Ramones by The Ramones

Ramones, the self-titled debut from the Ramones, came out on Sire on April 23, 1976, and rock and roll has been trying to catch its breath ever since. The route to it ran through a handful of believers: Hit Parader editor Lisa Robinson caught them at a gig in New York City, wrote them up and recruited Danny Fields to manage them; Fields talked Craig Leon into producing; and Leon got Sire boss Seymour Stein to come see the band, who then signed them. They cut the album in January 1976 in seven days for $6,400.

What they cut is blunt, fast and hilarious. Johnny Ramone's guitar is a wall of buzzing chords, Dee Dee Ramone's bass locks in beside it, Tommy Ramone's drums gallop, and Joey Ramone croons over the top like a teen idol stuck in a garbage compactor. Most songs clock in at well over 160 beats a minute, and nothing hangs around; the longest track, "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement", barely reaches two and a half minutes. The subjects are violence, drugs, romance and Nazis, all delivered with a deadpan grin. "Blitzkrieg Bop" opens the record and never quite lets go, "Beat on the Brat", "53rd & 3rd", "Judy Is a Punk" and "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" follow hard on its heels, and there's even a cover of Chris Montez's "Let's Dance". Roberta Bayley's cover shot, the four of them against a brick wall, cost Sire just $125 and has been copied endlessly since.

It stalled at number 111 and the singles went nowhere, but critics loved it, and its influence has swamped punk, grunge and heavy metal alike. Rolling Stone later named it the best debut album of all time, and it finally went gold in 2014.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.