The Ramones, live at Old Waldorf in San Francisco and recorded (miraculously) by KSAN-FM on January 31, 1978.
A few words via Wikipedia to get those you not familiar up to speed:
The Ramones were an American punk rock band that formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens, in 1974. They are often cited as the first true punk rock group. Despite achieving only limited commercial success initially, the band was highly influential in the United States and the United Kingdom.
All of the band members adopted pseudonyms ending with the surname “Ramone”, although none of them were biologically related. They performed 2,263 concerts, touring virtually nonstop for 22 years. In 1996, after a tour with the Lollapalooza music festival, the band played a farewell concert and disbanded. By 2014, all four of the band’s original members had died – lead singer Joey Ramone (1951–2001), bass guitarist Dee Dee Ramone (1951–2002), guitarist Johnny Ramone (1948–2004) and drummer Tommy Ramone (1949–2014).
Recognition of the band’s importance built over the years, and are now mentioned in many assessments of all-time great rock music, such as number 26 in the Rolling Stone magazine list of the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time” and number 17 in VH1’s “100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock”. In 2002, the Ramones were ranked the second-greatest band of all time by Spin magazine, trailing only the Beatles. On March 18, 2002, the original four members and Tommy’s replacement on drums, Marky Ramone, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on their first year of eligibility, though Joey had died by then. In 2011, the group was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
he Ramones’s loud, fast, straightforward musical style was influenced by pop music that the band members grew up listening to in the 1950s and 1960s, including classic rock groups such as the Beach Boys, the Who, the Beatles, the Kinks, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones and Creedence Clearwater Revival; bubblegum acts like the 1910 Fruitgum Company and Ohio Express; and girl groups such as the Ronettes and the Shangri-Las. They also drew on the harder rock sound of the MC5, Black Sabbath, the Stooges and the New York Dolls, now known as seminal protopunk bands. The Ramones’ style was in part a reaction against the heavily produced, often bombastic music that dominated the pop charts in the 1970s. “We decided to start our own group because we were bored with everything we heard,” Joey once explained. “In 1974 everything was tenth-generation Elton John, or overproduced, or just junk. Everything was long jams, long guitar solos … . We missed music like it used to be.” Ira Robbins and Scott Isler of Trouser Press describe the result:
With just four chords and one manic tempo, New York’s Ramones blasted open the clogged arteries of mid-’70s rock, reanimating the music. Their genius was to recapture the short/simple aesthetic from which pop had strayed, adding a caustic sense of trash-culture humor and minimalist rhythm guitar sound.
As leaders in the punk rock scene, the Ramones’ music has usually been identified with that label, while some have categorized their style as pop punk or power pop. In the 1980s, the band sometimes veered into hardcore punk territory, as can be heard on Too Tough to Die.
On stage, the band adopted a focused approach directly intended to increase the audience’s concert experience. Johnny’s instructions to C.J. when preparing for his first live performances with the group were to play facing the audience, to stand with the bass slung low between spread legs, and to walk forward to the front of stage at the same time as he did. Johnny was not a fan of guitarists who performed facing their drummer, amplifier, or other band members.
Nothing left to do but crank this one up and forget the week.
