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Ramones
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The Ramones were an American rock band often regarded as the first punk rock group. Formed in Forest Hills, Queens, New York, in 1974, all of the band members adopted stage names ending with "Ramone", though none of them were actually related. They performed 2,263 concerts, touring virtually nonstop for 22 years. In 1996, after a tour with the Lollapalooza music festival, the band played a farewell show and disbanded. A little more than eight years after the breakup, the band's three founding members—lead singer Joey Ramone, guitarist Johnny Ramone, and bassist Dee Dee Ramone—were dead.
The Ramones were a major influence on the punk rock movement both in the United States and Great Britain, though they achieved only minor commercial success.
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The Ramones were an American rock band often regarded as the first punk rock group. Formed in Forest Hills, Queens, New York, in 1974, all of the band members adopted stage names ending with "Ramone", though none of them were actually related. They performed 2,263 concerts, touring virtually nonstop for 22 years. In 1996, after a tour with the Lollapalooza music festival, the band played a farewell show and disbanded. A little more than eight years after the breakup, the band's three founding members—lead singer Joey Ramone, guitarist Johnny Ramone, and bassist Dee Dee Ramone—were dead.
The Ramones were a major influence on the punk rock movement both in the United States and Great Britain, though they achieved only minor commercial success. Their only record with enough U.S. sales to be certified gold was the compilation album Ramones Mania. Recognition of the band's importance built over the years, and they are now regularly represented in many assessments of all-time great rock music, such as the Rolling Stone lists of the 50 Greatest Artists of All Time and 25 Greatest Live Albums of All Time, VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock, and Mojos 100 Greatest Albums. In 2002, the Ramones were voted the second greatest rock and roll band ever in Spin, trailing only The Beatles. On March 18, 2002, the Ramones—including the three founders and drummers Marky and Tommy Ramone—were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
History
Early days: 1974–1975
The original members of the band met in and around the middle-class neighborhood of Forest Hills in the New York City borough of Queens. John Cummings and Thomas Erdelyi had both been in a high-school garage band in 1966–67 known as the Tangerine Puppets. They became friends with Douglas Colvin, whose family had recently moved to the area. Jeffrey Hyman was in the short-lived early 1970s glam rock band Sniper.
The Ramones began taking shape in early 1974 when Cummings and Colvin invited Hyman to join them in a band. The initial lineup featured Colvin on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Cummings on lead guitar, and Hyman on drums. Colvin, who soon switched from rhythm guitar to bass, was the first to adopt the name Ramone, dubbing himself Dee Dee Ramone. He was inspired by Paul McCartney's use of the pseudonym Paul Ramone during his Silver Beatles days. Dee Dee convinced the other members to take on the name and came up with the idea of calling the band the Ramones. Hyman and Cummings became Joey Ramone and Johnny Ramone, respectively.
A friend of the band—Monte A. Melnick, later their tour manager—helped to arrange rehearsal time for them at Manhattan's Performance Studios, where he worked. Johnny's former bandmate Erdelyi was set to become their manager. Soon after the band was formed, Dee Dee realized that he could not sing and play bass at the same time; with Erdelyi's encouragement, Joey became the band's new lead vocalist. Dee Dee would continue, however, to count off each song's tempo with his signature rapid-fire shout of "1-2-3-4!" Joey soon similarly realized that he could not sing and play drums simultaneously and left the position of drummer. While auditioning prospective replacements, Erdelyi would often take to the drums and demonstrate how to play the songs. It became apparent that he was able to perform the group's music better than anyone else, and he joined the band as Tommy Ramone.
The Ramones played before an audience for the first time on March 30, 1974, at their rehearsal space. The songs they played were very fast and very short; most clocked in at under two minutes. Around this time, a new music scene was emerging in New York centered around two clubs in downtown Manhattan—Max's Kansas City and, most famously, CBGB (usually referred to as CBGB's). The Ramones made their CBGB's debut on August 16. Legs McNeil, who co-founded Punk magazine the following year, later described the impact of that performance: "They were all wearing these black leather jackets. And they counted off this song...and it was just this wall of noise…. They looked so striking. These guys were not hippies. This was something completely new."
The band swiftly became regulars at the club, playing there seventy-four times by the end of the year. After garnering considerable attention for their performances—which averaged about seventeen minutes from beginning to end—the group was signed to a recording contract in autumn 1975 by Seymour Stein of Sire Records. Stein's wife, Linda Stein, had seen the band play at CBGB's; she would later co-manage them along with Danny Fields. By this time, the Ramones were recognized as leaders of the new scene that was increasingly being referred to as "punk".
Spearheading punk: 1976–1977
In February 1976, the Ramones recorded their self-titled debut album—of its fourteen songs, the longest barely surpasses two-and-a-half minutes. While the songwriting credits were shared by the entire band, Dee Dee was the primary writer. The record, coproduced by Tommy and Craig Leon on an extremely low budget, about $6,400, was released in April. The now iconic front cover photograph of the band was taken by Roberta Bayley, who shot regularly for Punk magazine.
Ramones made little commercial impact, reaching only number 111 on the Billboard album chart. The two associated singles, "Blitzkrieg Bop" and "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend", failed to chart at all. At the band's first major gig outside of New York, a June date in Youngstown, Ohio, approximately ten people showed up. It wasn't until they made a brief tour of England that they began to see the fruits of their labor: a performance at The Roundhouse in London on July 4, 1976 (second-billed to the Flamin' Groovies), organized by Linda Stein, was a resounding success. Their Roundhouse appearance and a club date the following night helped galvanize the burgeoning UK punk rock scene, inspiring members of the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Damned. The Flamin' Groovies/Ramones double bill was successfully reprised at The Roxy in Los Angeles the following month, fueling the punk scene there as well. The Ramones were becoming an increasingly popular live act—a Toronto performance in September energized yet another growing punk scene.
Their next two albums, Leave Home and Rocket to Russia, were released in 1977. Both were coproduced by Tommy and Tony Bongiovi, the second cousin of Jon Bon Jovi. Leave Home met with even less chart success than Ramones, though it did include "Pinhead", which became one of the band's signature songs with its chanted refrain of "Gabba gabba hey!" Rocket to Russia was the band's highest charting album to date, reaching number 49. In Rolling Stone, critic Dave Marsh called it "the best American rock & roll of the year". The album also featured the first Ramones single to break into the Billboard charts (albeit only as high as number 81): "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker". The follow-up single, "Rockaway Beach", climbed to number 66—the highest any Ramones single would ever reach in America. On December 31, 1977, the Ramones recorded It's Alive, a live concert double album, at the Rainbow Theatre, London, which was released in April 1979 (the title is a reference to a 1974 horror movie).
Recordings turn more pop: 1978–1983
In early 1978, Tommy, tired of touring, left the band. He continued as the Ramones' record producer, however, under his birthname of Erdelyi. His position as drummer was filled by Marc Bell, who had been a member of the early 1970s hard rock band Dust and punk icon Richard Hell's backing band, The Voidoids. Bell became Marky Ramone. Later that year, the band released their fourth album, and first with Marky, Road to Ruin. The album, coproduced by Tommy with Ed Stasium, included some new sounds like acoustic guitar, several ballads, and the band's first two recorded songs longer than three minutes. It failed to crack the Billboard Top 100. However, "I Wanna Be Sedated", which appeared both on the album and as the B-side of a single, would become one of the band's best-known songs. The artwork on the album's cover was done by Punk magazine co-founder John Holmstrom.
After the band's movie debut in Roger Corman's Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979), legendary producer Phil Spector became interested in the Ramones and produced their 1980 album End of the Century. During the recording sessions in Los Angeles, Spector pulled a gun on Dee Dee, forcing him to repeatedly play a riff. Though End of the Century was to be the highest-charting album in the band's history—number 44 in the United States, number 14 in Great Britain—Johnny made clear that he favored the band's more aggressive punk material. (A stance also conveyed by the title and track selection of the compilation album he later oversaw: Loud, Fast Ramones: Their Toughest Hits.) He later commented on working with Spector, "It really worked when he got to a slower song like 'Danny Says'—the production really worked tremendously. 'Rock 'N' Roll Radio' is really good. For the harder stuff, it didn't work as well."
In 1981, the Ramones' sixth album, Pleasant Dreams, came out. The record continued the trend established by End of The Century, diluting the rawer punk sound showcased on the band's initial three albums. Slick production was again featured, this time provided by Graham Gouldman of UK pop act 10cc. Johnny would contend in retrospect that this direction was a record company decision, a continued futile attempt to get airplay on American radio. While Pleasant Dreams reached number 58 on the U.S. chart, its two singles failed to register at all. On August 1, 1981, however, the Ramones became the first band to be interviewed on the newly formed cable network MTV, which temporarily provided a more receptive outlet for the band's music.
Subterranean Jungle, produced by Ritchie Cordell and Glen Kolotkin, was released in 1983. Billy Rogers, who had performed with Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers, played drums on the album's second single, a cover of The Chambers Brothers' "Time Has Come Today". Subterranean Jungle peaked at number 83 in the United States—it would be the last album by the band to crack the Billboard Top 100.
Shuffling members: 1983–1989
After the release of Subterranean Jungle, Marky Ramone was fired from the band because of his alcoholism. He was replaced by Richard Reinhardt, who adopted the name Richie Ramone. The first album the Ramones recorded with Richie was Too Tough to Die in 1984, with Tommy Erdelyi returning as producer. The album was largely considered a return to form after the unflattering pop-production techniques that characterized the previous three full-length releases. Some rock critics contend that it represents their final high-quality album. The band's main release of 1985 was the British single "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg"; though it was available in the United States only as an import, it was played widely on American college radio. The song was written by Joey in protest of Ronald Reagan's visit to a German military cemetery where SS members were buried.
Retitled "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)", the song appeared on the band's 1986 album, Animal Boy. Produced by Jean Beauvoir, formerly a member of the Plasmatics, the LP was characterized by a Rolling Stone reviewer as "nonstop primal fuzz pop". The following year, the band recorded their last album with Richie, Halfway to Sanity. The record was produced by Daniel Rey, formerly a guitarist with the late-1970s punk band Shrapnel. Richie left in August 1987, upset that after being in the band for four years, the other members would still not give him a share of the money they made selling T-shirts. Richie was replaced by Clem Burke from Blondie, which was disbanded at the time. According to Johnny, the performances with Burke—who took on the name Elvis Ramone—were a disaster. He was fired after two shows because his drumming could not keep up with the rest of the band. Marky, now clean and sober, returned.
Dee Dee Ramone left after 1989's Brain Drain—coproduced by Beauvoir, Rey, and Bill Laswell—to pursue a brief solo career as a rapper, adopting the name Dee Dee King. He was replaced by Christopher Joseph Ward (C.J. Ramone), who performed and recorded with the band until their break-up. However, Dee Dee continued contributing to the Ramones' music by lending his lyrics for use.
Final years: 1990–1996
After more than a decade and a half at Sire Records, the Ramones moved to a new label, Radioactive Records. The band's first album for Radioactive, released in 1992, was Mondo Bizarro, which reunited them with producer Ed Stasium. Acid Eaters, consisting entirely of cover songs, came out the following year. In 1993 as well, the Ramones were featured on an episode of The Simpsons titled "Rosebud", providing the music and voices for their animated versions. Booked to sing "Happy Birthday" at a party for industrialist Mr. Burns, the cartoon version of the band demonstrates its distaste for the job with various shouted invectives: "I'd just like to say this gig sucks!" (Joey), "Hey, up yours, Springfield!" (Johnny), and "Go to Hell, you old bastard!" (C.J.). On the other hand, the cartoon Marky quips, "Hey, I think they liked us!" Afterward, a confused Mr. Burns orders his assistant Smithers to "have The Rolling Stones killed."
In 1995, the Ramones came out with ¡Adios Amigos!, announcing that they planned to break up if the album was not a hit. Its sales were unremarkable, garnering it just two weeks on the lower end of the Billboard chart. The band spent the latter part of 1995 on what was promoted as a farewell tour. However, they accepted an offer to appear in the sixth Lollapalooza festival, which toured around the United States during the following summer. After the Lollapalooza tour's conclusion, the Ramones played their final show on August 6, 1996, at the Palace in Hollywood. A recording of the concert was later released on video and CD as We're Outta Here! In addition to a reappearance by Dee Dee, the show featured several guests including Motörhead's Lemmy, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, Soundgarden's Chris Cornell, and Rancid's Tim Armstrong and Lars Frederiksen.
Aftermath and deaths
On July 20, 1999, Dee Dee, Johnny, Joey, Tommy, Marky, and C.J. appeared together at the Virgin Megastore in New York City for an autograph signing. This was the last occasion on which the original four members of the group appeared together. Joey, who had been diagnosed with lymphoma in 1995, died of the illness on April 15, 2001, in New York.
In 2002, the Ramones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which specifically named Dee Dee, Johnny, Joey, Tommy, and Marky. At the ceremony, the surviving inductees spoke on behalf of the band. Tommy spoke first, saying how honored the band felt, but how much it would have meant for Joey. Johnny thanked the band's fans and blessed George W. Bush and his presidency, Dee Dee humorously congratulated and thanked himself, while Marky thanked Tommy for influencing his drum style. Green Day played "Teenage Lobotomy" and "Blitzkrieg Bop" as a tribute, demonstrating the Ramones' continuing influence on later rock musicians. The ceremony was one of Dee Dee's last public appearances; on June 5, 2002, two months later, he was found at his Hollywood home, dead from a heroin overdose.
In the summer of 2004, the Ramones documentary End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones was released in theaters. Johnny, who had been privately battling prostate cancer, died on September 15, 2004, in Los Angeles, almost exactly as the film was released. On the same day as Johnny's death, the world's first Ramones Museum opened its doors to the public. Located in Berlin, Germany, the museum features more than 300 items of memorabilia, including a pair of stage-worn jeans from Johnny, a stage-worn glove from Joey, Marky's sneakers, and C.J.'s stage-worn bass strap.
The Ramones were inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2007. That October saw the release of a DVD set containing concert footage of the band: It's Alive 1974-1996 includes 118 songs from 33 performances over the span of the group's career.
Conflicts between members
Tensions between Joey and Johnny colored much of the Ramones' career. The pair were politically antagonistic, Joey being a liberal and Johnny a conservative. Their personalities also clashed: Johnny was a military brat who lived by a code of self-discipline, while Joey struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Johnny, who was fascinated by the Nazis and Adolf Hitler, would sometimes torment Joey with anti-Semitic remarks. In the early 1980s, Johnny "stole" Joey's girlfriend Linda, whom he later married. As a consequence, despite performing together for years afterward, Joey and Johnny stopped speaking to each other. Johnny did not call Joey before his death in 2001, but said in the documentary End of the Century that he was depressed for "the whole week" after the singer passed away.
Aside from this central conflict, Dee Dee's bipolar disorder and repeated relapses into drug addiction also caused significant strains. Tommy left the band partly in reaction to being "physically threatened by Johnny, treated with contempt by Dee Dee, and all but ignored by Joey". As new members joined, payment methods and image representation became matters of serious dispute.
Style
Musical style
The Ramones' loud, fast, straightforward musical style was influenced by pop music that the band members grew up listening to in the 1950s and 1960s, including classic rock groups such as The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Kinks, and The Rolling Stones; bubblegum acts like the 1910 Fruitgum Company and Ohio Express; and girl groups such as The Ronettes and The Shangri-Las. They also drew on the harder rock sound of The Stooges and the New York Dolls, both now known as seminal protopunk bands. The Ramones' style was in part a reaction against the heavily produced, often bombastic music that dominated the pop charts in the 1970s. "We decided to start our own group because we were bored with everything we heard," Joey once explained. "In 1974 everything was tenth-generation Led Zeppelin, tenth-generation Elton John, or overproduced, or just junk. Everything was long jams, long guitar solos.... We missed music like it used to be." Ira Robbins and Scott Isler of Trouser Press describe the result:
As leaders in the punk rock scene, the Ramones' music has usually been identified with that label, while some have defined their characteristic style more specifically as pop punk and others as power pop. In the 1980s, the band sometimes veered into hardcore punk territory, as can be heard on Too Tough to Die.
On stage, the band adopted a focused approach directly intended to increase the audience's concert experience. Johnny's instructions to C.J. when preparing for his first live performances with the group were to play facing the audience, to stand with the bass slung low between spread legs, and to walk forward to the front of stage at the same time as he did. Johnny was not a fan of guitarists who performed facing their drummer, amplifier, or other band members.
Visual imagery
The Ramones' art and visual imagery complemented the themes of their music and performance. The band members adopted a uniform look of long hair, leather jackets, t-shirts, torn jeans, and sneakers. This fashion emphasized minimalism, which was a powerful influence on the New York punk scene of the 1970s and reflected the band's short, simple songs. Tommy Ramone recalled that, both musically and visually, "we were influenced by comic books, movies, the Andy Warhol scene, and avant-garde films. I was a big Mad Magazine fan myself."
The band's logo was created by New York City artist Arturo Vega, a longtime friend who had allowed Joey and Dee Dee to move into his loft. Vega produced the band's t-shirts, their main source of income, basing most of the images on a black-and-white self-portrait photograph he had taken of his American bald eagle belt buckle which had appeared on the back sleeve of the Ramones' first album. He was inspired to create the band's logo after a trip to Washington, D.C.:
I saw them as the ultimate all-American band. To me, they reflected the American character in general—an almost childish innocent aggression.... I thought, 'The Great Seal of the President of the United States' would be perfect for the Ramones, with the eagle holding arrows—to symbolize strength and the aggression that would be used against whomever dares to attack us—and an olive branch, offered to those who want to be friendly. But we decided to change it a little bit. Instead of the olive branch, we had an apple tree branch, since the Ramones were American as apple pie. And since Johnny was such a baseball fanatic, we had the eagle hold a baseball bat instead of the [Great Seal]'s arrows.
The scroll in the eagle's beak originally read "Look Out"/"Below". This was later changed to "Hey Ho"/"Let's Go" after the opening lyrics of the band's first single, "Blitzkrieg Bop". The arrowheads on the shield came from a design on a polyester shirt Vega had bought. The name "Ramones" was spelled out in block capitals above the logo using plastic stick-on letters. Where the presidential emblem read "Seal of the President of the United States" clockwise in the border around the eagle, Vega instead placed the stage names of the four band members: Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, and Tommy. Over the years the names in the border would change as the band's lineup fluctuated.
Influence
The Ramones had a broad and lasting influence on the development of popular music. Music historian Jon Savage writes of their debut album that "it remains one of the few records that changed pop forever." As described by Allmusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, "The band's first four albums set the blueprint for punk, especially American punk and hardcore, for the next two decades." Trouser Presss Robbins and Isler similarly write that the Ramones "not only spearheaded the original new wave/punk movement, but also drew the blueprint for subsequent hardcore punk bands". Writing for Slate in 2001, Douglas Wolk described the Ramones as "easily the most influential group of the last 30 years."
The Ramones' first British concert was held on July 4, 1976, the United States Bicentennial. Before the performance, the band hung out with fans including members of the Sex Pistols and The Clash, which was scheduled to make its public debut later that evening. During their encounter, Clash bassist Paul Simonon explained that his band had not played a show yet because they felt they were not good enough. Johnny Ramone responded, "We stink. You don't have to be good, just get out there and play." Another band whose members met with the Ramones that day, The Damned, played their first show two days later. The central fanzine of the early British punk scene, Sniffin' Glue, was named after the Ramones song "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue", which appeared on the band's debut album. Ramones concerts and recordings inspired many musicians central to the development of California punk as well, including Greg Ginn of Black Flag, Jello Biafra of Dead Kennedys, Mike Ness of Social Distortion, Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion, and members of The Descendents. Canada's first major punk scenes—in Toronto and in British Columbia's Victoria and Vancouver—were also heavily influenced by the Ramones.
In the late 1970s, many bands emerged with musical styles deeply indebted to the Ramones'. There were The Lurkers from England, The Undertones from Ireland, Teenage Head from Canada, and The Zeros from southern California. The seminal hardcore band Bad Brains took its name from a Ramones song. Later punk bands such as Screeching Weasel, The Vindictives, The Queers, The Mr. T Experience, Beatnik Termites, and Jon Cougar Concentration Camp have recorded cover versions of entire Ramones albums—Ramones, Leave Home, Rocket to Russia, Road to Ruin, Pleasant Dreams, and Too Tough to Die, respectively. The Huntingtons' File Under Ramones consists of Ramones covers from across the band's career. The Riverdales, made up of former Screeching Weasel members, have emulated the sound of the Ramones throughout their career.
The Ramones also influenced musicians associated with other genres, such as heavy metal. Metallica's Kirk Hammett has described the importance of Johnny's rapid-fire guitar playing style to his own musical development. Motörhead lead singer Lemmy, a friend of the Ramones since the late 1970s, mixed the band's "Go Home Ann" in 1985. The members of Motörhead later composed the song "R.A.M.O.N.E.S." as a tribute, and Lemmy performed at the final Ramones concert in 1996. The Polish blackened death metal band Behemoth covered the Ramones' "I'm Not Jesus" on 2008's Ezkaton. In the realm of alternative rock, the song "53rd and 3rd" lent its name to a British indie pop label cofounded by Stephen Pastel of the Scottish band The Pastels. Evan Dando of The Lemonheads, Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters, and The Strokes are among the many alternative rock musicians who have credited the Ramones with inspiring them.
The first Ramones tribute album by multiple bands was released in 1991: Gabba Gabba Hey: A Tribute to the Ramones features tracks by such acts as The Flesh Eaters, L7, Mojo Nixon, and Bad Religion. We're a Happy Family: A Tribute to Ramones (2003) is the best known Ramones tribute album, with artists such as Green Day, Kiss, The Offspring, Red Hot Chili Peppers, U2, Metallica, and Rob Zombie (who also did the album cover artwork). Green Day members have gone as far as naming their children in honor of the band. Billie Joe Armstrong named his son Joey as tribute to Joey Ramone, and Tré Cool named his daughter Ramona.
Band members
Former members
Lineups>| (1974) |
- Dee Dee Ramone – lead vocals, rhythm guitar/bass
- Johnny Ramone – guitar
- Joey Ramone – drums
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| (1974) | Joey Ramone – lead vocals, drumsJohnny Ramone – guitarDee Dee Ramone – bass |
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| (1974–1978) | Joey Ramone – lead vocalsJohnny Ramone – guitarDee Dee Ramone – bass, vocalsTommy Ramone – drums |
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| (1978–1983) | Joey Ramone – lead vocalsJohnny Ramone – guitarDee Dee Ramone – bass, vocalsMarky Ramone – drums |
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| (1983–1987) | Joey Ramone – lead vocalsJohnny Ramone – guitarDee Dee Ramone – bass, vocalsRichie Ramone – drums, vocals |
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| (1987) | Joey Ramone – lead vocalsJohnny Ramone – guitarDee Dee Ramone – bass, vocalsElvis Ramone (Clem Burke) – drums |
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| (1987–1989) | Joey Ramone – lead vocalsJohnny Ramone – guitarDee Dee Ramone – bass, vocalsMarky Ramone – drums |
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| (1989–1996) | Joey Ramone – lead vocalsJohnny Ramone – guitarC. J. Ramone – bass, vocalsMarky Ramone – drums |
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Discography
Studio albums
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