Giant steppes
Ramones’ classic third album with extras of alternate mixes, B-sides, outtakes and a December 1977 live show. By Jon Savage.
Ramones Rocket To Russia RHINO. CD/LP
The Ramones were on a roll in 1977: Rocket To Russia was their third album in just over 18 months. The checklist was well established: a slamming first side of group compositions, with a) a slowie at track three and b) a definitive side-closer; a second side that contains a cover and that ends with a spiral into infinity. But this time they floor the formula into a charging, surging punk/psych masterpiece. Leave Home had filled in the stark simplicity of Ramones with perceptual and psychedelic touches but R2R ups the game throughout: the production is fuller, the guitars are shinier and, on occasion, they jangle. We’re A Happy Family is at the album’s centre: with layers of overdubs, the Ramones’ most complex and darkly humorous song to date (which, oddly, ends here on a full stop rather than a fade). R2R displays a complete mastery of their chosen genre. Despite the revolutionary sound of their first album, they had always considered themselves a chart group. Never have they been so nakedly pop as here. Rockaway Beach and Sheena Is A Punk Rocker channel the uncomplicated euphoria of Surfin’ Bird while Locket Love, Ramona and Here Today, Gone Tomorrow update teen romance tropes. Until you listen harder. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow is astonishingly bleak: “someone had to pay the price”. The primitive I Don’t Care is in its circularity even more indicative of hopelessness than the nihilistic lyrics. We’re A Happy Family makes light of a dysfunctional wasteland – refried beans, Thorazines and the like – the details of which make it clear that the Ramones know much of what they speak. Something dark and disturbed lies underneath the shiny pop surface: well, it is punk. Sometimes it comes to light in selfreference and black humour: Cretin Hop and We’re A Happy Family, with its sneered question, “what is minimalism?” Teenage Lobotomy and I Wanna Be Well bookend the middle of side two, while Why Is It Always This Way? climaxes the record with a circular, upwards riff and a horror movie storyline. R2R only sags with a superfluous cover of Bobby Freeman’s 1958 hit Do You Wanna Dance. Worthwhile additions are two separate overdub tracks for We’re A Happy Family and earlier mixes that emphasise the group’s speedy attack. The barnstorming live show, from Glasgow in December, reproduces with added Carbona the set from It’s Alive – the New Year’s Eve Rainbow concert that was the group’s zenith. Designed as a breakthrough, R2R stalled at Number 49 US. Its comparative failure took the heart out of the group – they blamed the Sex Pistols in part for muddying the punk waters – and they would never recapture the careening momentum of those first 18 months. Enjoy this accelerated, euphoric pop album – that never
quite escapes its dark undertow – and think of what could have been.