For the life of me, I will never, ever understand why The Ramones were not huge in this country. I’ve been pondering this question, off and on, since I first heard “Rockaway Beach” on the radio some twenty-seven years ago, and I’m no closer to an answer now than when I began.

Dana’s fave rave pin-up rock crit, Chuck Klosterman, spends a good portion of his book Fargo Rock City going on about how Motley Crue were The Beatles for his generation. And for all I know, that may actually be the case. I can’t really tell you what the teenage knuckleheads in the midwest were rotting their brains to in the 80’s. Being the west coast born and raised middle-aged lobotomy that I am, I can tell you that, for people my age (the clever ones, anyway), The Ramones actually deserve the comparison. Plus they had mop-top type hair and, y’know, were actually good.

On the face of it, you’d be hard pressed to bring together a group less likely to revolutionize rock and roll, yet that is exactly what they did. If ever there was a band that perfectly (or imperfectly, if you will) illustrated the hoary old chestnut “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, it was The Ramones. Johnny was, let’s face it, a dick, and a hardcore conservative to boot; Joey was a nebbish with an almost debilitating case of OCD; and then there’s Dee Dee, loveable goof, hopeless junkie and failed rent-boy. Of the several drummers the band had over the years, Tommy was probably the most grounded and the least talented. Throw ‘em all together, though, and you’ve got the band that breathed life once more into the fetid rotting corpse of rock & roll in the mid-70’s and taught it to pogo. Joey had the voice, Johnny had the downstroke, Tommy had the metronome-like timing, and Dee Dee had the lyrical genius. And if you don’t recognize that genius… well, I don’t think we can be friends anymore.

And so it is only right and fitting that the band get the fancy box-set treatment form the good folks at Rhino. What they’ve given us is Weird Tales of the Ramones. And, since it was on sale, I’m in a unique position to tell you all about it.

The entire 22-year (!) arc of The Ramones’ career is represented here, from “Blitzkreig Bop” through to “R.A.M.O.N.E.S.”, the song written for and about the band by Lemmy from Motorhead. Given the speedy nature of their music, there are a total of 85 songs included on threes discs. How many other bands could say that? Therein lies the beauty and the power of the early Ramones – the songs are quick and punchy, and if you don’t like this one, just wait a moment and it’s “1-2-3-4!” on to the next one. May not sound like much now, but at the time (mid-to-late 70’s) it went totally against the grain. (Upon hearing the band for the first time, noted rock authority Linda Ronstadt managed to extract Don Henley’s cock from her mouth long enough for Rolling Stone to quote her as saying, “It’s so constricted, I’d call it hemorrhoid rock”. It’s still unclear as to whether she was referring to the sound of The Ramones or the state of Mr. “Best of My Love”’s schvantz.)

It’s those first four albums (The Ramones, Leave Home, Rocket to Russia and Road to Ruin) upon which the legacy of the band hangs. That’s your classic era Ramones, the time when they never made a misstep or a false move. This period is covered on Disc One of WToTR. It’s kinda fun to hear the production values become more sophisticated (and I use that term advisedly) over the course of the disc. The material from the first album is pretty basic – the only “trick” is the strict stereo separation: drums and bass on the left channel, guitar on the right, vocals on both sides. It’s a full-on adrenaline charge from jump street.

I cannot impress upon those of you not around for the original release of this material strongly enough what an absolute bombshell it was at the time. Quite literally, there was nothing else like it in the world. Hard Rock had been taken over by the likes of Sammy Hagar and Foreigner, Metal was little more than endless odes to getting wasted and/or getting laid (OK, nothing new there, but sometimes one wants to stretch the boundaries a little, y’know?), and Prog Rock, by and large, was chasing its own tail and, ultimately, disappearing up its own asshole. Rock, in other words, was completely out of touch with the day to day lives of its adherents. Suddenly, here comes this group of guys dressed like juvenile delinquents from some warped 50’s social science film, blasting out simple yet aggressive-as-all-hell songs about beating on brats, wanting to have something to and wanting to be somebody’s boyfriend. Some of the references were a little obscure for me, (growing up in suburban California, I had no clue whatsoever what Rockaway Beach was actually like – still don’t, really), but I could totally relate to the sentiment. And therein lies the true beauty of a song like “Pinhead” – what adolescent doesn’t want to be accepted for being the incurable freak he or she might think themselves to be? It made a hell of a lot more sense than some British twit swathed in silk robes squealing about mountains coming out of the sky and standing there, I’ll tell you that. Listening to Disc One is not only listening to the birth of Punk Rock (for so it is); it is also hearing the liberation (of a sort) of thousands of zit-ridden misfits across America, throughout the UK, and on to points around the globe. “Cretin Hop” was an invitation to the party we’d been barred from previously. That, for me at least, is pretty fucking awe-inspiring.

And yadda yadda yadda. This has all been said before, in terms much more eloquent than I could ever hope to cobble together. My point is, this was and continues to be vital rock & roll.

So that’s Disc One. Disc Two picks up with the seemingly destined by fate (but ultimately doomed to failure) collaboration with Phil Spector that ended up becoming End of the Century, the fifth album and the first step on the second leg of the strange journey of The Ramones.

It really did seem like the most logical idea at the time. If you take a look at the structure of the average Ramones tune, it’s obvious that they’ve paid a great deal of attention to the pop of the 60’s in general and to the girl groups of the early part of that fateful decade in particular. Spector, being the grand pooh-bah of that particular sound, was a natural to produce Les Freres Ramone. Or so it would seem on the surface. A closer examination would show that Spector’s patented wall of sound approach was completely inappropriate for the band. The Ramones were minimalism distilled; Spector never heard a song that he couldn’t throw another glockenspiel at. Heads butted (Johnny particularly chafed at taking more than two or three passes at a song, while Spector routinely asked for dozens), tempers flared, guns (Spector’s) were drawn.

The upshot, while flawed, is not without its own particular charms. “Rock & Roll High School’, from the Alan Arkush film of the same title, is classic Ramones teenage mayhem. (Interestingly, Johnny chose to include here the mix done by Ed Stasium, as well as the one he did for “I Want You Around”. Revenge from beyond the grave, as it were. “Do You Remember Rock & Roll Radio?” shows off Spector’s everything-and-the-kitchen-sink style of production at its best. And “Danny Says”, while the sound is somewhat more, um, delicate than one might expect from a Ramones record, is probably one of Joey’s best efforts.

Pleasant Dreams came next. Here, let me make a confession. This was the last Ramones record that I bought when it was new. At the time, I felt as if they had said all that they had to say. Listening over the entirety of Weird Tales of the Ramones, I don’t think I was too terribly wrong. There are flashes of the old Ramones fire here and there after this point, but on the whole they seemed to be on the downward slide.

What happened? Well, as far as I can tell, several things. For one, the band themselves were frustrated by the lack of general acclaim they’d received to this point. Sure, rock critics loved them, but rock critics get their albums for free. The buying public, by and large, wasn’t going for what they had on offer. Again, this situation is mysterious to me, but it was indeed the case. So, in their attempt to break through to the mainstream, as it were, they began to dilute the original sound. This actually started with the recording of End of the Century, of course, but it didn’t really hit home (for me, anyway) until Subterranean Jungle, came out and there wasn’t much of interest beyond “Psychotherapy”. It pains me to type that out, but it is the honest truth. You start hearing things like (shudder) synthesizers, which are absolutely anathema to the Ramones’ sound. I’m guessing it took a lot of convincing to get Johnny on board with that decision.

Dee Dee, who was always the prime songwriter behind The Ramones, seems to have sorta lost the tread, lyrically speaking, around this time. Compare the lyrics for “Sheena Is A Punk Rocker” with, say, “Wart Hog” or “Howling at the Moon”. They’re all sonically good songs, but the goofy side of Dee Dee’s personality is subsumed by the, uh, dark side. Could drugs have been involved? All signs point to “Fuck, yeah!”.

And let’s not forget the feud between Joey and Johnny, fueled by Johnny’s stealing/taking (depends who you talk to) Joey’s girlfriend and then marrying her. Ever wonder what “The KKK Took My Baby Away” is really about? Now you know.* Both parties spent their remaining time on earth not speaking with each other. Which, I’m guessing, might have been something of a drag for the rest of the band.

Was this era a total loss, then? Hell no – we’re still talking about the Ramones here, pally, and no matter how fucked up they became, on whatever level you want you might think of, they were still capable of bringing the true, real rock from time to time. Witness “Psycho Therapy”, “My Brain is Hanging Upside Down”, plus the tracks included here from End of the Century and Pleasant Dreams. But on the whole, honestly, the writing was already on the wall for the band.

Sadly, it took another ten or so years for the band themselves to read it. Disc Three covers the last act of the Ramones saga. Most of this material was new to me when I played the disc, and, um… there’s a fair amount of it that’s just not very good. The rough-and-ready Ramones sound gets even more diluted, by truly misplaced metallisms (which, to be fair, had started back on Disc Two) and the increasingly self-help-style lyrics. It’s good for an artist to mature, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that when Dee Dee abandoned the comic book juvenile basket-case voice for the one used in “I Wanna Live”, “Strength to Endure”, etc., he gave up what made him unique. Not wanting to push the genius thing too much, but if Einstein had given up physics for teaching 8th grade algebra… OK, yeah, that’s a little over-the-top, but you see my point, I hope. The music became weaker, the lyrics became weaker. Eventually, Dee Dee was “replaced” by CJ, who was a fine bass player in his own right, but there’s really no way anyone could have filled that particular hole. The zombie Ramones stumbled on until 1996, when they finally decide to call it a day.

Again, there are a few nuggets among the slag. If ever there was a divinely guided match of band and cover tune, it was the Ramones’ version of the theme to the Saturday morning cartoon Spiderman. Truly inspired. What’s truly sad, though, is that all the good tracks on this disc are covers. Their take on Tom Waits’ “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” was a good fit, as was the runaway train of Love’s “7 & 7 Is”. And Lemmy’s tribute to the band, “R.A.M.O.N.E.S.”, is a relatively happy note on which to wrap things up.

If it sounds like I’m coming down hard on the band, it’s only because they meant so much at one point in my life. Perhaps I hold them to too high a standard. Isn’t that what a fan does? “Fan” is short for “fanatic”, after all. It’s one thing for me to sit here and say. “Oh, they should have done this, they shouldn’t have done that”. It’s quite another to be in the band. They were great, and they knew it. The frustrating thing for them , as far as I can tell, was that the Greater American Public didn’t recognize that greatness until well after the band had gone the way of all flesh & several of its members had done the same. It’s a little weird to listen to “I Want To Live” and “Pet Sematary” knowing that by the end of 2004 the three core members of the band would be dead.

Be that as it may, you can hear them now at sporting events, with cheerleaders shaking asses and pom-poms to “Blitzkrieg Bop”. I seem to recall a TV commercial done to the tune of one of their songs, although I’m too drunk at the moment to recall what it was. Doesn’t really matter, I suppose. The point is, mainstream America has finally drawn the boys in to at least arm’s length, which is more than most anyone expected back in the day. Some of us, the band included, always hoped that it would be so. They could have knocked it in the head after Road to Ruin and still have had a greater impact on the trajectory of rock & roll than anybody ever had a right to, truthfully. Then again, how many of us know the proper time to walk away from a good thing? Not as many as think so, that’s for damn sure.

And what would the boys have done? Joey could probably have pulled off a solo career. That may be wishful thinking on my part, but I think he’d be the one best positioned for continuing success. Johnny might have been able to do so, but I think he would have been hard pressed to find other musicians to work with for extended periods of time, given his apparent control-freak nature. And Dee Dee pretty well proved that a career beyond the Ramones was beyond him with his outing as Dee Dee King.

There are some extras included in this set. The comic book is pretty cool. The 3-D glasses actually work! I’m not all that much into commix, but even I recognized a few names involved here: Altergott, Aragones, Fleener, Griffith (hey, Zippy had to show up for this gig), Hernandez, Holmstrom (duh), Lay, Woodring. Given that a Ramones comic is such a natural, I’m somewhat surprised that one hasn’t appeared before now. Or did I miss it?

There’s also a DVD containing 18 music videos. I tend not to think much of music videos, really, and given what’s on the disc I don’t think the band did, either. A couple of them are kinda amusing, but since most of them come from the time of the great decline, the less said the better, as far as I’m concerned. Live footage would have been much more interesting to me, but I guess that’s pretty well covered by Ramones Raw and the End of the Century documentary.

So where does that leave us? Well, if you’re looking for a career overview, Weird Tales of the Ramones would be a good choice. At this point, it’s pretty much the historical document. Damn near anything you’d be looking for would be here. If you just want a quick and dirty introduction to the band, the two-disc anthology Hey Ho Let’s Go would be a good place to start. Honestly, though, to get a true idea of what the band were about, all you really need are those first four albums. And having said that, I’ll go on to say that I don’t think it’s possible to have too much Ramones in your life.

Gabba gabba, we accept you, one of us.

*Y’know, say what you want about Johnny, but he’s the one who compiled this thing, and he chose to include both “KKK”, in which he is equated with the Klan, and “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg”, AKA “My Brain is Hanging Upside Down”, in which his hero, Ronald Reagan, is compared to Nazis. We know that he put his foot down and demanded the title change on “Bonzo”, but he still could have left it off this set. And “KKK”… either he was able to look past the personal and see it as just a great song, which it is, or he was so deeply in denial that he just didn’t know. Having seen the Ramones documentary End of the Century, I’m inclined to believe the latter.

(Weird Tales of the Ramones is available through Rhino Records)