The Ramones legacy lives on in reissues

Now that The Ramones' first four albums have been given the deluxe reissue treatment, complete with bonus tracks, liner notes and all the other hoo-hah, it may be appropriate to do a little Objective Historical Comparison. Let's step into the Way-Back Machine™ and first examine an excerpt of the lyrics from Rush's bloated-beyond-belief 1976 album 2112, released just one month before The Ramones' self-titled debut.\nI stand atop a spiral stair\nAn oracle confronts me there\nHe leads me on light years away\nThrough astral nights, galactic days \nThat comes from "Oracle: The Change," the Fifth Movement of Side One's 20-minute opus (please stifle your laughter). Now, for the sake of comparison, let's look at the complete lyrics to "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend," the fourth song on Side One of Ramones:\nHey, little girl\nI wanna be your boyfriend\nSweet little girl\nI wanna be your boyfriend\nDo you love me babe?\nWhat do you say?\nDo you love me babe?\nWhat can I say?\nBecause I wanna be your boyfriend.\nThe Ramones, and the New York punk scene that sprang up around them, grew out of a Newtonian reaction to the soul-crushing behemoth that was "progressive rock." The point of the Ramones was that anybody could do it, and anybody did -- get four guys together, learn two or three chords and you have a band. It wasn't a new concept -- the so-called "garage-punk" scene of the late 1960s was born out of the same philosophy and spawned such all-time classics as The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" and Count Five's "Psychotic Reaction." (For 110 songs that made The Ramones possible, the essential Nuggets boxed set is highly recommended.)\nThe album itself, 14 songs in just under 30 minutes, is a scorcher. From the opener "Blitzkrieg Bop" and its now standard chant "Hey-ho, let's go!" to the closing "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World," the band is painted as a sort of invasion force for everyman rock and roll, albeit in the friendliest manner possible. The Ramones weren't nihilistic like the Sex Pistols or guitar wizards like Television, they just worked hard and played fast. They weren't rock gods, they were the guys next door -- I mean, Joey Ramone was ugly (Well, so were the guys from Rush, but they hid behind big smoke machines and lasers). But it didn't matter, because when he got on the stage he was simultaneously an idol and a friend to all his fans.\nAs embarrassing as it is to admit it, I never actually owned a Ramones album in high school. And yet, when I put Ramones in the CD player for the first time this week, I could sing along with every song almost instantly. There are two reasons for this, perhaps the apparent one being that the songs tend to give themselves away pretty quickly -- once Johnny found a nice chord progression he didn't seem inclined to discard it for the next two minutes. But the other reason is that I really have heard these songs before, because the Ramones are everywhere. They're an institution. They're like Motown. And the sad passing of lead singer Joey Ramone earlier this year will not diminish their legacy, because it's all still in the grooves (or 1s and 0s, as the case may be). If you've ever felt ugly, or alone, or sad, or happy, if you've ever jumped up and down at a rock concert or just by yourself in your bedroom, this album is for you. The dedication is implicit.\nOK, just for one last piece of comparison, let's look at a small portion of a song from Kula Shaker's 1999 album Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts:\nAlien identities don't hide your pretty face from me (etc…)\nYou're a wizard in a blizzard, a mystical machine gun.\nOK, I guess some things never change.