Blitzkrieg Bop

The Ramones' formula is on display from the jump.

Track one, side one, of course, is Blitzkrieg Bop, featuring Johnny's guitar panned to one side, hard left, and Dee Dee's bass panned hard right.

The other center channel filled with Tommy's drums and Joey's vocal right there in the center.

Their self-titled debut arrived on Sire Records on April 23rd, 1976, opening again with Blitzkrieg Bop and its defining, "Hey ho, let's go," and then followed by 13 other eq- th- 13 other equally prompt, amped-up jams, including Beat on the Brat, Judy is a Punk, I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend, Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue, 53rd and 3rd, and of course, tonight's topic and album closer, Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World.

Start to finish, the album is 14 songs in under 30 minutes, and their debut codifies the Ramones formula: speed plus simplicity plus aggression plus '60s pop melody plus deadpan humor.

The album only reached number 111 on the Billboard album chart, and radio largely ignored it, as its stripped-down sound was radically out of step with the polished arena rock dominating American music at the time.

So I went, uh, and I hadn't listened to the whole album front to back in a long time.

So I'm like, "Okay, well, you know, I'm not...

heard of them.

Well, during the Dictators' final song of their set, they were joined on stage by Tommy Ramone, who was the last surviving original member at that time, for a rendition of the Ramone song, Blitzkrieg Bop.

So that was pretty cool, too.

Now, regarding the band, the personnel on Two Tub Man, Handsome Dick Manitoba, he was a DJ on the Underground Garage for many years.

You can, you can hear a little bit of the Ramones that I'm talking about in that.

Um, it has a very Blitzkrieg Bop kind of vibe on that song.

And, uh, yeah, that one was, was really fun live.

I was enjoying that one.