#10 - Ramones: Ramones (1976)

Classic, classic punk. Black and white? Check. Simple lettering? Yup. Basic portrait of the band, but looking totally bad ass? Got it.

Such back-to-the-basics thinking was one of the style's hallmarks. So, in addition to the stripped-down songs, we’ve got stripped-down art as well.

The cover for this one was done by Roberta Bayley, a photographer for Punk magazine, the very early standard for this growing music scene in NYC.

Roberta and friend

Starting as a doorman at CBGB, Roberta would go on to capture a lot of the burgeoning punk scene, as well as garnering over 40 album credits:

She actually came up with her own parody (for some fund-raising thing for dogs):

As did oh, about 28 others (if amiright.com is to be trusted):

You can kind of think of the Ramones as the American equivalent of the Sex Pistols. Both were the first real punk rock bands in their respective countries. Personally, I think the Sex Pistols were more of an idea, with the Ramones actually having some real musical talent.

The album, though nowhere near a commercial success, was loved by the critics. The Village Voice’s normally hard-to-impress Robert Christgau confided, “I love this record—love it... For me, it blows everything else off the radio.” (Interestingly, the album was just covers of other songs – no originals.)

Eventually, the band would be elected into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame (but so were the Sex Pistols), get a Lifetime Grammy Achievement Award, and actually be ranked by Spin as the 2nd greatest band of all time (I might have to disagree with that last one). And to top it all, of course, “Blitzkrieg Bop” – with its chorus of “Hey, ho!  Let’s go!” – would eventually be right up there with “Rock ‘n Roll, Part2,” “We Will Rock You,” and “Seven Nation Army” as a popular number at sporting events. 

The band was Johnny (John William Cummings), Joey (Jeffrey Ross Hyman), Tommy (Tamas Erdelyi), Dee Dee (Douglas Glen Colvin)

<#11