I was never really into The Ramones until I heard this album. I noticed how many classic ratings their debut got, so I picked up this expanded edition. This album has everything a punk rocker can want. The original album plus demos of some of their best songs. It really is a classic album.
I love the humorous lyrics. Beat on the Brat in particular. "Beat on the brat with a baseball bat". This is a band that liked strange song titles like I don't wanna go back in the Basement. Whether any of these lyrics were personnal in any sense is a mystery to me, but regardless it's hysterical.
The guitar work is done well. Traditional power chords throughout that are sometimes palm muted, but don't get boring. The drumming is somewhat similar in most songs with simple bass drum-hi hat- snare combo. As well as the bass copying the guitar while at a reasonable volume, at least for a bass anyway.
The song writing is strong. With the good instrumentation beside Joey Ramones fun lyrics makes most songs a joy to listen to. There are some songs however that fall short like I wanna be your Boyfriend. Songs like that are too typical and everyone's heard a song about lust at some point in their life. But other songs like I don't wanna go back in the Basement, Judy is a Punk, Beat on the Brat, and Blitzkrieg Bop are spectacular and are the songs that I reccomend listening to first.
The demo's aren't really anything special to speak of. Mainly just demo's of songs already on the record along with some songs that aren't. But this is the best Ramones album i've heard so far, so who knows the next one i'll get(Rockets to Russia perhaps?) But it's easy to see why this album is so respected.
