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Originally Posted by RdTv
Agreeing with Everyneurotic here, I DO like the ramones, well at least the first two or three albums, but I do believe they are overrated and get a lot more praise than they are worthy of. Its intersting how many people claim them as the best, only because they (the people) haven't fully explored that era of music.
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That's quite an assumptive claim.
We are talking here about the band who went and played a tour in England that inspired members of the Pistols, the Clash, the Buzzcocks, the Damned, and Siouxsie and the Banshees to start their own groups. The same band that the Bad Brains took their name from one of their songs, and Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys both invoke as their major influence. I'm sure there are a few kids out there who fit the description you imply, but there are also plenty of people that know that the Backstreet Boys were Wayne County's band and still think of the Ramones as the best because they fucking started it all.
For me personally, Suicide, Television, and Rocket from the Tombs/Pere Ubu have all had a bigger influence on my life and my music, but that doesn't mean that I don't still think of the Ramones as the archetype for pure unbridled punk rock 'n roll from that era or any since. You can't strip down to the essence of rock 'n roll music further than "Beat On the Brat" or "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue". The three groups to come the closest before were probably the Stooges (a bit too free jazz influenced), the New York Dolls (a bit too glam) and the Dictators (a bit too stand up comedy), but due to their other elements none of them achieved what the Ramones did - what Tom Verlaine summed up as creating the first pure white urban rock 'n roll without copping any old blues riffs.
I'd question how anyone
could have "fully explored that era of music" as you say and not realized that it was the Ramones who Hilly Krystal first booked at CBGBs forever changing rock music as we understand it and creating the NYC scene that Sonic Youth would later rise to the top of in their day (though they of course incorporated the downtown avant garde and No Wave scenes in their rise as well.)