Hey onetwothree, identify this quote: "What's with the fourth chord, Lou?" And anyway, it's "onetwothreefour." Try to keep up.

Put the Ramones in context: Yes, the Silver Convention, the Bee Gees... Oh wait, did we forget that this was supposed to be rock and roll? At the time, it seemed that only the Ramones remembered. Guitar-bass-drums, the 101 Strings get the day off, no synthesizers, backbeat & barred E, E min, A, A min, A7 (whoa, arty!) chords – it was like a bucket of ice water dumped over your head while you were sleeping off a Budweiser overdose.

Zappa is another deal entirely. Remember him, Ozzie, & Joey Ramone versus Tipper Gore? Frank had respect for Johnny Ramone; do you think he might have known something?

Besides, that whole list is stupid. JJ Cale isn't even on it. Steve Cropper, who basically invented soul guitar, comes in at 36, while Keith Richards, who has to read it off index cards, is at 10. Ron Asheton of the Stooges at 29? I cringe when they break for a guitar solo. I want to scream at him "Jesus, don't touch that wah-wah pedal! I'm serious, dude! And keep it short, will you?"

I don't know what you're smoking, but I'm kind of annoyed you're not sharing it.

Posted by: Mitch on August 12, 2006 12:46 AM

OneTwoThree, you should do what I do, and never, ever, ever read Rolling Stone, an utterly worthless publication.

Then you won't be upset when they rate things in a different order than you would. You won't know!

Posted by: Lexington Green on August 12, 2006 12:55 AM

Johnny Ramone was almost solely responsible for an genre of music. That warrants a high rating in these types of lists. Also, technical proficiency, which the other guitarists you mentioned have in spades over Ramone, does not categorically trump creativity.

Posted by: the patriarch on August 12, 2006 10:18 AM

Reading all this stuff about The Ramones and watching the videos has made me wonder all over again why I never really liked them even though I liked so many of their contemporaries in the NY rock scene: Television, Patti Smith, New York Dolls, Talking Heads, etc, etc. Sure, there was a lot of corporate rock around in the mid-70s, but there was a lot of good stuff too. A goodly number of artists who started out in the 60s were still doing good work: Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Lou Reed and others. In the midst of all this The Ramones never really stood out for me. I sorta liked the first album--it sounded like nothing I'd heard before. But to me they never seemed to get past that. It just seemed to me that if you'd heard one Ramones song you'd heard them all. They had a good sound, but there was nowhere to go with it and my appreciation of it burned out pretty quickly.

Posted by: Michael P on August 12, 2006 4:16 PM






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