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The Ramones are the first punk rock band. Other bands, such as The Stooges and The New York Dolls, came before them and set the stage and aesthetic for punk, and bands that immediately followed, such as The Sex Pistols, made the latent violence of the music more explicit, but The Ramones crystallized the musical ideals of the genre.
By cutting rock & roll down to its bare essentials - four chords, a simple,
catchy melody, and irresistibly inane lyrics - and speeding up the tempo
considerably, The Ramones created something that was rooted in early '60s,
pre-Beatles rock & roll and pop but sounded revolutionary. Since their
breakthrough was theoretical as well as musical, they comfortably became the
leaders of the emerging
New York punk rock scene.
While their peers such as Patti Smith,
Television,
Talking Heads and
Richard
Hell all were more intellectual and self-consciously artistic than The
Ramones, they nevertheless appealed to the same mentality because of the way
they turned rock conventions inside out and celebrated kitschy pop culture
with stylized stupidity.
The band's first four albums set the blueprint for punk, especially American
punk and hardcore, for the next two decades. And The Ramones themselves were
major figures for the next two decades, playing essentially the same music
without changing their style much at all...
Source: All Music Guide
«UK punk and The Clash would never have happened without The Ramones.»
Joe Strummer
(1952-2002)
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Concert photography: © Helge Øverås. Must not be used without permission. |
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