The quest for something to occupy my time continues.
(Un)Fortunately lethargy gives way to a bit of sleep and four of my waking
hours at home without “M” are spent in the company of “Da Brudders” Ramone.
(AV 28) The Ramones –
It’s Alive 1974 – 1996 (released 2007)
The Ramones played 2265 gigs before calling it a day in 1996
and this release is a magnificent testament to that achievement. Its two discs and 113 tracks covers 33 different performances
over their 22 year history including concerts
and appearances on TV programs. Every classic
Ramones track is present, including
latter day notables such as Pet Sematary, Bonzo Goes To Bitburg and
R.A.M.O.N.E.S.
I suspect Disc 1 will be the one that Ramones freaks
will play the most often. It commences with
rough black and white footage of three
tracks (Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue, I
Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement and Judy Is a Punk) filmed in CBGB’s in
September 1974. It is a true revelation for
any students of the evolution of punk as it conclusively proves that The Ramones
in New York City and The Saints in Brisbane had arrived at the same musical point
simultaneously and completely independent of each other. For evidence, listen to these three Ramones
tracks and then compare them to the hard to get Saints album The Most Primitive Band In The
World Live From The Twilight Zone, Brisbane 1974.
The rest
of Disc 1 contains a variety of, mainly US, appearances as the band gradually tighten
their sound and learn to run the tracks together, eliminating the awkward
silences that are apparent between numbers early on. There’s a lot of great material here,
especially a sensational four track appearance on TV’s Don Kirshner’s Rock
Concert in August 1977. The opening
number here, Loudmouth, is an absolutely magnificent and exciting performance
that must have won over more than a few fans and the remaining numbers (Here Today Gone Tomorrow, Chinese Rocks, and Teenage
Lobotomy) are almost as good.
But it is
the final 14 tracks of the disc that forms the holy grail of this entire collection
and the single reason to splash out your hard earned if you’re a fan. These tracks were recorded at The Rainbow Theatre in London on December 31, 1977 which, as all true
Ramones fans will tell you, was the performance immortalised on their seminal
live album It’s Alive. (How this was not
played up in the marketing for this release is beyond me unless the motive was
to preserve sales of the CD.) This is the Ramones performance and miraculously
most of the key parts of the show, especially the explosive finale of I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You, Pinhead, Do Yo Wanna Dance?, Now I Wanna Be A Good Boy, Now I Wanna
Sniff Some Glue and We’re a Happy Family, have been preserved. The footage quality is not great and there
are times where you think that the soundtrack and footage are not in synch, but
I don’t care. This is how I prefer to remember the band – young, healthy and super
aggressive.
DVD 2, by
comparison, becomes less exciting as it goes on. Age and other factors gradually catch up with
the band so that, by the end, Joey and Johnny are relatively static on stage. (Crucially, only a total of 11 tracks come
from the final 8 years of the band’s
history.) However, there is still a lot
of good material, especially the opening 11 tracks, Blitzkrieg Bop among them, which
come from an appearance on German television in September 1978. There’s also a performance
of Rock ‘n’ Roll School, appropriately enough on Sha Na Na’s TV show, as well as some awkward appearances on the BBC’s Top Of The Pops and better ones
on The Old Grey Whistle Test. And then
there’s a 9 track sequence from their set at the original Us Festival in
California in 1982. Despite the inspiration
the band derived from Californian surf music, somehow the combination of a
daytime set, bikini clad girls in the audience and a large stage seems to dilute
the music. Still it is fascinating watching the band try their hardest to win
over probably its toughest audience. 
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