Ramones – Road to Ruin
Author: tracysigler | Posted: February 1st, 2009 | | Tags: 1978, music, punk rock, Ramones, vinyl | 1 Comment »
Ramones - Road to Ruin (album cover front)
Oh man was that a pathetically long period of non-posting. I’m pretty sure that’s a record, one that I hope will stand for a long time.
Back to our regularly scheduled program… Ramones, Road to Ruin (1978) was a big artistic leap forward for these guys. Some people like to think all their music is the same, but this record alone is proof against that. Overall it’s a more “melodic” album, with even a strummed pretty ditty called “Questioningly,” which is 100% power-chord-free. And oh yeah, there’s also a cover of the ’60s pop hit co-wrote by Sonny Bono, “Needles and Pins.” My favorite though is “Bad Brain.” That song eventually became the namesake of my all-time favorite band, Bad Brains. It’s true, they named themselves after a Ramones song.
One not-so-pleasant memory about Road to Ruin goes back to my teenage years. My friend John (last name removed to protect the guilty) and I went through a brief, and ultimately painful period of spray painting graffiti at places like our high school. John, being a huge Ramones fan at the time, chose to spray the words “Road to Ruin” on one of our outings.
To make a long story short, we were eventually ratted out, interrogated individually, we confessed, and then got suspended for a week I believe. To minimize the cost of removing the paint and just pay some dues, John and I spent some days over the winter break on our hand and knees with wire brushes and paint stripper trying to clean the bricks and concrete we had vandalized. It sucked. The whole thing sucked. I don’t even know why we did it. We were generally trouble-free kids. It’s one of the few things that I’m embarrassed about, and completely regret it. But there is this that makes me smile… John said that when he was getting grilled about it that the vice principal said in a deadpan way, “Looks like this was your road to ruin, John.” As John put it later, it was like something from a closing scene of Dragnet.
Ramones - Road to Ruin (album cover back)
“Gabba gabba… who? Gabba gabba you, John. Your friends may say ‘Johnny is a punk rocker,’ and you may say ‘I don’t wanna grow up,’ but this is truly your road to ruin. You won’t be sedated over this, but one day, deep in your poison heart, you’ll realize that ignorance is not, in fact, bliss. Surfin’ bird.”