Ramones [40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]

The Ramones will remain a launching pad for artists and bands around the globe, as a sense of “Hey, I can do that, too!” is born upon your first listen. It either grabs you for life or scares the shit out of you. Either way, the simplicity is the genius.

Ramones is pretty much perfect. [Sep 2016, p.102]

There's not an ounce of flab on this record. [No. 134, p.60]

Not even overfamiliarity can really dull the rest of what’s here. The box set carries a distinct whiff of die-hards only--the mono mix is nice but inessential, the best of the demos have already been released, as has the first of the live shows, while the second was recorded later the same night and sounds virtually identical--but the music at its centre is about as inarguable as you can get.

The Ramones, like Warhol or Lichtenstein, were masters of doing one thing brilliantly and repetitively--something reinforced by the second disc of this set, which contains singles and unreleased demos, including tracks that would appear on subsequent albums such as “You’re Gonna Kill That Girl”, “You Should Never Have Opened That Door” and “I Don’t Care” but could easily have fitted on Ramones.

At three discs and 78 tracks, the suspicion is that this set is for the truly hardcore fans for whom the previous reissues aren't enough and who need everything they can get their hands on. As such, Rhino is providing a public service. And every note of this is great, of course. For everyone else, though, they can feel relatively comfortable staying with the various beautifully done vinyl reissues of the original album or the 2001 CD reissue.