because they show that even the biggest legends of Rock & Roll make mistakes. Thus, when tracks from this album rolled around, I was expecting some highly embarrassing, perversely entertaining fluff.
What I got instead was some of the most vital, glorious music I’ve ever heard in my life.
I’ve spent many hours thinking about how such wonderful sounds could have been so slaughtered by music enthusiasts, how songs as great as these are now widely known as embarrassments. My conclusion? As in many occasions, it is historical ignorance that has caused this.
You see, many critics thought that The Ramones were only the torch-bearers of Garage Rock, tough, primal, nasty three chord noise. This was a big part of them, of course, but it wasn’t everything! The Ramones took their influence from a wide variety of early Rock music, including Rockabilly, R&B, Girl Groups, Surf, the teen melodrama of Gene Pitney, the glory of Spector himself, Doo Wop (how did you think they came up with “gabba gabba hey”??), Folk Rock and all of those many interesting styles that populated the musical landscape between 1959 and 1964.
Problem is, most Post Punk critics don’t see that era as what it really was: one of the most exciting, vital and—hell yeah!—dangerous periods of popular music, but rather as quaint oldies that grampa owns. For those poor souls that thought Rock was dead between Buddy Holly dying and the arrival of The Beatles, the songs on End Of The Century are incomprehensible and thus undesirable.
Ya see, kids, you can’t pogo to “Do You Remember Rock & Roll Radio?” You have to Twist! Shout! Shimmy! Hully Gully! Do the funky somethin’! You have to be Archie Drell of The Drells—you come from Houston, Texas and you can’t only sing, you can dance just as good as you want to. ”Do you remember Jerry Lee*/John Lennon, T-Rex?” Joey asks. Testify! Also name dropped—Alan Freed! Shindig! While singing the praise of the great idols of their past, The Ramones never forget the future, too—"we need change and we need it fast,” cuz ”lately it all sounds the same to me!” A valuable lesson—hey, all you Alterna Kids constantly whining about when the new Rock revolution is gonna come, how about buying a Shirelles or Coasters record? Then you’ll know what revolution really means, not Nirvana trashing themselves up but the lust for life present in all the good stuff from Little Richard to The Strokes, and I don’t mean feedback! And the music? Saxophones! Sound effects! The Spector Sound in excelsis. And if you can’t dig that or don’t think it’s “hard” enough, fuck you. Go listen to Linkin Park or something.
Equally great is “Danny Says,” the ballad that ends the first CD. With its wonderful production and melancholic lyrics, this tear-jerker really belongs on Pet Sounds (or Semisonic’s All About Chemistry which is JUST AS GOOD! So fucking there). ”Danny says we gotta go/gotta go to Idaho/but we can’t go surfing ‘cause it’s four below.” Help me, Rhonda! The kids are watching Get Smart on TV, and they ain’t got nowhere to go. It might sound funny, but it’s true...
After such a pleasant surprise, I was ready for everything, but I gotta admit that the Synth-Pop of the Dave Stewart (Eurhytmics) produced “Howling At The Moon (Sha La La)” on CD2 irked me at first. Then I realized that this was just The Ramones playing with their formula, and that their reluctance to do so is what caused their downfall in the first place! Hooray for experimentation, then—this is a great shiny New Wave tune, synths and all.
In a way, Punk is all about dealing with the shit you see, finding a way to come to terms with all the violence and misery in the world without resorting to escapism. But there are many ways to do that—The Sex Pistols simply slammed the truth into everyone’s faces, while maintaining a “couldn’t care less” attitude all the while; The Clash saw what was wrong and set out to try and change it; and The Ramones simply cartoonified the world’s menaces and thus rendered them harmless, if only for three minutes. No one was safe from this—fascism (“Blitzkrieg Bop”), the Vietnam war (“Commando”) or the KKK.
Q magazine has called second CD opener “The KKK Took My Baby Away” “glorious dumb anthemicism,” but I think it goes beyond that...maybe I read too much into lyrics (though I still maintain that “Jailhouse Rock” by Elvis Presley was a social commentary on homosexuality in prisons), but I’ve always seen this as a very sweet love song about an interracial relationship.
And so it goes on and on, with a few great tracks (“My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down,” “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up”), many good ones and only two lackluster ones: “Mama’s Boy” is self parody, which is funny because The Ramones already were a living parody in the first place; and one wonders how a group that only recently enthusiastically sang about wanting to be sedated could be scared of “Psycho Therapy.” But hey, two clunckers out of 58—not a bad deal by any means.
The booklet is disappointing—there’s none of the wonderful, enthusiastic liner notes that we are used to from Rhino releases. However, there are some very nifty photos—The Ramones posing with The Clash (Joe Strummer looks like a choirboy!), Iggy Pop (the sheer coolness of that is overwhelming) and Johnny Rotten (complete with urine-spiked beer).
I said previously that there’s more to The Ramones than just violent noise, but don’t let that fool you—I enjoy their rockin’ Punk attacks just as much as I do their catchy Pop tunes. There’s a great one at the end of CD2—Lemmy from Motorhead guests on “R.A.M.O.N.E.S," a brilliant 1:23 track from a very mediocre album (Adios Amigos). Yet another reason to buy this album instead.
* I’m assuming Joey meant The Killer of “Great Balls Of Fire” fame, not Mr. Funny Faces.
