We went to the closing Saturday night show of a three-night stand and the opener was The Fast. Somehow, I gave in and in late 1976, he and I make our first trip to CBGB’s on a night when the Ramones were headlining. I was more of a conventionalist and maybe that’s why I first just didn’t get what was behind songs with silly titles like “Beat on the Brat” and “Now I Want to Sniff Some Glue.” I found that Dennis often like to be a rebellious contrarian taking pride in such things like thinking that it was foolish to keep his LPs in alphabetical order. Although we were Jersey guys who shared a common love of Springsteen and Southside Johnny, he had a harder edge to his taste, favoring some bands that I didn’t such as Blue Oyster Cult. But, back in the days of listening to the musical excess of some of the crap being played on the radio, it took me a while to realize that void of its tough and gritty façade, Punk was more about a return to the basics of good old Rock ‘n Roll.Ī college friend of mine named Dennis was the first person I knew to really start digging The Ramones. The pretentiousness of the music on the radio seemed to have moved to one of attitude. Given that I eventually grew to love both bands, let’s just chalk it up to simply being too young to appreciate what either of them were doing. My Ramones story starts the same way it did with New York City’s other seminal Punk band, The New York Dolls. I only wish that I could remember more about it. Yes, I can brag that I saw the original Ramones at CBGB, their birthplace in the Bowery of Lower Manhattan.
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