RAMONES discography

S.D. wrote:

Rocket To Russia is my favorite Ramones album, classic from start to finish. I used to crank "Surfin' Bird" at ridiculous volume back in the 80s and thrash around the living room like an idiot. Fun times.

It was one of my favorite LPs to spin at parties.

My dad used to play the original version by the Trashmen riduculously loud too when I was a kid. It's just that kind of song I guess. Surprisingly, when I played him the Ramones version many years later, he actually liked it. Normally he poo-poo covers.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

S.D. wrote:

Rocket To Russia is my favorite Ramones album, classic from start to finish. I used to crank "Surfin' Bird" at ridiculous volume back in the 80s and thrash around the living room like an idiot. Fun times.

It was one of my favorite LPs to spin at parties.

My dad used to play the original version by the Trashmen riduculously loud too when I was a kid. It's just that kind of song I guess. Surprisingly, when I played him the Ramones version many years later, he actually liked it. Normally he poo-poo covers.

Ramones are the kings of covers. They do them so simple and well, you can't not like them.

Rocket To Russia is in my top 10 albums of all time. It was the first thing I bought by the Ramones. I have recently added to my collection of their music.

I don't know if this is the right place to do this, but I wanted to suggest a few bands that Ramones fans may dig on, if they don't already know about them. I feel it my duty, as my roots are tangled in punk rock just as much as metal.

First, The Zeroes (not the late 80s/early 90s L.A. band). These dudes are often called the Mexican Ramones. They just had a similar style: short, simple punchy rock n' roll songs.

The Vibrators. They were a UK band, and had a little more...flair, I guess, than the Ramones. But something about them always seemed more Ramonesian to me than the Pistols or the Clash or some of the other UK bands. Their first record, Pure Mania, is among my favorites.

Another UK band is The Boys, and they were one of the best punk bands to come out of the 70s, period, in my opinion. All four of their records are just great.

I don't want to just catalog every punk band I like, but I do really think if you like the Ramones a lot, you might dig some of these records. Metal and punk have always been so closely related to me...maybe because I got into a lot of my favorite punk bands through metal. Megadeth's cover of "Anarchy in the UK". Slash wearing a Sid Vicious shirt. Axl wearing The Damned shirts. Duff just being punk as hell. Skid Row covering "Psychotherapy".

Road To Ruin, the Ramones' fourth album, was released in September 1978, and though it's widely considered to be one of their best efforts, it was also the beginning of a rough period for the band. By this time it had become clear that the Ramones were probably never going to become big time rock stars. Their previous three records had all been critical faves, but had never caught fire with the public at large. Also, by the time Road To Ruin was released the general consensus was that "punk rock," which had been dismissed as nothing more than a passing fad anyway, was dead.

Road To Ruin does come off as angrier than the preceding three records. The usual twisted Ramones wit is still there, but on the previous three albums it had been tempered with a "wink-wink" sense of humor, which seems to be absent here. Tracks like "I Wanted Everything," "I'm Against It" and "Go Mental" reflect the band's disappointment with how their career had been handled thus far. Even the "softer" songs like the acoustic ballad "Questioningly" and the suicidal-sounding cover of the Searchers' "Needles and Pins" are bleak.

"I Wanna Be Sedated" was released as a single in 1979 and since then it's gone on to become one of their most well known songs. The track was inspired by the frustration Joey felt about the grind of being on the road 300+ days out of the year, constantly being stuck in hotel rooms with "nothin' to do, nowhere to go."


Befitting its status as one of the Ramones' signature tracks, a long-overdue music video for "Sedated" was filmed in 1988 to coincide with its inclusion on the Ramones Mania compilation album.


Road To Ruin is one of my fave Ramones albums and if the universe were not such a cruel b*tch, this one would've made them huge.

Useless trivia:
1978 marked one of the Ramones' most unusual tour experiences, opening for Black Sabbath (as both bands were part of the Warner Music empire at the time) ... billed as a "clash of the titans" style tour of punk vs. metal, the Ramones were regularly boo'ed off the stage and pelted with flying objects by unimpressed Sabbath audiences. Legend has it that one show was halted when someone in the crowd threw a car's radiator (!) at the Ramones, causing Joey to scream at the promoter, "Couldn't you have at least taken their radiators away at the door?"

Road To Ruin also marked the first personnel change in Ramones history as drummer Tommy left the band to pursue a career in record producing/engineering. His replacement was Marc Bell, now known as Marky Ramone, who'd also played with Dust and Richard Hell and the Voidoids.

The drawing of the band on the cover was done by cartoonist John Holmstrom, who'd previously done the back cover and sleeve art for Rocket To Russia. It's become one of the most iconic images of the band (the first Ramones shirt I ever owned was of this cover!).

Love this album and one of many Ramones albums I owned on cassette and lost.

Not a bum track on this disc and that line about taking away the radiators at the door, is classic!!!!!!!!!!!

Its funny that punk vs metal crap was such a big deal because now adays its just assumed that both genres share fans

The Ramones were busy for a good hunk of 1979 filming the movie "Rock N Roll High School" (more about that in our next entry) so to keep their space warm on record store racks the live album It's Alive was released in April of that year. The typically fiery performance on this 2-LP set was recorded at the Rainbow Theater in London, England on New Year's Eve 1977.

According to our friends at Wikipedia, the band recorded four gigs during that brief British tour to consider for this album, and eventually chose to release this particular night's gig due to the fanatical crowd reaction, which included ten rows of seats being torn up by the audience and thrown around the venue.

For some odd reason It's Alive was not released in America in '79. Apparently the Powers that Be at their record label didn't think that a live Ramones album would sell. I wonder what jughead made that decision. After all, this was the late 1970s, which was the golden era of bands scoring big with live albums (Kiss' Alive, anyone? Cheap Trick's At Budokan? Rush's All The World's A Stage? Hell, even Frampton Comes Alive?). When I first saw this 2 LP set in a record store in the late 1980s I thought it was some weird bootleg I'd never heard of, till I flipped it over and saw the Sire Records logo on the back. It finally got a belated U.S. release in 1996.

The London performance was also captured on film, and clips of it can be seen on the compilation DVD It's Alive 1974-1996 along with other live material from throughout the Ramones' history.

A killer live set, 'nuff said

Some guy had a boom box recorded cassette of this album back when I raced downhill longboards. I dug the humor and the energy....It was obvious that punk was gonna be the music of skateboarding. So I started playing keg parties and interest in racing wained.

I don't know that music gets much better than Road To Ruin. And I'm convinced that any time someone hears I Wanna Be Sedated for the first time it will instantly become their new favorite song. And just try to sit perfectly still while that plays.

"Questioningly" would be a top ballad all time for me.

Now that I have a sh*t-load of Ramones albums to slog through, it's amazing how "familiar" the songs sound to me. Granted, the first 3 albums could pretty make up greatest hits comps all on their own.

But the mid-period and later stuff just has a familiar feel to them, like I've heard them before. Most of their latter day material, I'm only familiar with the few songs that ended up on their anthology. I guess it's part of their sound that's just so recognizable.

Quote :

In addition to "Babysitter" and the re-instated "Carbona Not Glue," the 2001 Rhino Records reissue of the album includes a fifteen-song live set as bonus tracks, recorded at The Roxy in Hollywood in 1976.

While the inclusion of demos and b-sides are cool on the other re-issues, the inclusion of this smoking live set is awesome and I normally don't care for live takes. 15 songs in 28 minutes!!

The Ramones spent the bulk of 1979 in Hollywood, working on their film debut in Allan Arkush's Rock N Roll High School, which was released in August. Produced by B-movie legend Roger Corman's New World Pictures, the film has since gone on to achieve cult status and is considered to be one of the best rock n roll movies of all time. The over-the-top comedy also starred P.J. Soles ("Halloween"), Vincent Van Patten ("Hell Night"), Mary Woronov ("Death Race 2000"), Paul Bartel ("Eating Raoul"), and Dey Young.

"RNRHS" was originally conceived as a "Saturday Night Fever" rip-off/parody entitled "Disco High," until director Allan Arkush told Roger Corman point blank "You can't blow up a high school to disco music!" Arkush was a huge rock music fan and he was able to convince Corman that disco was on the way out, and that the movie should be about rock 'n' roll. He envisioned "RNRHS" as an affectionate parody of the low budget "rock n roll" musicals of the 1950s and 60s (many of which were made by Corman!), updated for the anarchic spirit of the late 70s.

Before the Ramones were hired, other bands that were considered for the movie included Cheap Trick (who wanted too much money, as they were at their commercial peak at the time), Devo (who were ultimately considered "too weird") and the then-new Van Halen, who had just released their first album. Legend has it that Warner Brothers (who were co-ordinating the music for the film) offered VH to the filmmakers, but warned them that they were "pretty wild and you probably won't be able to control them."

According to the filmmaker's commentary on the 2010 DVD of the film, the cast and crew were intimidated by the Ramones' tough-guy reputations when they first walked on set, but the band members were all very cooperative and got along well with everyone involved with the movie. The only problem was that none of them could act. in the film's original script, the Ramones members all had much more dialogue written for them but since they kept screwing up their lines so much, the filmmakers eventually pared their speaking parts down to the very bare minimum. (In the finished film, Dee Dee has only one line in the entire movie - "Heyyyy, pizza! Let's dig in!")



Capsule Film Review: it's a new school year at Vince Lombardi High and a new principal has taken over - the demonic Miss Togar (Woronov), who values obedience and order and despises the rebellious spirit of rock n roll. Needless to say this puts her at odds with Riff Randell (Soles), an aspiring songwriter and "rock n roller" who is also the Ramones' #1 fan. When Riff gets word that the Ramones are coming to town, she cuts school for three days in order to camp out in front of the concert venue to get tickets for herself, her nerdy pal Kate Rambeau (Young), and the rest of her friends at school. When she's caught and the precious concert tickets are confiscated by Miss Togar, Riff and Kate crash the concert anyway, where they get to meet the band and show them Riff's songs, including a hot new number she's written called "Rock N Roll High School," which the band decide is "perfect" for their next album. The girls invite the band to visit them at Vince Lombardi High the next day, where the students stage a takeover of the building. A riot ensues and the Ramones help Riff and her friends teach Miss Togar the error of her ways with the aid of some high explosives.




The low-budget flick was a moderate success at drive-in theatres in '79 and became a perennial TV favorite.

The Ramones recorded two new songs for the film - the ballad "I Want You Around" and the title song. The film's soundtrack album also included a number of tracks from the Ramones' back catalog and a medley of live songs from the film's concert sequence, along with tracks by Brian Eno, Nick Lowe, Richie Valens, Todd Rundgren, and Alice Cooper. Other songs that appear in the film, but not on the soundtrack album, include "Did We Meet Somewhere Before" by Paul McCartney, "High School" by the MC5, and the Velvet Underground's "Rock N Roll."

This is a very special movie for me because this flick got me into the Ramones when I was a kid. I was already semi-familiar with the band when I first saw it on TV around 1983 or so thanks to an older cousin who was a big Ramones fan and from seeing some of their early videos on MTV, but I was not much more than a casual fan at the time. Naturally I thought the movie was great - how can any 12 year old kid NOT love a movie where the students trash their school and then blow it up at the end? - and the seed of curiosity about the Ramones was planted. When I saw the movie again a few years later (circa 1986 or 87) my family had just gotten a VCR, so I recorded the film and found myself watching the Ramones' concert segments over and over again, saying to myself "Damn, these guys kick some serious ass!" I soon started seeking out some of their albums, and the rest is history, as they say. By the time I got to college I was a full blown fanboy and throughout my college years my friends and I watched my "RNRHS" tape dozens of times, usually at midnight ala "Rocky Horror." I have reached the point where I can recite virtually every line of dialogue along with the actors and I've lost count of how many times I've seen it over the years, I simply never get tired of it.

A belated sequel, "Rock N Roll High School Forever," was released in 1991 starring Corey Feldman (!), Mojo Nixon as "The Spirit of Rock N Roll," and Mary Woronov as a very Miss Togar-ish administrator named "Vice Principal Vadar." The movie sucks and is not worthy of carrying the "RNRHS" name. In the early '00s a "RNRHS" remake was supposedly in the planning stages at Howard Stern's production company, to be directed by Alex Winter of "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" fame, but thankfully this project seems to have died while it was still on the drawing board. Leave "RNRHS" alone, Hollywood -- it's perfect just the way it is!!

If you haven't seen "RNRHS," it's currently available on DVD as part of the "Roger Corman's Cult Classics" series from Shout! Factory, and it is packed with a ton of bonus features and geeky goodies. As far as I'm concerned, it belongs on everyone's rock-video shelf right next to "KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park," "This Is Spinal Tap" and "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years."

Haven't seen this since college. Should probably give it a fresh view one of these days. The big mouse at the concert always cracked me up.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

The big mouse at the concert always cracked me up.

Concert Venue Guy:
(to random dude) "Let me see your pupils." (raises glasses) "You're stoned. This guy doesn't get in."

(To mouse) "I'm sorry, we're not letting any more mice in, they've been exploding all over the place...ohhh, you have headphones? Great, great! Just don't get too close to the amplifiers."

RNRHS is one of the best movies, pretty much ever.

I met Riff Randall herself, PJ Soles, at a horror convention last year. She was awesome, and clearly had a deep affection for RNRHS and The Ramones.

ZombieHavoc wrote:

I met Riff Randall herself, PJ Soles, at a horror convention last year. She was awesome, and clearly had a deep affection for RNRHS and The Ramones.

Lucky you. PJ is in two of my all time favorite films, "RNRHS" and "Halloween." I think if I met her in the flesh I'd probably drop to the floor ala Wayne and Garth, i.e. "I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy!"

Fat Freddy wrote:

ZombieHavoc wrote:

I met Riff Randall herself, PJ Soles, at a horror convention last year. She was awesome, and clearly had a deep affection for RNRHS and The Ramones.

Lucky you. PJ is in two of my all time favorite films, "RNRHS" and "Halloween." I think if I met her in the flesh I'd probably drop to the floor ala Wayne and Garth, i.e. "I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy!"

Ha, I know what you mean. I had her sign an RNRHS one-sheet and a Halloween one-sheet. She looked at the Halloween poster, and said "This is a great movie". She looked at the RNRHS poster and said, "This is an even better movie". I liked that.

ZombieHavoc wrote:

Fat Freddy wrote:

ZombieHavoc wrote:

I met Riff Randall herself, PJ Soles, at a horror convention last year. She was awesome, and clearly had a deep affection for RNRHS and The Ramones.

Lucky you. PJ is in two of my all time favorite films, "RNRHS" and "Halloween." I think if I met her in the flesh I'd probably drop to the floor ala Wayne and Garth, i.e. "I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy!"

Ha, I know what you mean. I had her sign an RNRHS one-sheet and a Halloween one-sheet. She looked at the Halloween poster, and said "This is a great movie". She looked at the RNRHS poster and said, "This is an even better movie". I liked that.

No mention of her work in 'Stripes'? For shame, the two of you!!

Quote :

No mention of her work in 'Stripes'? For shame, the two of you!!

Don't get me wrong, I love me some "Stripes" too, but I haven't seen that movie anywhere NEAR as many times as I've seen "Halloween" and "RNRHS."

Fat Freddy wrote:

Quote :

No mention of her work in 'Stripes'? For shame, the two of you!!

Don't get me wrong, I love me some "Stripes" too, but I haven't seen that movie anywhere NEAR as many times as I've seen "Halloween" and "RNRHS."

Same here. She did have some Stripes 8x10s amongst her stuff for sale though, so she still embraces the movie.

I never owned the soundtrack but I loved that damn movie, and need to grab it on DVD before it goes out of print again

Here's the Ramones performing "Rock n' Roll High School" on Sha Na Na. Enjoy!

The Ramones and Bowzer. Does it get any cooler than that?

"It's the end, the end of the seventies
It's the end, the end of the century!"


For 1980's End of the Century, the Ramones took a leap towards what they hoped would be mainstream acceptance by leaving New York behind and recording in Hollywood with famed 60s girl-group impresario and "Wall of Sound" inventor Phil Spector. The band met Spector while they were in L.A. working on the Rock N Roll High School film and even though the producer had been semi-retired at the time (the last album of note that he'd worked on had been the Beatles' Let It Be, in 1971) he was interested in working with the band. This pairing was a dream come true for Joey, because Spector had produced some of Joey's favorite songs of his youth. For the rest of the band, the experience was a nightmare.

The strict recording process of the notoriously compulsive, nocturnal Spector was totally alien to a band like the Ramones, who were used to banging out an entire album, assembly line style, in a week. Spector practically kept the band members locked in the studio, making them record the same parts over and over again, until he finally captured the "sound" he wanted. He butted heads most notoriously with Dee Dee, who at one point tried to leave Spector's mansion, only to have Phil pull a gun on him and tell him "You're not going anywhere." Up until his death, Dee Dee maintained that he eventually stormed out of the studio and never went back, therefore he never played a note of bass on the album and in fact had no idea who did.

Even after the band was done recording, Spector re-mixed the album over and over attempting to get it to match the sounds he imagined in his head. Sire Records eventually took the record from him when it went way over budget (legend has it that the album cost nearly $200,000) but even then Phil never considered it truly "finished."

Spector's "Wall of Sound" production style works well on some of End of the Century but overall it seems mostly unnecessary. The famed producer's touch is most prominent on "Do You Remember Rock N Roll Radio?," which was the first single from the album. Other strong tracks include "Chinese Rock," which was written by Dee Dee with Richard Hell and originally recorded by Hell's band the Heartbreakers (the notoriously straight-laced Johnny Ramone didn't even want the song on the album since it was about drugs); "I'm Affected," the plaintive "Danny Says" (a song about the boredom of life on the road; the "Danny" in the title referred to their then-manager Danny Fields) and an alternate take on "Rock N Roll High School." The album also features a cover of "Baby I Love You," a song written by Phil that was a hit for the Ronettes in 1963.  Joey is the only Ramone who appears on the track; the rest was recorded with an orchestra of studio musicians that Spector brought in for the occasion. The other band members hated the "Baby I Love You" cover; in his book "Commando," Johnny describes it as "the worst thing we ever did."

Even the album cover - showing the band in plain ol' t-shirts instead of their trademark leather jackets - seemed to indicate that the Ramones were trying to "clean up" their image. The album sold respectably, hitting #44 on Billboard (the highest chart position of their careers) but still didn't crack open the doors to the mainstream as they'd probably hoped. The videos for "Do You Remember Rock N Roll Radio" and "Rock N Roll High School" got their fair share of play on the fledgling MTV network when it first launched in 1981.




End of the Century was when the cracks started truly showing in the Ramones brotherhood -- up till this point the foursome had been fairly straightforward "punk" rock, but now arguments about their future musical direction were becoming commonplace. Joey dreamed of hitting it big with a Top 10 single and bringing more "pop" to their music, while Johnny and Dee Dee, the true "punks" of the band, felt they should keep on doing what they do best and quit trying to "sell out." These disagreements would go back and forth for virtually the rest of the Ramones' career.

End of the Century remains a controversial album in the Ramones catalog to this day; many fans hate it and consider it the beginning of the end, while others praise its experimental touches. I've always been fond of it but it's mostly a "love" or "hate" kind of record.