Whoever would’ve thought that, with forty-five years of hindsight, The Ramones’ Rocket to Russia (released 11/4/77) would become so topically relevant? But all political and cultural issues aside, the prototypical punks’ third album both looks (in its black and hot pink color scheme) and sounds (in the comparative clarity of crashing guitars and drums) like their definitive work. And while it doesn’t quite render obsolete their eponymous debut or their resounding reiteration of that opening statement in the form of the sophomore album Leave Home, it certainly functions as a reliable benchmark for the genesis of punk.
As a reaction to rock’s overblown conceits of the time, this quartet– who took their moniker from one of Paul McCartney’s early assumed names–heralded the paradigm shift of the late Seventies movement when they visited England in 1976 two years after their initial formation. And with outing number three, both they and their Sire Records label were poised to make ‘Ramones’ a household name. Unfortunately, an accident befalling lead vocalist Joey resulted in the cancellation of a tour to support the record, and the Sex Pistols–remember them?–stepped (staggered?) into the void.
The eponymous debut of this often-misunderstood ensemble was a breathless blur. Only on the follow-up did the Ramones see fit to take a breath or two with a cover of “California Sun,” but the outside material on that LP’s successor fits more comfortably into what they were doing: at the “Cretin Hop” (what kind of dance is it?), “Do You Wanna Dance?” might well have been the question posed to their alter ego “Ramona” or the other object of their affections, Sheena who “… Is A Punk Rocker”.
Meanwhile, for “Surfin’ Bird,” the Ramones reaffirmed their loyalty to the long history of rock’s devotion to absurdity. Even as they kept their collective tongue in cheek on that previous dismissal of the West Coast’s glamorous lifestyle in order to lampoon it–the West Coast myth as toxic as their parents’ materialism–so too they sound less cartoonish and more human here.
But as much as the foursome babble nonsensically there, they inject a gravity of sorts into their broadly satirical approach. “We’re A Happy Family” posits a kind of Bizarro version of TV’s ‘Happy Days,’ the undercurrent of fatalism and frustration coming through in the grind of Johnny’s guitar and Dee Dee’s bass meshed with Tommy’s relentlessly metronomic (but swinging) drums. And over it all, Joey squalls in his inimitably nasal tone about “Teenage Lobotomy:” how exactly might such an operation might be performed anyway, via peer pressure or surgical means?
And, contrary to the comparatively slower mid-tempo changes of “I Don’t Care,” the quartet does stipulate what may be its essential desire–“I Wanna Be Well.” Still, the Ramones aren’t so naive they have all the answers beyond managing the volume control on their amps (and the rock and roll radios they would sing about under the studio aegis of Phil Spector three years later on End of the Century).
As such, the fourteen tracks and slightly more than thirty minutes of playing time end with a musical question in the high-stepping form of “Why Is It Always This Way?” Engulfing the despair that first comes to bear in the teenage years as the ultimate (inevitable?) adult conundrum, this paradox renders perfect the image of the pinhead in place of ‘Dr. Strangelove” on the original back cover. “Here Today Gone Tomorrow” indeed!
As the four-piece band originally formed in Queens, New York soldiered on through its early internal conflicts and later shifts in personnel arising from that friction (and other activity detrimental to their unity), it ultimately recorded fourteen studio albums, the first eight of which were reissued with bonus tracks in what turned out to be just the first foray into archival releases of Ramones catalog.
Such efforts and the 40th-anniversary deluxe edition of the debut represent a practical testament to the high esteem with which they have come to be revered–and rightly so–forty-five years after the first release of Rocket To Russia.
