![]() These days when listening to FM radio, you’re far more likely to pick up on the sound of the Ramones than the Beatles, actually. Which brings us back to the mystery of how, in 1974, four scruffy Forest Hills ne’er-do-wells who were obsessed with Iggy Pop and the Stooges could coalesce and mutate into the single most influential rock & roll band since the Beatles and manage to stick it out for nearly a quarter-century come hell, high water, and more personality crises than the New York Dolls. ![]() On the other hand, three of the four original members have passed away in the last three years, two to cancer and one (predictably, it was Dee Dee) from a heroin OD, which renders this celebration of the Ramones also something of a wake, albeit one with enough undiluted Lower East Side energy to power a thousand Marshall amps for millennia. On the one hand, the sheer wealth of rarely seen footage of Joey, Dee Dee, Johnny, and Tommy Ramone (and later Marky and CJ) tearing it up onstage and off is so glorious in all its ripped-Levi’s and black-leather splendor that it’s all you can do to not hurl yourself around the theatre hollering the chorus to "I Wanna Be Sedated" alongside Johnny’s buzzsaw guitar and Joey’s adenoidal yelp. ![]() You can’t help but feel conflicted watching this superb documentary about the seminal New York-based punk rock vanguard, the Ramones.
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