Sleeve notes
Ramones
Ramones · 1976
Ramones formed in Forest Hills, Queens in 1974, when John Cummings, Douglas Colvin, Jeffrey Hyman and Thomas Erdelyi adopted a shared surname and a uniform of leather jackets, ripped jeans and matching haircuts, presenting themselves as a single unit rather than four individuals. Playing CBGB alongside Television and Patti Smith, they stripped rock and roll down to two-minute bursts of buzzsaw guitar, nonsense hooks and a count-in shouted before nearly every song.
Their self-titled debut arrived in 1976, recorded fast and cheap, and a UK tour that summer put them directly in front of the future Sex Pistols and the Clash. The band toured almost constantly for over two decades despite deep internal rifts between Joey and Johnny, breaking up in 1996. Joey, Dee Dee and Johnny all died within the following decade, leaving the band's blueprint more influential than the band itself ever was commercially.
