The End of the Century

The New York Times and Salon.com review The End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones. From the Salon story:

The passion of fans, unfortunately, doesn't always add up to actual dollars. But even if the Ramones never got to live like rock stars, there's no doubt that they were rock stars of the highest order. Fields and Gramaglia are never cavalier about the band members' fractious relationship. If anything, their movie is imbued with a sense of gratitude that the Ramones would suffer so much internal bitterness in order to give us, their fans, so much rock 'n' roll bliss.

Listen to the demos below, taken from their self-titled reissue, with bonus tracks. Isn't there a place, even today, for hard-driving songs (guitar, bass, drums) with 3 chords and simple lyrics? These songs are certainly more moving than the pseudo-poetry you find in some of the indie music you hear today, destined for insignificance in three to five years. It's all about the sincerity of what they were doing. The Ramones rocked like they meant it, and we sweated with them in our leather jackets.

mp3: Judy is a Punk (Demo)
mp3: I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend (Demo)