ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #082

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

#082: Ramones – ‘Beat On The Brat’ (Sire Records ’77)

Good morrning friends,

you may or may not know that The Clash have always been my # 1 band. Mainly because of the musical variety combined with lyrics which I could sympathize with – there weren’t all too many styles or ideas Strummer and Jones came up with in their career which didn’t fully meet with my approval.

So it is hard to tell why it is that The Ramones have always come in for me a close second. I mean, they were completely different, weren’t they? A million songs, all the same by and large: loud, fast, brute – most of the time fragility or tranquilness has always been a no-go for the band.

Thinking of this, I still cannot come to an understandable conclusion, even after all those decades. Perhaps it has something to do with the real origins of Punk (UK? US?) – a question which is still being debated today, although a thousand books have been written on the subject. Perhaps just one single date is important: July 4th 1976, that’s when The Ramones started touring the UK, promoting their first album, produced for $ 6,400 and already played to New York fans dozens of times in CBGB’s and elsewhere. On that evening they played London’s Roundhouse, sold out with its capacity of 3.000, supporting labelmates The Flamin’ Groovies, whom they completely blew away by all accounts.

At the very same evening, 160 miles up north, The Clash played their very first concert in The Black Swan in Sheffield – in front of a handful of people.

At the end of the day it’s all meaningless, I suppose, but one thing is granted: The Ramones have surely been amongst the very first who tried to do things differently over there in New York, along with Blondie and The Dead Boys, and they had a very hard time in finding even a bit of approval. I mean, we are talking 1975/1976 here, with prog rock still being the ultimate ratio – and everyone in those days who had the guts to try to blow away those cobwebs deserves my admiration. And yours as well, I would think.

Bearing all this in mind, there is no question at all that some of the early stuff has to feature here today.

Basically almost everything they did in their career was great, but the first album is a milestone, of course. Therefore, it makes sense to play something from it, one of the brothers’ earliest songs, in fact, their take on New York’s Birchwood Towers kids:

 

mp3: Ramones – Beat On The Brat

This obviously is a single (all really early works, although not released before ’77) combining three fantastic tunes – I could have chosen each of them, easily. And if you think 2:30 minutes is too short for such brilliance, let me paraphrase Johnny Ramone here—“they’re not short songs, they’re long songs played quickly”.

There are quite some things that have given me enormous pleasure in my life. One of those things is that I had the chance to see The Ramones in concert on quite a lot of occasions: a most wonderful experience, each and every bloody time!

Enjoy,

 

Dirk