Standing Over By The Record Machine: The 2016 mono mix of the first Ramones album gets a standalone release!
Better hurry, though – there are only 3000 pressed!
RAMONES – Ramones [Rhino Red Edition] (Rhino Records/Sire Records) ltd. edition red vinyl LP
Rhino Records has been the world’s premiere reissue specialist since 1978, evolving out of a carefully curated record store run by Richard Foos on Westwood Boulevard in Los Angeles. Harold Bronson partnered with him to create the label, and it sure seems like they were an instant hit. There was a time when roughly a quarter of my record collection consisted of Rhino releases, be it the boxset version of Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets or their Monkees reissues. To celebrate their 45th anniversary, they’ve instituted a new series called Rhino Reds: Special limited edition red vinyl repressings of classic albums from distributors Warner Records’ vast back catalog, accompanied by a reproduction of a 45 from each title, also on red vinyl. And while it’s tempting to want red plastic retrofits of some crucial titles by the likes of Love, Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, there’s only one LP I absolutely had to have, out of all the ones Rhino is offering — the first Ramones album, from 1976. And it’s producer Craig Leon’s 2016 mono remix, offered separately from the 40th anniversary deluxe edition for the first time.
First of all, was there a more important album in punk rock history? Yes, we can talk all day about The Stooges/New York Dolls/MC5/Sex Pistols/Clash/etc. They’re all fundamental to this music/aesthetic/lifestyle. And once the punk floodgates opened, for 10 years it felt like 5000 new records were released weekly, all great. But that first Ramones album crystallized all that was brilliant about pre-1976 rock ‘n’ roll, and provided a blueprint for everything that came after it. It was like playing scratchy Phil Spector and Beach Boys 45s through a 10 ft. tall transistor radio built by Marshall Amplification. It was pop music with balls, running on 100CCs of hi-test rocket fuel. It was hard without being heavy, raucous while still working within some sorta discipline, and had no guitar solos. And it wore a black leather jacket, ripped Levi’s 501 straight legs, and Keds so dilapidated, the red label riding the heel read “K ds.”
From the initial 1-4-5 blast of “Blitzkrieg Bop” to the last drops of amplifier hum on the fade-out of “Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World,” Ramones was 28 minutes and 58 seconds of pure assault, but you could sing along with it. They’d been honing this sound for two years, a barrage of downstroked barre chords — two positions (the only two Johnny Ramone learned), played up and down the neck of his Mosrite Ventures II — wed to Dee Dee Ramone’s pressure drop bass, anchored by Tommy Ramone’s tight, deceptively simple (but not simplistic) drumming. And the gangly, hairy scarecrow up front, hanging onto the mic stand for dear life, Joey Ramone — the least likely rock star to ever live, which made him immaculate. Joey was likely the first male rock ‘n’ roll singer in history to have wholly been influenced by the great Ronnie Spector, adding an ache, a vulnerability, a catch in his voice that humanized these cheery singalongs about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and boredom dispelled by sniffing glue.
Though the attack was rock ‘n’ roll at its rawest, basking in the sonic waves The Stooges and Dolls had set in motion just three years before, the Ramones’ songwriting was the purest of pop. They reportedly attempted to learn their chops by playing ‘60s bubblegum hits ala “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” by The Ohio Express, or at least tried. Problem was, they could not manage passable renditions of even the most gut-simple bubblegum classics! So it was necessary to write their own bubblegum hits. They also obviously admired the Brill Building popsmiths, and all the British Invasion acts, such as Herman’s Hermits and The Dave Clark Five. Plus it must be noted that there is just a hair’s difference between bubblegum staples like “A Little Bit O’ Soul” by The Music Explosion and paragons of garage-punk such as The Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction.” It all leaked into their songwriting, primarily handled by Joey and Dee Dee.
Thing is, the Ramones’ version of bubblegum was a bit warped. These were four guys from Queens who’d grown up on Mad magazine, warped TV sitcoms like Hogan's Heroes, and B-movie fare such as anything Roger Corman directed for American International Pictures. Hence they thought when they were writing “Blitzkrieg Bop” that they were creating an homage to 1975’s Bay City Rollers chantalong “Saturday Night.” But Rollers manager Tam Paton would never have allowed his charges to write a two minute pounder turning concentration camp gas chamber lines into a 1960s dance craze! Danny Fields saw no such problem! Which maybe meant he was either the perfect manager for the Ramones, or the worst, depending on your viewpoint.
I vote for the former. Ramones was a clarion call for everyone who hated the bloated goddamned beast rock (without the roll) music had become by 1976. Those Stooges/Dolls-worshiping cargo cults flung all over Earth’s most remote corners I wrote about when In The Red reissued The Saints’ “(I’m) Stranded” this past summer now understood they were not alone. Many, like The Saints and Minneapolis’ Suicide Commandos suddenly recognized they had four cousins in NYC. Even more now had a blueprint to create their own potent ‘70s rock ‘n’ roll. This is how homegrown revolutions happen.
If there’s any quibble with the Ramones’ perfection, it’s the surface absence of Black influences. Johnny Ramone famously boasted they had no blues roots. But if you dig deep enough, you see the R&B lying within — the Ronnie Spector influence, later covers like Bobby Freeman’s “Do You Wanna Dance,” or The Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today.” Rock ‘n’ roll is Black music. Over the years, it got bleached. Which is why Jimi Hendrix shocked so many, just ten years after Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Little Richard all hit. Sure, white English bands turned the blues into a cliché, sucking out all the pigmentation even worse and turning it into an excuse for masturbatory guitar exercises. (I blame Eric Clapton, who admitted to using “stock phrases” in this interview, in which he sounds like Nigel Tufnel’s father.) I say Johnny was not thinking through what he actually wanted to say. It was that white gunslinger blues rock he was objecting to, not any Black influence. But thereafter, punk required a shot of reggae and the input of bands like Bad Brains and Pure Hell to course-correct the ship.
Meanwhile, back at Plaza Sound, above Radio City Music Hall, Craig Leon and Tommy Erdelyi (what Tommy Ramone’s mom called her son) discussed the sonic picture they wanted the album to present. The duo felt it should be in mono, like all pre-1965 rock ‘n’ roll. Problem was that no one did mono in 1976, save for English R&B muggers Dr. Feelgood, who weren’t exactly burning up the charts in the US. Their next idea was that if they had to opt for stereo, they would imitate the rather silly stereo mixes that Capitol Records released for their US Beatles albums, in which all of the instruments and vocal parts were separated and panned to the extreme ends of the auditory spectrum. Thus Johnny was in one channel, Dee Dee in the other. This became a boon for budding punk rock musicians. You could put on Ramones and turn your stereo’s balance knob one way or the other, depending on if you were learning guitar or bass, and play along with your Ramonic counterpart! Once you’d mastered their parts, you could turn to the opposite channel and join the Ramones in the privacy of your bedroom! I know — I’m one of those kids who learned to play guitar the Johnny Ramone way, from this album!
It only took 40 years for Ramones to get its mono mix, for that 2016 box set, and it’s an improvement. It’s a solid ball of noise flying at you from the speakers. Dee Dee’s bass is fatter and more present than before. The drums sound like they slam harder. Johnny’s Mosrite is a dense harmonic buzz, still full of attack. Joey’s vocals are the abiding presence here, as they should be, only getting submerged in the sub-Beach Boys “oooohs” on “Chain Saw”’s bridge, likely an inescapable auditory accident of the mono. But previously inaudible sonic details are suddenly brought out in 3-D, such as the bells on “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend.” There will be purists who will object, but purists can be a pain in the ass.
The industry looked upon the Ramones and punk rock as a failure for years. Even the Ramones saw themselves thusly, because they didn’t become The Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night. Thing is, in the long run, they won. Everyone who bought Ramones seemed to start a band. The fact that you hear “Blitzkrieg Bop” at every sporting event in the world for the last 30 years means it eventually became a hit, just not on the radio. It is embedded in the public consciousness. Every late night talk show theme song since the turn of this century sounds like the Ramones. The Ramones got the last laugh. And that laugh sounds better in mono. Grab this while you can — Third Man Pressing only made 3000 copies! Comes with a bonus “Blitzkrieg Bop” b/w “Havana Affair” 45.
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