Hey! Gabba, Gabba Right Back Atcha

Album: Ramones, Leave Home, 1977 (cassette reissue)

Best Original Track: "Pinhead"

Best Cover: "California Sun"

Lasting Memory: One of the first real concerts I attended was a Ramones show at the Boathouse in Norfolk in July or August 1986. I was 16 at the time, spending my summer not dating, deciding not to continue playing football, and working 10 hours a day in a minimum-wage job as a warehouse laborer. In short, I was a standard-issue, postpubescent American loser.

The Pinhead came out on stage when the Ramones fired up on "Pinhead." It was exactly like not looking into a mirror, if you know what I mean.

I don't know, either, so don't sweat it.

What I think I'm trying to write is that the Ramones largely failed at fulfilling the raison d'être of a punk band, which is to capture and convey the alienation and anger of teenagedom.

The Ramones were always too damn much fun to be avatars of anomie. While the excellent band documentary End of the Century makes clear that the lads had more than their share of personal problems -- ranging from heroin addiction to social anxiety disorder and New York City Jewish liberalism -- those issues rarely came across in their performances, even when the performance was explicitly about those problems.

There was no wallowing in the Ramones discography. Catalog songs like "California Sun" did more than lighten the mood. They banished almost all the darkness.

No wonder "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker."

Up Next: Ramones, Rocket to Russia, 1977 (dub)