Hey Ho

I was uncertain whether or not I wanted to write about this book at all.  It is an interesting book to read and it hits a lot of the points I have come to expect from rock 'n roll memoirs, but I was hesitant because the Ramones have been such an important band to me in my life.  There isn't a lot that Marky relates that I didn't already know from reading other accounts, watching documentaries, and just absorbing it from the punk rock culture.
So I'll just drop this in here for what it's worth.  Read the book if you are inclined, it is worth the time.
The rest of this (hopefully) short post is going to be about the band and their music.
At this point, I think it is impossible to overstate the influence that the Ramones had on both punk rock and on rock and roll in general.  The sound, the look, the song structure, the attitude, all of it has been copied over and over with varying degrees of success.  I first started listening to the Ramones when I was in high school, around the same time that I began discovering a lot of other punk rock.  They weren't the first band I listened to, or even the one that I listened to the most, but they were always in rotation in our group of friends.  But my first contact with the Ramones goes back even further.  In fact, I don't remember a time when I actually first discovered or first heard the Ramones because they seemed to just always be around.  I remember joking with my brother about this weird band that might all be brothers because they all had the same last name, knowing nothing else about them.  I might have been 10 or 11 at the time.  Once I started getting into punk rock, they were a group like MC5, the Stooges, and others that were the originators of the sound.  But, this was the early 1990s and there were also a lot of imitators that we heard as well.  This is all to say that now, after having listened to the band's music for 25+ years, I have a different appreciation for it.  When I was young I was drawn to the Ramones for the simplicity and the raw energy of their music.  This is still a draw, but I think that there is a kind of genius in the sincerity of this straight-forward rock style.  The Ramones were never overtly political but the message that they conveyed through their style took on a greater significance than the simplicity of the lyrics would suggest.  I realize that there is probably not a lot I can say about this band that is new, but a lot of their early songs defined a sort of ironic punk detachment that has run through the whole scene.  Their stance and image was cool and it let you know that they didn't care whether you liked them or not.  The Ramones were just the Ramones and you had to deal with it on their terms, or not.
I did get to see the Ramones play live one time.  I was maybe 15 or 16 years old and my brother took me to see a show in Cleveland.  The headliner was White Zombie and the Ramones were opening.  Joey leaned out over the crowd, his foot up on the monitor in front of him.  The song I remember the most from the set is "Pet Sematary."  The set was fast and they powered through a number of their classic songs. 
Thinking back on that day, I am glad that I had the chance to see them.  Growing up where I did, I got to see a lot of bands play, and I still see a decent amount.  This makes me glad.  It reminds me that there is still a collective way to absorb art with like-minded folks.  I think this is a lot of what the Ramones did for pop music and for punk.