The first couple of times I listened to this album, I was understandably confused by its appeal, and had a feeling that this was going to be another one of those cases where I was just going to have to chalk it up to my tastes differing from people in general. The overall sound was just bewildering to me; I knew "Blitzkrieg Bop" going in, of course, and I'd been warned that all of the other songs had pretty much the same approach and arrangement as that one, but I still wasn't prepared for all of the songs to sound this similar. Combined with the unskilled vocals and the generally simplistic nature of the songs, I had the feeling that, even if I continued to enjoy the album (and I generally did on those early listens), I was kinda going to have this set aside in my mind as a novelty or curiousity. I certainly didn't see them as a band I was going to bother to pursue as a future band to review.

The thing that first changed my mind on this was just how good I came to think these riffs were. They're pretty much all built around the same idea, and the way they're arranged is definitely consistent, but the riffs on this album don't repeat themselves, and pretty much all of them strike me as interesting. After warming to the riffs, then, it was pretty much inevitable that I'd slowly come around to the other features, and while they're certainly not impressive from any technical perspective, I can't really see them as anything but enjoyable in this context. For all of the dumbness this album exudes on a superficial level, this is not an album that makes me feel dumber when I listen to it, and it's one of the better examples of "genial simplicity" I've ever heard.

Now that this album is firmly entrenched in my mind as a favorite, I often find myself wondering in a given listen whether this time will finally be the one where I see that the emperor has no clothes, but it never happens. To the contrary, while it's difficult to imagine that an album like this could reward further listening, it really does, and my admiration of it keeps going up and up. I especially find it amazing that an album this "monotonous" could have so many songs that my mind considers at least minor classics, and so few that I consider clear weaknesses. Maybe "53rd and 3rd" (about a guy who's a failure as a male prostitute) is a little weaker than others, with a little less driving power than other tracks and a really ugly vocal part from Dee Dee, but even that one doesn't strike me as a clear lowlight.

The big famous highlight, of course, is the opening "Blitzkrieg Bop," a much more deserving staple of sporting stadium/arena PA's than anything by Queen could ever be. While it's the album's most famous track, though, I'm hardly convinced that it's heads and shoulders above the bulk of the material on here. A personal favorite of mine is the following "Beat on the Brat," which combines some of the dumbest lyrics ever ("Beat on the brat, beat on the brat, beat on the brat with a baseball bat! Oh yeah! Oh yeah yeah!!") with another simple riff, and which somehow strikes me as more and more awesome with each listen. I'm also very fond of the three "relationship" songs on the album. "I Wanna be Your Boyfriend" may express a message of longing, and "I Don't Want to Walk Around With You" may express a message of disdain, but they're cut from the same cloth in overall approach. The riffs and vocal melodies for each are genial once again, and I find myself amused once again with how effectively blunt the lyrics are. I also like "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World," which switches from a typical form for this album to a slowed down section that really strikes me as an effective anthemic capstone to the album.

There are a lot of other fun bits on the album. There are the great pair of lines in "Judy is a Punk" that basically sum up how the band writes songs. There's the hilarious way "Chain Saw" starts with the actual sound of a chainsaw before the buzzsaw guitar sound that typifies the album pops up. There's the way that Joey crams the word "basement" into one syllable in "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement," and seemingly crams the title of Listen to My Heart into three syllables. There's the way I start cracking up every time I hear the first notes of "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue," and how a song about such a ridiculous and awful way to spend time as a teenager can make me sing along to it so happily. "Loudmouth" (about a girlfriend who should shut her fool mouth), "Havana Affair" (a fantasy about working for the CIA) and "Let's Dance" (a cover of the old standard, and which I think actually has an organ buried down in the mix) all are pretty nice as well.

The album does take some getting used to, of course, and this kind of sound isn't exactly my ideal for how rock music should sound. Still, I like all of the songs, and I find the general sound novel, and ultimately this album just makes me feel incredibly happy and light on my feet. This is just a great rock record.

The songs here, of course, generally follow the same form as those that dominated the debut. There are a small number of instances where the songs seem to imitate songs from the debut, but there aren't too many. It also seemed a little odd to me to have "Sheena is a Punk Rocker" and "Suzy is a Headbanger" right next to each other (as if having two songs that similarly titled was something you'd want to emphasize), but then I found out about the whole issue with "Carbona Not Glue," and things made a little more sense. Speaking of Sheena, it may properly belong to Rocket more than to this one, but it's a great song either way, and I'm glad it's here.

As on the last album, the songs are split between "tough" songs and 60's-ish pop ballads, with a classic 60's cover thrown in for good measure. The 60's cover this time around is "California Sun," and it has just such an incredibly happy, warm and fun feeling that I can't help but consider it one of the album's best. So help me, I get all kinds of fuzzy feelings the first time I hear the band play the third chord in the introduction, as well as when I hear the solo guitar sound after Joey sings each line in the verses, and there are few songs that clock in at almost 2 minutes on the dot that I could see enjoying more.

Among the gentler material, if I had to pick a low point, I'd say I'm not especially fond of "What's Your Game," but it's certainly ok. "Oh Oh I Love Her So" (a great bit of teenage cliche, lyrically) and "Swallow My Pride" (supposedly about the band's disappointment that their debut didn't exactly bring them overnight success) are marvelous bits of updated 60's-ish pop, and the opening of "You're Gonna Kill That Girl" has a funny melody that almost sounds like a twisted version of doo-wop (it gets reprised through the song as well). The tougher material is highlighted by the other section of "You're Gonna Kill That Girl" (I really hope this is about something from a movie), "You Should Never Have Opened That Door" (which definitely seems to be about watching a predictable horror movie), and the opening angry salvo of "Glad to See You Go" (with its great "gogogogo goodbye" line in the chorus) and "Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment" (possibly the heaviest song from those first few albums). There are a few other songs on the album, and they're good enough, even if I can't think of much specific to say about them (except for Pinhead, whose vocal introduction has gotta be one of the most amusingly absurd things I've ever heard).

In short, this is a great album, and if it's not as good as the debut, it's only behind a hair or two. And just like the debut, any decent rock collection should have this album. The best way to get this album and its predecessor, of course, is to get the compilation All The Stuff and More, Vol 1, which is the first two albums plus some bonus tracks. There's little excuse not to own this particular CD.

There are also a few songs I'm definitely not really fond of. I know that self-recycling was pretty much inevitable with the band, but even so warned I still can't get over the similarities between this album's "I Wanna be Well" and the debut's "I Wanna be Your Boyfriend." The chord sequence, and the "flow" of the song into the chorus is just way too close to that classic for my comfort. It's kinda catchy and fun to sing, sure, but that's pretty much because I could say the same thing for its predecessor. I could also do without the oft-disliked "Ramona," an only kinda sorta okayish poppy ballad that drags a bit, if any song from the first few Ramones albums could be said to drag. And there are a couple of other songs, both among the "rockers" and the "ballads," that kinda strike me as "Ramones by Numbers."

Still, there are quite a few songs on here that definitely stand up to the best songs of the first two albums. The opening duo of "Cretin Hop" (a hilarious ode to their fans, I guess) and "Rockaway Beach" (yet another high quality reinvention of early 60's surf pop stylistics) are clear classics; maybe not quite up to the standard of the last two albums, but certainly close. The 50's/60's covers are absolutely top-notch: "Do You Wanna Dance" works amazingly well in this context (with the vocal harmonies stripped out, leaving only the melody), and "Surfin' Bird" combines "Bird is the Word" and "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" in such a perfect way (seemingly not changing the rhythm track of vocal melody one bit) that it seems like they were always intended to go together. I'm also very fond of "Teenage Lobotomy," a minor classic about destroying your mind with DDT (!).

The other major classics are "Sheena is a Punk Rocker" (which may have ended up on Leave Home, but works just fine here), and the surprising bolt of darkness that is "We're a Happy Family." It's nothing especially new for the band musically, of course, but the lyrics are an amusing bit of social critique, and it's strangely funny to hear them sung in such a serious way. "Daddy likes men," indeed.

When all is said and done, I can't buy the idea that this fully lives up to the first couple of albums, but it's still marvelous. Even the weaker, fairly by-numbers tracks are mostly fun, and the highlights still have a lot of punch (even if the band was supposedly consciously letting up a bit to facilitate a breakthrough into the mainstream, which didn't work). And of course it goes without saying that any Ramones fan will want this, and that anybody who loves the first two albums but hates this one needs their head examined.

While this came out after Road to Ruin, the peformance for this album came from a 1977 New Years Eve show, when the band was touring Rocket to Russia, and it contains no Road to Ruin material (hence the placement on the page). As expected, then, the album largely ends up just functioning as a compilation (albeit pretty extensive) of the first three albums. Some complaints could be made here and there (there's a lot of great material from the debut that doesn't make the cut here), but seeing as more than 2/3's of the songs from the three studio albums make it on here, it's hard to make too many complaints. As far as the performances themselves go, there aren't really any significant deviations from the originals, aside from the band maybe taking a few shortcuts here and there (in songs that didn't have that many chords to strip out to begin with, heh). But oh gosh is it fun. Just one furious assault after another, with a slightly slower song thrown in for good measure here and there, and with almost no pause between songs. It's a gloriously no-BS presentation of a whole bunch of no-BS songs, with lots of tightness and a singer not really missing any notes.

So yeah, it may not be the most necessary live album of all time, but if this is what all Ramones shows were like back in the day, then it's no wonder the band amassed such a strong cult following. It may actually be worth it to get this first; if you don't like what's here, there's no chance you'll like the rest of the band's work from this time.

Between the last album and this one, the band changed drummers, replacing Tommy Ramone with Marky Ramone, and this changed things a lot. Marky had been a hard rock drummer before he'd been a punk drummer, and this aspect of his style shows up strongly in both his playing and in the kinds of songs the band does here. This album strikes me very much as a cross between the established style of the band and a more typical classic rock one, and that's very much because of the few songs that fall somewhat into the hard rock category.

The other big reason that this album strikes me as falling as much into classic rock as punk rock is that the nature of the ballads has changed. The first three albums had their share of songs that fell into the pop ballad category, of course, but they still had the same general feel and approach in the arrangements as all of the other songs. Most of the ballads here, though, don't require any qualification in the description, as they use noticably different styles of arrangements from the other songs. "Don't Come Close" is a full-fledged country song, with acoustic guitars and everything. The album's lone cover, "Needles and Pins" (an old Searchers song), sounds more like a straight imitation of that oldie than a Ramones cover, but there's something incredibly neat about hearing the band reach so far away from the style it had been limited to in albums previous. "Questioningly" might have been a little gloppy in the hands of another band, but the combination of Joey's singing (it should really be emphasized that, between Leave Home and somewhere in the early 80's, Joey was actually a really good vocalist), the lightweight spirit of the song and the great guitar arrangement all make it into a pretty terrific song.

So those are the major aberrations on the ballad side (the closing "It's A Long Way Back" is more in the "traditional" mode of Ramones ballads, and rules as much as the typical ballad from the first three albums). On the rocker side, the first sign of changes comes in the opening "I Just Want to Have Something to Do." It may seem a little cheap to have a song title based on a line from one of the band's most famous songs to that point, but the song has enough interesting traits that I don't think about this much. It's a mid-tempo stomper (incredibly slow by Ramones standards) based around yet another simple-but-effective riff, and the way the tension of the guitars builds during the chorus is really impressive. It's definitely one of the best hard rock songs the band would ever do.

None of the other rockers are as hard as that one, but most sound harder than similar songs from the previous albums. If I had to pick favorites among the "new-style" songs in this group, I'd probably pick "I Wanted Everything" or "I'm Against It" (the band's tongue-in-cheek mockery of the anti-establishment attitudes of so many of their contemporaries, no doubt), but the others are still an awful lot of fun. All of these songs would have sounded just fine with standard Ramones arrangements, but they sound really fascinating in this context.

Still, for all of the mild experimentation that the band takes on within this album, the two tracks I love most are the most typical of what they'd done to this point. "I Wanna Be Sedated" is the album's best known track, and with good cause: the vocal melody is one of the cleverest in the band's career, which says a lot, and the guitar solo is incredibly energetic and uplifting for basically having just one note. On the same level, though, if not surpassing it, is the glorious power-pop bliss that is "She's the One. " I get largely the same kinds of happy feelings from listening to this that I do from listening to the band's "California Sun" cover, and that says a ton right there. Sure, it's just another Ramones song in form and structure, but it's one of those cases where a bunch of simplistic elements come together in just about the perfect way.

So basically, this album might not be immediately appealing for somebody interested in The Ramones as a punk phenomenon, but it should appeal to people interested in The Ramones as a solid band in its own right. Plus, since it's available in its entirety on the compilation All the Stuff and More, Vol 2 (with Rocket to Russia in its entirety, and some bonus tracks), there's really no good excuse for a Ramones fan not to own this. If it's not as classic as the first two albums, then it's really really close.

On the other hand, though, the album makes a good deal more sense within the narrative of "The Ramones were an interesting modernized update of 50's/60's lightweight pop." Spector was, after all, one of the most sought-after producers of the 1960's, helping to generate hit single after hit single, and in the early 70's he produced albums for George Harrison and John Lennon that are often considered among the best albums of their time. If the band was looking for a new direction for its next album, why wouldn't they consider turning to a man who had helped so many of spiritual musical kin years before?

What made this episode in the band's history so interesting and so volatile was that both narratives had a significant amount of merit and truth to them. These two sides of the band had managed to co-exist just fine up to this point, with both feeding off each other and creating the sound and approach we all know and love, but this album really pitted the two against one another. The "punk" elements are cannibalized and reused in a pretty grotesque way, all in the name of strongly serving the "neo-retro" nature of the songs. The stories from the recording sessions, especially Phil pulling a gun on Dee Dee and Phil making Johnny play a single chord for 8 hours straight, are fairly well-known, and show that this arrangement was a combination that pretty much doomed itself to the stuff of legend from the moment it was suggested. The end result was an album that's one of the strangest I've ever heard, yet strange in a fairly predictable way: endless layers of instrumentation, most individually playing in a punkish manner, but thrown on top of each other until the punk elements disappear, while various other supporting instruments (e.g. saxophone) buoy up Joey's echo-laden vocals.

Truth be told, I really like the overall sound. The main problem I have with the album is the slightly inconsistent songwriting. Songs like "Let's Go," "All the Way" and "High Risk Insurance," as cool as they sound production-wise, and as much as they ostensibly rock, just aren't going to cut it with me when they feel this undercooked in the chord sequences. Plus, I'm still not sure how I feel about "I'm Affected," which is kinda catchy and intense but also sounds kinda ugly to me. I do kinda like the lead slidey parts in the guitars, but I'm not at all convinced Johnny had anything to do with those parts.

Still, there's a lot of great material on this album. The opening "Do You Remember Rock 'N' Roll Radio?" must have thrown everybody for a loop upon first listen, from the opening radio broadcast sounds to the endless layering of instruments to the main sax-driven groove that screams out "50's" loudly with every repetition. The song is incredible, arrangements aside, from a great vocal melody that doesn't sound like anything the band had done before, to the fun looking-back-and-looking-forward lyrics, to just about anything else that Phil buried in the mix just to have. And man, does Joey ever sound great in this context. Another major classic comes later in "Rock 'N' Roll High School," aka the song with the first chord that was played hundreds of times to get it just right. It's largely a rewrite of "Rockaway Beach," but it's definitely a rewrite that I'm glad exists, as the guitar parts and Joey's singing are just oodles of fun. And, well, I dig the opening schoolbell sound, and the totally random explosion sound at the end.

The ballads are represented by "Danny Says" and "Baby I Love You," two songs that are incredibly unlike anything the band had done previously but which I find myself liking quite a lot. "Danny Says" just feels like it should have gone down as more of a classic than it did; it just has a really nice timeless feel to it that I like a lot, and the juxtaposition of the lovely melody with more of the usual Ramones lyrical themes (like sitting around watching "Get Smart" on TV) just fascinates me. "Baby I Love You" is the album's sole cover, of a Ronettes' song produced by Spector in 1964, and while it's more of a solo Joey song than a proper Ramones song (and thus not really a great choice for a lead single), it's pretty nice. I wouldn't have wanted any more songs like this on the album, but it's a neat little novelty.

The remaining songs are pretty nice, overall. "Chinese Rock" is a solid hard stomper that could have fit in well on Road to Ruin, and while "The Return of Jackie and Judy" seems a little too reminiscient of "Judy is a Punk" (and others) for comfort at first, it does have a couple of melody twists here and there that definitely sound like they haven't been used yet. "I Can't Make it on Time" is another bit of mid-tempo rock, and not exactly rousing, but I definitely enjoy the vocal melody. And finally, there's just something incredibly appealing about the "ba ba banana, this ain't Havana" hook in "This Ain't Havana," enough anyway to make me want to give it a second listen once in a while.

Still, for all of the praises that can be thrown out to many of the songs, and for the interesting sound, I just can't give this album quite as high a rating as the last few. There are just a few too many instances where it feels like the cool sound is covering up a clear decline in the songwriting. Still, when everything is put together, I like the album way more than I dislike it, and I happily give it a low 8. It's definitely the last Ramones album I'd call very good.

Still, when I swallow hard and accept this as a New Wave bubblegum pop album, I find that there are a few songs on here that I find quite nice. The opening "We Want the Airwaves" has a really neat texture of guitars, and it almost feels like, if they'd just turn up the volume on the rhythm guitar a couple of notches and speed up the tempo, it would have placated fans of the classic sound just fine. I'm also quite fond of "The KKK Took My Baby Away," a song that's supposedly about how Johnny (the major conservative of the group) stole Joey's girl, and which really strikes me as a magnificent power pop song. I keep hearing it's a ripoff of some Cheap Trick song, and it well may be, but I don't know Cheap Trick very well, so I don't know that for sure.

Of the remaining ten tracks, I'd say two really stand out as noticably better than the others. "It's Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World)" has a neat little "Calypso" (that's what it is, right?) thing going on in its main groove, and the mid-section sounds almost like something from a 60's Who single. It's got a lot of personality, if nothing else. "7-11" may be a lyrical redo of "Oh Oh, I Love Her So," but it's still a rather nice pop ballad, and even the little bits of synth in the background during parts of the second half sound pretty decent.

The other eight songs aren't so much bad as they're unremarkable. I'd be hardpressed to say that I hate any of those songs, which is why I don't punish the rating severely, but once I'm done listening to their mild pleasantness, they slide right out of my brain, not to return. What good is bubblegum pop if it can't even stick in my head for ten seconds after it's done?

I do know that there are some out there who like this album quite a bit, and I do see how somebody could be taken with the combination of typical Ramones-esque lyrical topics with this kind of bubblegum music. An album this heavily filled with okayish songs can only get an okayish rating; it's the standouts that nudge the rating as high as it is. As is, I don't remotely hate the album, but aside from those four highlights, I can't see ever listening to the album again.

The drums only partially explain, though, why a good chunk of this album sounds very weak. Two of the covers, in particular, sound horrible. The opening "Lil' Bit of Soul" shoves electronic drums in the listener's face right away, putting the various percussive handclaps and what-not high in the mix, and while there's some decent guitar texture in spots, the overall impression is one of cheap, plastic pointlessness. "Time Has Come Today," though, comes across as even worse. The main culprit here isn't the drums, and it's only sort of the length (it goes well over four minutes, an eternity for a Ramones song); no, the main problem is Joey's singing, which is completely abominable. His singing reminds me of what I'd imagine it would sound like if Otto (from the Simpsons) were to take lead vocals in a song; it's the exact same kind of weak, tuneless growl that has come across whenever he's sung on the show. Except, here, it's done in an actual cover of a song that was only sorta ok to begin with.

A third cover comes in "I Need Your Love," and my feelings are mixed about that one. In a lot of ways, it comes across way too much as the kind of thing Joan Jett or Pat Benetar would have done, and that's not even remotely a compliment. On the other hand, though, there is something genuinely appealing about the chorus, and the combo of Johnny's riffage and Joey's singing succeeds in making me feel a twinge of emotion. So yeah, it's an ok song, one that can stick around.

There are some highlights among the originals, but a lot of the tracks just kinda blend into the background. Try as I might, I just can't get anything out of "Highest Trails Above," "In the Park" or the metallic Dee Dee-sung "Time Bomb." Notice, by the way, that the last two make ample use of the classic I-IV-V chord sequence from "Blitzkrieg Bop," only forgetting to do so in anything resembling a classic manner. Speaking of that chord sequence, the third (and most blatant) use of that sequence comes in "Somebody Like Me." The song ends up sounding kinda dumb as a Ramones song, but I strangely don't hate it, and part of the reason is that, especially in the chorus, it almost sorta sounds (to my ears: I don't know if anybody in the world would agree) like early 80's Sparks. And you know, as a Ramones-doing-early-80's-Sparks-doing-Ramones track, I dig it.

The rest of the songs are basically fine, though only a couple of them strike me as near-classics. I really like the lovely ballad "My-My Kind of a Girl"; I'm sure the melody is stolen from some 60's pop ballad or another, but I don't know that for sure, and in the meantime I just enjoy the strong power pop chords and nice singing. Outsider is probably a classic of some sort, too: if nothing else, letting such a weak voice as Dee Dee's sing the middle eight heightens the emotional resonance of the song by a lot.

Of the others, "What'd Ya Do" is decent enough; "Psycho Therapy" has some decent power to it (not really sure why it's often considered a classic, aside from the siren sound in the background), and the closing "Every Time I Eat Vegetables It Makes Me Think Of You" could have done very well as an average, pretty good track on one of the first four albums. In the end, then, there are a good number of tracks falling between good and great, and they're almost enough to make me boost the album up a point. Unfortunately, between the bad drum sound (even in the context of okayish production), and the small number of very low points, and the constant defiling of an iconic chord sequence (it's ok to reuse that sequence, but you'd better well come up with a classic in doing so), and the various mediocre tracks, that grade just isn't possible. I can see how somebody would like it more, especially if the production doesn't bother them, but the flaws just get me down.

In addition to these two moves, though, the band made some decisions that weren't completely wise. First, the band suddenly developed a half-assed political conscience; this resulted in tracks like "Planet Earth 1988" and "Human Kind," which are full of an awkward combination of earnestness, half-assed lyrics and a general feeling of sleepy boredom. Second, the band decided to try its hand at the more "hardcore" side of punk, which had largely developed without the band's input over the previous few years. And third, Dee Dee suddenly decided it was a good idea to pretend he was British. Seriously, his rapid-fire singing in "Wart Hog" and "Endless Vacation" sounds more than a bit to me like a more "hardcore" version of early Joe Strummer or Johnny Rotten, and the effect is amazingly awful. The songs themselves are rather unremarkable, and wouldn't have been anything great with Joey singing, but they just sound horrible with Dee Dee taking lead vocals.

While the various downsides prevent the album from approaching anything near a rousing success, though, the album has enough interesting stuff going on for me to call it quite good without too much hesitation. What's especially interesting to me is that, for all of the album's "bad ass" posturing, some of the best tracks are some of the most lighthearted and least rocking of the lot. "Chasing The Night" and "Howling at the Moon (Sha-La-La)" are basically lightweight synth-pop (and the latter starts off with a synth line that sounds an awful lot like something from some of the various NES games that came out over the next few years) with a decent guitar presence, but they have such great melodies and effective singing that I can easily forgive yet another departure from the band's "typical" sound. Another lightweight song, while falling more into the rocker category, is probably my favorite. "Daylight Dilemma (Dangers of Love)" is a little too long to have worked in the band's "classic" albums, but it's still just a really great pop song, with a whole bunch of great melody ideas that any pop band could be proud of. I hear some ideas in there that would later pop up in various pop-punk songs a decade later, but that can't really be held against it.

As for the more rocking stuff, some of it is pretty interesting. The album actually goes so far as to have a good minute-long instrumental (which unfortunately segues into "Wart Hog"), and it could have easily served as the basis for a perfectly fine "regular" song. Among the other tracks, the best tracks are probably the opening "Mama's Boy" (perhaps a little overdone in attempting to show how hard the band can rock it out, but rather catchy nonetheless), the hilarious "Danger Zone" (with ugly vocals in the verses but a really fun riff driving it forward) and the closing "No Go" (which kinda sounds like heavy rockabilly, meant in a very good way). The other tracks have some decent aspects, but overall they're rather dismissable, and don't make a strong case for the band as serious hard-rockers.

There's actually a lot of solid material on the album, for all of its general and song-specific flaws, and I have little problem giving it a low 7. It's nothing brilliant, but parts of it are a lot of fun, and a good album in this era of the band's history is nothing to sneeze at. A fan of the early stuff who's wary about the other stuff could start here and not feel too disappointed.

It's largely rooted in synth-pop, with some harder elements thrown in (as opposed to the last album, which was a hard rock album with some synth-pop elements), but whereas the synth elements of the last album largely saved that one, here they don't do a lot to help things. Two of the songs are full-fledged adult-contemporary glop-slop keyboard ballads, and while "She Belongs to Me" almost works (there's something amusingly creepy about the lyrics, "Don't tell me how to love my baby, she belongs to me"), the closing "Something to Believe in" is just a total embarrassment. Why the heck are there pompous synth chimes in a RAMONES song??!!! The song is at least moderately up-tempo, which is nice because the song would be even more unbearable if it were any slower, but it sucks nonetheless.

The album's most famous song, of course, is "My Brain is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)," inspired by Reagan's ill-conceived visit to a graveyard full of Nazi soldiers. It's a big political statement from a band that, frankly, wasn't really made to make big political statements. If it makes the band seem at all more sophisticated than usual, then I'd have to say that the effect of that sophistication is roughly akin to that of a monkey wearing a hat. Most important to me is that the song is just boring, and full of the same synthesized chimes that hurt the last song so much. Honestly, the best part of the song is its "controversial" history, what with Johnny having protested the song's original name (Bonzo) and forcing the band to change it, even though he didn't force a change in any of the actual content of the song. What a maroon.

Among the rockers, "Love Kills" and "Eat That Rat" once again show Dee Dee singing in his forced-angry faux-British way, and while the former is actually kinda fun, "Eat That Rat" is just another dumb, clumsy political statement. The title track isn't incredibly interesting, but it's got some strong energy that isn't sabotaged by the production, so it's not terrible. The penultimate "Hair of the Dog" isn't exactly offensive either; it just commits the sin of not letting a single interesting thing happen in its 2:21 of playtime.

The rest of the tracks, then, are quite decent, and sometimes even more. "Mental Hell" is the album's sole major classic, driven forward by a fantastic riff, graced with a cool echoey effect on Joey's singing, and featuring an awesome conclusion in Joey's bellowing of "Mental! Hell Mental! Hell Mental! Hell!" Whatever may be, I listen to Ramones albums for strong hooks as much as for anything else, and this song is full of them. And speaking of hooks, how could any Ramones fan resist something like "Crummy Stuff?" It's painfully simple, but it's simple in a way that would have made it a perfect inclusion on the first few albums, and it really does a good job of tapping into the same part of the brain that can get enjoyment out of something like "Yummy yummy yummy I've got love in my tummy." Sure, it's got some silly sounding, rather pointless synth noises in the middle, but they don't distract me too much.

The opening "Somebody Put Something in My Drink" (penned by Richie) tries a bit too hard to fit into the arse-kicking vibe of the last album (with the same overdone vocals that were common there as well), but it's undeniably rousing, so that's something. "Apeman Hop"'s best moment comes in the faux-Zulu speaking at the beginning of the song, but the bulk of the song is a lot of fun (and Dee Dee's "ape"-scream backing vocals are hilarious). And finally, while the song could stand to have some more power in the production (and a little less growling in Joey's singing), I can't help but have some good vibes towards "Freak of Nature," especially because of its funny "Freak!" cries in the chorus and the way it inexplicably shuts down after a minute and thirty seconds.

All of these minor positives aside, though, the truth is that I just can't find this album very good. It's not quite as bad as the 1986 albums that came from some other bands that were their age or older, but it's still easily the worst they'd made yet. Where Too Tough might have functioned as some half-hearted renaissance, this album strongly suggested it was nothing more than a mirage. At this point, the band could still write some decently catchy tunes, but they had so many other things going against them that that sole strength wasn't going to cut it anymore.

The band largely ditched the over-produced synth-poppy sound of AB, and instead turned to a much heavier sound than even Too Tough to Die produced. There sure as hell aren't any delightful experiments on here like "Chasing the Night" or "Howling at the Moon," but there aren't any tracks like the last AB track either, so I'm not complaining excessively. The band often drives the sound of its "rockers" extremely close to regular heavy metal, and while there are certainly some drawbacks to that (heavy metal, a genre that's tradtionally extremely dependent upon solid instrumental prowess, doesn't seem like a perfect fit for a band whose guitarist prided himself on never practicing), the songs definitely kick a lot of ass, and the band doesn't seem totally incompetent in this vein. There are some major exceptions, of course: "I Lost My Mind" is the final installment in Dee Dee's attempt to sound like a British hardcore punk-rocker, and the Richie-penned "I'm Not Jesus" is one of the greatest embarrassments to mankind I've ever heard (this track pushed the rating down at least a point, and I almost considered dropping it even further), but other than these tracks, the band provided a nice collection of material here.

My two favorite tracks on here about as different as can be from one another. "Bop 'til you Drop" is basically a dark, sarcastic, metallic take on, uh, something (punk rock? old 50's lyrical ideas?), but it kicks a lot of ass, and besides, it's fun to hear Joey sing the title in such a stern way in the chorus. The other, "Bye Bye Baby," is essentially Joey making an attempt at an "epic" (4+ minutes) lush 60's-ish pop ballad, and it works surprisingly well. Johnny basically only contributes some simple arpeggiation in the verses and some power chords in the chorus, but his guitar breaks between vocal parts are quite pretty, and the vocal melody is so lovely throughout that I don't see why I shouldn't consider this a highlight in the band's post-70's work.

Of the remaining eight tracks, the one that inevitably creates the most divided opinions (in my observation) is "Go Lil Camaro Go," which shows the band trying to recapture the surf vibe of some of its early songs. It's really tough to figure out if it's a tongue-in-cheek parody of its past (mostly from the reprisal of the "Papa Oom Mow Mow" vocal theme) or if it's just a really clumsy metallic surf-pop "rocker," and while I certainly don't hate it, I never find myself really looking forward to it on the album either. If I'm looking for a song on this album to satisfy my desire for a throwback to the band's early years, I'm much more likely to turn to "A Real Cool Time."

The other six songs are all quite good, with the possible exception of "Death of Me," which drags a little too much and is just a little short of being as catchy as I'd like. Two songs that I rarely see mentioned in a positive way are "Weasel Face" and the closing "Worm Man," but I generally dig them, even if I'm not completely sure why. I guess I just like the idea of Joey singing lyrics about people with animalish features, but whatever may be, I find the songs pretty catchy and an awful lot of fun, even if they feature the same overly solemnized vibe as so much of the rest of the album. "I Wanna Live" and "Garden of Serenity" each combine their metallic trappings with solid choruses that combine arena rock elements with the band's typical efficiency (see the next album for a lot of cases where the choruses just have arena rock elements), and a frenzied, passionate vocal delivery in each. And finally, "I Know Better Now" is a perfectly solid "lessons learned from a relationship" rock song.

In short, the album's very inconsistent, and it's drearier than one would ideally want from a Ramones album, but it gets better with each listen, and it has quite a few songs that I'd consider very good. One could definitely do a lot worse in post-peak Ramones than with this album, and it's mostly quite recommendable.

There are a few solidly catchy songs on here, of course, and that's basically the album's saving grace. "Pet Semetary," for all of its silly flaws (stiff keyboards, really crappy lyrics), still has a catchy-as-hell chorus, and it's hard for me to call it a bad song. "I Believe in Miracles," "Punishment Fits the Crime" (which has a really nice, low-key delivery from Dee-Dee in the verses; I guess he'd given up the hardcore punk thing) and a few others have choruses that, as gross and 'get-yer-lighters-out' they might be, are still pretty solid and, in some cases, have roots in the "traditional" Ramones values that made us care about the band so much in the first place. Plus, there are songs like the cover of "Palisades Park" (with a fun, circus-y guitar introduction), "Learn to Listen" and "Don't Bust My Chops," which could have fit in just fine on earlier albums if they had better arrangements. Oh, and the closing "Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight)" is a charming reuse of classic Ramones chord sequences, and it's funny to hear a Joey-penned "ballad" like "Can't Get You Outta My Mind" done with a metallic flair.

Yet despite all of these minor successes, the album just does not please me. I give it a 5/10, but it's dangerously close to a lower grade. I know that the band still really wanted to have a serious break into the mainstream and a high-selling album, but this was exactly the wrong approach to take, and much more wrong-headed than anything they'd done to this point. Pick off a few of the songs, but avoid the album.

Unfortunately, new bassist or no, this live album is depressingly mediocre. The setlist is decent enough, even considering the large number of mid-to-late-80's songs (especially from Brain Drain), but the performances kinda sorta suck. I get that the band was all about doing its songs at a breakneck pace live, and that the band wasn't shooting for exact clones of its studio versions when performing live, but this is far below the standard set by It's Alive. In particular, Joey's singing here is an absolute disaster; sure, on It's Alive, Joey wasn't able to hit all of the notes perfectly, but he was clearly trying, whereas here he's just blurting out the notes as fast as he could without making them sound good. I find this especially disappointing given that I genuinely consider Joey to have been a good singer in the studio; I could never have thought as much were this the quality he sought on a regular basis.

If there's a significant positive to pick out of the generally aggressive, reckless vibe applied to all of the songs here, making them all sound basically the same, it's that a lot of the 80's tracks, once drenched in overproduction and sapped of their full power, end up sounding, on the whole, about as good as the "classic material." Of course, that statement is almost as demeaning of the older stuff as it is praising of the newer stuff, but regardless, there's a psychological boost here that gets applied to a lot of the more recent stuff. Some of it still really stinks (Ignorance is Bliss = bleeeeurgh), but that happens less than I might have guessed.

Still, that's not a tremendous compliment. I give the album a 5/10 due to a good setlist and some stretches of semi-decency, but I can't go any higher than that. Unless you're a major fan, don't bother.

The songwriting is dominated by Joey, with Marky throwing in a couple and Dee Dee generously lending three songs (at least, the lyrics; I don't know how much the band reworked his ideas for the actual music). The album's minor hit was "Poison Heart," which is mid-tempo and slightly arena-rockish, but which also has a nice set of guitar lines in the chorus and breaks, and I definitely like it more than I don't. C.J. gets a couple of vocal showcases, in "Strength to Endure" and "Main Man," and they're both decent enough songs. They're nothing especially remarkable, but I nonetheless enjoy them while on and (more importantly) find that they stick around in my memory after they're done.

The album's bookending tracks each have features that somewhat raise eybrows, in a bad way; the opening "Censorshit" is the album's attempt at a political statement, where Joey specifically attacks Tipper Gore for her push for "Parental Advisory" labels to get put on CD cases, and the closing "Touring" is basically a direct rewrite of "Rock 'N' Roll High School." On the other hand, "Censorshit" is very memorable in the chorus and a lot of fun to sing along to, and "Touring" is tons of fun as long as I can temporarily shut off the part of my brain that cares about the band's self-plagiarism tendencies.

The rest of the album is nothing but perfectly decent songs, and that makes me happy. If I had to pick out highlights without namechecking every single track, I'd probably pick out the strangely tense, two-minutes-long "Anxiety," the oh-so-uplifting "It's Gonna be Alright" (the band's lyrical acknowledgement that C.J. is aboard, and that the band will be fine), the angry-ish "Tomorrow She Goes Away," and the bitter-disguised-in-happy-chords-driven "I Won't Let it Happen." The band also does a fascinating cover of "Take it As it Comes," one of the lesser known pop songs from the first Doors album. I never really liked the original version, but it apparently works very well in a guitar-heavy environment, and Joey's interpretation of Jim's singing style is a hoot. They even fill the song with organ solos!

There are a few other songs, and they do a decent enough job of rounding out the album. The end result, then, is that while the band's soul might have up and left, the band had enough remaining strengths to pull off a good album if they really focused on it. Any fan that gave up on the band after all of the 80's albums should strongly consider getting this one.

The younger version of the band had a real knack for taking famous songs from the 60's and adapting them to the band's own style and personality (which, of course, was largely based in the same stylistics that produced those songs in the first place). By this time, though, the band had largely aged out of having a really idiosyncratic approach, which is what you need to make one of these kinds of albums worthwhile. The band doesn't bring any particular instrumental strengths to the table, and when combined with a serious lack of creative invention in approaching these songs, the result is just really tedious. At best, the covers are just kinda okayish, never adding much to the originals or giving any reason to listen to these versions instead of the originals (see: "Substitute" and a bunch of others). At worst, the covers are offensively terrible: the worst culprit is the cover of "My Back Pages," which strips out all of the mystic qualities of the original and leaves an abysmal pop-punk cover (sung by CJ) in its wake. There are moments here and there that provide interesting variations on the originals (like in "Surf City," when the "two girls for every boy" vocal line is swapped out for a guitar line), but they're definitely the exception.

I can give this a low 5/10 because, most of the time, it isn't offensive to my ears, and I can get a certain level of enjoyment out of listening to it. It's just the sheer pointlessness of the album that gets me most. Unless you're a really hardcore fan, avoid.

The album is heavily dominated by the bassists former and present, and their contributions are, at best, maddeningly inconsistent. C.J. contributes a pair of songs, and while "Got a Lot to Say" is annoyingly undeveloped, the immediately preceding "Scattergun" has something strangely appealing about the verse melody, so it's ok enough. Dee Dee's six contributions, meanwhile, are all over the map quality-wise. "Cretin Family" is in strong contention for the worst Ramones song ever (though that title would probably go to I'm Not Jesus), what with the shameless mish-mashing of iconic lyrical and rhythmic ideas from years past. A few others don't immediately jump out as awful, but they don't do anything at interesting either. A couple of his tracks, though, are pretty great. "The Crusher," his ode to a boxer, is disturbingly catchy (just try not to sing along to, "I'm the Crusherrrrrr, king of the ring ..."), and the closing "Born to Die in Berlin" (with Dee Dee literally phoning in a verse, in German) is an unexpectedly powerfully angry way to end, suggesting an incredible amount of self-loathing and featuring a very simple riff (and some interesting noisy texture) that nonetheless works perfectly with the song.

Elsewhere, there are a couple of covers, and while one of them ("I Love You," by Johnny Thunder) is just vaguely ok, the opening "I Don't Want to Grow Up," by Tom Waits, is a total hoot. Could any song the band could have covered better summed up the band's life philosophy? Joey does a great job on the vocals, too, not even trying to approach Tom's original approach, but rather making the song seem like it belonged to the Ramones forever. Marky contributes a song (Have a Nice Day) that doesn't register one way or the other in my mind, and Joey's two contributions are both very good. "Life's a Gas" is the album's one sole nod to the band's bubblegum roots, and it brings a badly needed dose of levity to the stodgy material all around it. Even better, though, is "She Talks to Rainbows," where Joey makes it impossible not to empathize with a guy who's in love with a girl who seemingly talks to everything in nature except for him. It's so good, actually, that I end up really wondering why Joey didn't write more material for the album. Was he already sick enough that he couldn't put in a lot of time towards songwriting?

Anyway, there's supposedly a version of the album floating around that contains the band's cover of the Spiderman theme, but I don't have it. Regardless, while the album has some solid highpoints, it's got so much deadweight, mediocre material that a higher grade than a 5/10 can't really be given (I almost went to a 6/10, but just couldn't get myself to change it). Get it if you're a serious fan or if you're curious.