Ramones — Leave Home (1977)

Punk stalwarts start a whole new genre with their second album?

Cover art for “Leave Home”, the second album from Ramones, released in 1978

As much as I griped about the content of Paige Owens’ “book”, I feel an obligation to give her credit in the instances where it might be due. She certainly starts her list of 500 Essential Pop-Punk Albums with a solid entry. If I can have a legitimate beef with her beginning her project where she does, it would be that there’s no discernible logic to starting with Ramones second album and not their first. Musically, there is almost no progression between Ramones and Leave Home, so it’s difficult for Ms. Owens to claim that the first-ever pop-punk album came out a year after a record that sounds exactly like it.

Let’s face it: one of the things that makes Ramones such a great band in the first place is that they always sound like Ramones. They are nothing if they are not consistent. I could, in theory, rewrite the last sentence of the last paragraph by replacing Ramones and Leave Home with the titles of their third and fourth albums (Rocket to Russia and Road To Ruin, respectively) without changing the sentiment of the point I’m trying to make. It’s certainly a hallmark of their history and, as a trait, it’s totally unique to them. The closest approximation I can come up with for a band that is this sonically consistent (and remained so seemingly forever) is AC/DC. Australia’s most-famous rockers are not even remotely close to being a punk band. Awesome? No doubt. Punk? No way.

When I first became enamored of Ramones, I would have not considered them “pop.” The girl who introduced me to them — I was casually dating her — certainly did not consider them as such. She would have dumped me had I even tried to make the claim. She actively abhorred most late 90s/early2000s mainstream radio-ready punk and classified almost all of it as an abomination against the legacy of a band like Ramones. Even without the fear of not getting laid, though, I wouldn’t have equated Ramones with the bands I loved at the time (Green Day, Offspring, et al.). I suppose my definition of “pop” has evolved over time.

Back then, my definition of “pop” was characterized by catchy melodies. Since the sheet music of a Ramones vocal line doesn’t stray too far from the note it started on, the “melodies” of Ramones songs were, to my ears, intentionally without melody. Pop music always struck me as somewhat vocal-driven, but Joey Ramone was a truly deadpan, nasal vocalist, making it difficult to decipher all of the lyrics. Pop music has commercial appeal, right? I almost never heard Ramones songs on the radio. When I did, the lyrics of said song were unrelatable (Twenty, twenty, twenty-four hours to go/I wanna be sedated/Nothing to do, nowhere to go/I wanna be sedated). Ramones compositions are repetitive, aggressive, and not at all like the fun, euphonious symphony of sound that was pervasive, crossing genre into multiple sections of the local radio tuner.

Since the 90s, when my true interest in them began— and I’m talking about a serious interest, not a casual one — I have collected and listened to enough Ramones vinyl, been exposed to enough of the bands that claim to be inspired by them, that I have changed my tune, as it were, to where Ramones lie on the punk spectrum. They are, without question, miles more aggressive than the bands the public might immediately think of when prompted to name a pop-punk ensemble, but their melodies do get stuck in your head. The chorus of the first track on Leave Home is downright infectious (You gotta go go go go goodbye/Glad to see you go go go go goodbye/Glad to see you go go go go goodbye . . .). The refrain of the fourth track (Oh oh, I love her so/Oh oh, I love her so/Oh oh, I love her so . . .) is pleasantly repetitive, rendering it an earworm impossible to ignore. If I had heard “Swallow My Pride” back in 1995, I would have never denied this band any status in the realm of pop-punk. Track nine (and probably my favorite song on the entire record) has vocal harmonies and handclaps. With a cleaner delivery than the eight songs before it, “Swallow My Pride” presents as a pure gob of bubblegum. Two tracks later, we are in the midst of a 1–2–3–4 blast of early surf rock as filtered through a blast of high-octane New York City punk with a blistering cover of Joe Jones’ “California Sun”.

Yeah, Leave Home is a pop-punk record all right. But so is Ramones. And Rocket to Russia. And Road to Ruin. That’s all I’m saying.