What can I say about The Ramones.........1,2,3,4, Hey, Ho, Lets Go. Absolutely nothing that hasn't been said before. No Ramones, No Busted, sad but true. The Ramones British debut was on American Independence day. It was a culturally significant event, all the early 'punk players' were in attendance. No Clash or Pistols, they were in Sheffield that night, they had to wait a day latter to see 'em at Dingwalls. It was the first chance they had to see their 'new heroes', der brudders Ramone. It's fitting that 10 years previous at The Roundhouse in 1966 Pink Floyd had played a launch party for IT a new London Underground magazine and in 1967 it also hosted The Dialectics of Liberation conference, with speakers such as; Herbert Marcusse and Stokey Carmichael, they later got a standing ovation, then announced to the hippy radicals that the speech he had just delivered was one of Adolf Hitlers'. That's Black Power for you. Mick Farrens 'Pronto-Punks', The Social Deviants played at this event. So there you have it, all the ingredients of 'British Punk' The Ramones leading the New York Invasion, the hippy/prog element, and some radical leftist thinking. Despite the Stalinist revision of history, the truth comes out in New Labour retrolution culture and it turns out some of the 'punk players' had a fondness for all things prog, and attended events at The Roundhouse when their hair was longer and their trousers wider. Thank Fuck for The Ramones. "We can't play. If you wait until you can play, you'll be too old to get up there."-Johnny Ramone

THE RAMONES @ THE ROUNDHOUSE 1976 - http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JKSTFRJ6