RAMONES - "Judy Is a Punk" - RAMONES trailblazing rock and roll discography (1976 album Ramones)

RAMONES - "Judy Is a Punk" - RAMONES trailblazing rock and roll discography (1976 album Ramones)

Judy Is a Punk" is the third song from the Ramones' debut studio album released on April 23, 1976 by Sire Records. This is such a cheeky song. It makes fun of quite a few things. Rather than re-singing a second verse, Joey explicitly announces: "Second verse, same as the first..." and "Third verse, different from the first." Here again the Ramones are telling us that they don't like the pretentious 1970s fat, self-important, bloated rock music, that they prefer the upbeat, simple energy of the original rock and roll by explicitly quoting the line from Herman's Hermits’ “I'm Henry VIII, I Am." The Ramones also make fun of the rebellious youth, joining the Ice Capades as an absurdity but also a terrorist organization named the SLA (like joining the looting, stealing, violent street gangs of antifa, black lives matter, pro-hamas jew-hating gangs). What's going to happen to the violent punks? "Perhaps they'll die, oh yeah, Perhaps they'll die, oh yeah, Perhaps they'll die, oh yeah, Perhaps they'll die, oh yeah." The Ramones even added hand clappping because why not!

The Ramones ignited a massive fire in all of rock music, making fast songs the general mode of operation—a 29-minute lightning strike against pretentious, bloated, self-indulgent rock (like ten-minute in-concert bass solos) and disco. They stripped away the blues, prog, and pretension to return to the upbeat, fast energy of young American 1950s rock and roll and early 1960s American upbeat girl groups. The Ramones delivered catchy, melodic, rapid-fire tempos, buzzsaw guitar chords, no look-at-me solos, and minimalistic lyrics. They were returning to the original spirit of teenage American rock and roll and its culture: leather jackets, ripped blue jeans, sneakers, bowl-cut hair, 1950s movie street gangs, greasers, juvenile delinquents, and the disaffected, bored, suburban teenage outcast. Johnny Ramone once said, "When you think of who punks are, they're greasers, people who didn't fit in, but they didn't back down either. Who above all, love America." To Johnny Ramone, anti-Americanism, anarchism, anti-patriotism, political violence, and resentment—all those types of discourse—were literally foreign to his American way of thinking, much like the way British punk rock completely misunderstood the Ramones. RAMONES - "Judy Is A Punk"