The Ramones Greatest Hits Full Album

[Marketta Carucci]

Its time we reclaimed our favorite greatest hits albums and praised them for what they are: not the last word on a band, for sure, but an essential highlights reel that delivers pleasure after pleasure, with the least percentage of nonessential fat attached.

Erin Keane is Salon's Chief Content Officer. She is also on faculty at the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University and her memoir in essays, "Runaway: Notes on the Myths That Made Me," was named one of NPR's Books We Loved In 2022.

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Rocking a fuzzy bucket hat, chunky gold chain and a fur-lined, poofy pink jacket, Missy Elliott sits on a cinder block in front of a brick wall, seated next to an old-school boombox. Like the thematic content of Under Construction, the cover harks back to the golden age of hip-hop while still moving boldly into the future; despite the imagery, Elliott leans forward, eying something in the distance, always looking for the next thing.

The pop polymath and electronic music pioneer broke new ground with his synth- and sequencer-heavy solo album (separate from his work with YMO) and the cover art gives a vaguely surrealist impression of his creative mind; Hosono gazes serenely into the future as his hairline disappears into a pine forest skyline, with a glorious, heavenly collection of clouds hanging overhead.

Leading up to her debut album, the genre-blurring FKA Twigs made a name for herself on stunning visuals: music videos, EP covers, and even magazine shoots. This porcelain-sheen headshot was an exquisite introduction to the wonder of her music.

In 1969, artist Andy Warhol was approached by the Rolling Stones to create the cover art for their upcoming greatest hits album, Through the Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2). Whatever Warhol created for the set was seemingly never used, but his concept of employing a working zipper on an album cover came to fruition on the cover of Sticky Fingers. With photographs by Warhol (focused on the bulging jeans of a still-unidentified male model) and graphic design by Craig Braun, the set would earn a Grammy Award nomination for best album cover.

A nod to the Afrofuturism of artists like Sun Ra, the artwork for Fear of a Black Planet was conceived by Chuck D, who imagined the titular Black planet eclipsing earth. Appropriately, given the interplanetary concept, the group hired NASA illustrator B.E. Johnson to draw the final design.

The innocence of a baby-sized Biggie on the cover of his classic debut Ready to Die contradicted the lyrical content inside. But that was the point: the album traced his life from beginning to a mournful, foreshadowing end, using the innocence of a child to illustrate how a cruel world imprints on unmolded minds.

The Ramones are one of a handful of bands that I can distinctly remember hearing for the first time, that I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing: I was a teenager in Southern California, in my soon-to-be friend Lance's car, accompanying him and my friend Kristine to a midnight screening of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

Lance and Kristine bounced joyously to the music, singing along gleefully as the car turned onto Pacific Coast Highway. I was transfixed. And maybe a little freaked out. But mostly transfixed. The wash of what I'd eventually learn were the band's greatest hits wafted from the cassette deck: "I Wanna Be Sedated," "Rockaway Beach," "Sheena is a Punk Rocker" and the '50s-esque "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend."

Fourteen years into the 21st century, that lyric sounds almost quaint. The late '70s are a long way away, but for many music lovers, particularly fans of punk rock and the genres it later influenced, The Ramones and the swirl of energy and creativity around them were as significant a flashpoint as hearing the Beatles or Elvis Presley was for others.

"Mayor" L.B. Worm, an icon of the local punk scene, describes the concert in an Internet exchange as "the loudest show I ever attended. Had to hold your fingers in your ears to make out the songs." Coming from him, that's quite a statement! Local poet Tony Brown, frontman of The Duende Project, described the show as "Loud and glorious."

"The thing I remember most," says local music promoter Deborah Beaudry, "is when an overzealous fan tried to grab Johnny's leg and he kicked him in the face. I looked at Johnny, he looked at me and I shrugged and rolled my eyes. He actually smiled and laughed. The only time I saw that look on his face in person, ever."

The E.M. Lowes show was apparently the only time they played in Worcester, although there's some uncertainty on that front. Goslow says he believes the band was scheduled to play at WPI in 1976, but the show was canceled because of controversy around the band's song "Now I Want to Sniff Some Glue." Former Telegram features editor Dave Mawson noted in a Facebook post that, in addition to seeing the Worcester show, he saw the band in the '70s at Shaboo in Willamantic, Conn., and Lupo's in Providence. Brown notes he saw them in Amherst. So even if they only came to Worcester once, the band maintained a regular presence in the region.

But very little about those recollections seem to be particularly about Erdelyi, do they? Perhaps it's that he left the band so early, even if he produced later albums such as "Road to Ruin" and "Too Tough to Die." Many of the obituaries that appeared in the wake of his death painted him as an almost forgotten member of the band, although most were quick to give him the lion's share of credit for conceiving of the band, putting it together and changing the sound of rock 'n' roll forever with the words "Hey ho, let's go": The first words of Erdelyi's "The Blitzkrieg Bop," the first song on the Ramones' first album. Those short, lightning-fast and devilishly whimsical songs proved an antidote for a genre of music that was quickly becoming more baroque, and losing touch with its roots.

"We're in The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame," said Erdelyi, in one of his last interviews, with The Village Voice. "That's amazing. We're in there, along with other great American musicians like Louis Armstrong. So you know? I think it shows everybody something. It turns out we knew what we were doing all along."

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