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Ramones “Leave Home” 1977. Today, May 19th, would have been Joey Ramone’s 70th birthday (b. Jeffrey Hyman, 1951, d. 2001). Their second album, Leave Home is filled with breakneck, fuzzed-out surfy-pop-infused punk tracks, three of which became single releases: “I Remember You,” “Swallow My Pride” and “Carbona Not Glue” (not released until 1991). Leave Home went to #148 in the US but hit #45 in the UK, their first album to chart. Our original issue of Leave Home has the track “Carbona Not Glue.” That song was pulled soon after the initial album release and replaced with “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” in the US and “Babysitter” in the UK. Ramones’ manager Danny Fields realized Carbona was the stain remover’s registered trademark and pushback by the producers of the product (who were likely against kids huffing their cleaning solution) would be forthcoming, even though the lyrics suggest that Carbona was a superior high to regular old glue-sniffing. Other noteworthy tracks on Leave Home include “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment,” “Suzy is a Headbanger,” the cover of The Rivieras’ “California Sun,” and “Pinhead.” The Ramones’ signature rallying cry “Gabba Gabba Hey!” comes from the last lines in “Pinhead” and provided endless audience call-and-response at Ramones shows for the rest of their career.

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The Ramones released a couple of singles from the LP in ‘76, “Blitzkrieg Bop” (which gave us the endearing and enduring “Hey Ho! Let’s Go!” anthem) and “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend.” I’m fairly certain neither single charted at the time. Besides those two songs, the whole album really is a stream of classic tracks back-to-back. I’m particularly fond of “Beat on the Brat,” “Judy Is a Punk” and first songs of many more over the years that gave insight into what the Ramones wanted to do: “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” and what they didn’t want to do: “I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement” and “I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You.”

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My favorite tracks are the great punk classics including “Chinese Rock” (written by Dee Dee and Richard Hell, though I do prefer The Heartbreakers version), “This Ain’t Havana” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” (#67 UK; the first version was recorded by Ed Stasium for the Rock ‘n’ Roll High School movie soundtrack).

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Ramones did release a couple of singles from the LP in ‘76, “Blitzkrieg Bop” (which gave us the endearing and enduring “Hey Ho! Let’s Go!” anthem) and “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend.” I’m fairly certain neither single charted at the time. Besides those two songs, the whole album really is a stream of classic tracks back-to-back. I’m particularly fond of “Beat on the Brat,” “Judy Is a Punk” and first songs of many more over the years that gave insight into what the Ramones wanted to do: “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” and what they didn’t want to do: “I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement” and “I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You.”

Approximately a million people have written/said about a million things about Ramones and it’s been included on almost as many best-of lists, but of note is The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame around the time of the Ramones’ induction in 2002: “The Ramones got back to basics: simple, speedy, stripped-down rock and roll songs. Voice, guitar, bass, drums. No makeup, no egos, no light shows, no nonsense. And though the subject matter was sometimes dark, emanating from a sullen adolescent basement of the mind, the group also brought cartoonish fun and high-energy excitement back to rock and roll.” Allmusic states in its 5 star review, “Ramones is all about speed, hooks, stupidity, and simplicity. The songs are imaginative reductions of early rock & roll, girl group pop, and surf rock. Not only is the music boiled down to its essentials, but the Ramones offer a twisted, comical take on pop culture with their lyrics…”

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“End of the Century” is the Ramones fifth studio album and produced by the infamous Phil Spector, which created a bit of disconnect between the band’s punk lo-fi sensibilities and Spector’s legendary use of high production techniques like overdubbing and, you know, quality (”End of the Century” was the most expensive album of the Ramones’ career). Spector also used less high end techniques like the threat of violence during the recording sessions – he allegedly held the band at gunpoint to get them to continue to work into the wee hours of the morning. The result is a more pop orientated and higher grade sound but a “watered-down” version of the Ramones, according to Johnny. It even contains a cover of The Ronettes’ “Baby I Love You” that Johnny claimed the band didn’t even perform: just Joey and studio musicians.  The album did well though, charting at #44 on Billboard and #14 in the UK. Our vinyl went through a punk rock blender: this copy is scraped to all hell and in places barely playable.

My favorite track is “Chinese Rock,” which Dee Dee wrote in 1976 and Richard Hell/The Heartbreakers recorded with lyrical revision in 1977. There remains contention over the writing credits: on “End of the Century” the song is credited to D.D.Ramone/R.Hell. However, it later appeared on the CD rerelease credited to the Ramones as a whole, with no mention of Richard Hell. According to Dee Dee in ‘97, the credits to Hell were false. He wrote, “Johnny Thunders ranked on me for fourteen years, trying to make out like he [Hell] wrote the song. What a low-life maneuver by those guys!”

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A bit slower, more surfy and poppy than previous releases, it still epitomized the punk ethos of simple snottiness while commenting on social issues, in the case of “Rocket to Russia” family dysfunction (“We’re a Happy Family”), being a social outcast (“Sheena is a Punk Rocker”) and suicide (“Why is it Always This Way?”)

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