The Ramones

Joey influenced our lives, look how the surf culture influenced his...

Hace algun tiempo que quiero usar esta imagen; pero queria colocarla con alguna info. de la banda; bueno pues al fin he conseguido el tiempo para sentarme y hacerlo... Si bien es cierto que ellos nos han influenciado de muchas maneras, miren lo que la cultura a la que pertenecemos le ha hecho a Joey Ramone....

The Ramones are the first punk rock band. Based in the Forest Hills section of Queens, NY, the Ramones formed in 1974. 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. Although some punk diehards -- including several of their peers -- would have claimed the band's long career wound up undercutting the ideals the band originally stood for, the Ramones always celebrated not just the punk aesthetic, but the music itself.

En el año 1974, en un garage de Forest Hills, Johnny en guitarra, Joey en Batería y Dee Dee en bajo, ensayan canciones rápidas y de no más de dos minutos. Al poco tiempo, la formación queda conformada por Johnny en guitarra, Dee Dee en bajo, Joey en voz y Tommy en batería. La música de los Ramones sonaba mal, rápido y raro. Pero estaban en el momento en que la escena neoyorquina del underground podía fijar su vista en todo aquello que sonará original. Los Ramones mezclan bases del pop más primitivo con algo de surfer, esencia del rockabillie y por otra parte se apoyan en el llamado "Glitter Rock"; tal es la mezcla que no queda más que decir que solo podía llamarse de una manera a ese sonido: Ramones.
Los atuendos de pandillero neoyorquino decadente y demode iban a compañados de un sonido primitivo y de letras directas que versaban sobre vivencias y frustraciones de cualquier chico criado en el Queen´s.