Reviewed by Beth Squires
Stars Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, Tommy,
Marky, Richie and C-Jay
UK certification Exempt
UK RRP £24.99
DVD Region 2
Runtime 262 minutes
From early scratchily-taped performances at legendary venue CBGBs, to playing on British stalwart pop shows like The Old Grey Whistle Test and Top of the Pop, this is a fantastic DVD box-set that compiles a huge stream of live highlights of The Ramones' long and varied career. The main event is the brilliant New Years Eve 1977 concert at the Rainbow in London, playing out in its full glory. There's more than four hours of unreleased footage and rare performances to jog your memory of the decades they were together, or to discover for the first time if you're a younger fan.
Sifting through the many performances for this review was nowhere near a chore; it was exhilarating — even hearing them shout 'Hey Ho, Let's Go!' for the 50th time didn't get tiring. Perhaps this is due to how fresh and current they sound; there are so many artists around now that have been 'inspired' by the first family of punk, and not only in sound but in style – super-skinny jeans, leather jackets... a classic rock look. Sixty-five individual song performances have been carefully chosen and compiled over the last four years for this DVD collection, with Tommy Ramone overseeing everything. It's fascinating being taken back to New York's tiny nightspots in the early 70s and watching them perform in a cramped corner (proving a hindrance to really rocking out) and then moving on to the huge stages of the later shows, proving the how far the originally underground punk band managed to go with their punk-pop music. Blitzkrieg Bop, I Wanna Be Sedated, I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend, Sheena Is A Punk Rocker... the songs are all so familiar and so energetically performed, you can't help but be swept along in the memories these songs evoke. Whether those memories are from the first time round, or more recently! We'll never see the original line-up perform again, but this DVD box-set gets you halfway there… A must for any music fan in my opinion, this is a great collection to dip in and out of.
EXTRAS *** On top of all this great live music there are some extras, which include a bunch of interviews with the band, some apparently rare music videos and a photo gallery that rounds off this collectors set, providing some great insight into the men behind the music. It's hard to say that this isn't comprehensive enough when there's over four hours of music etc on these two discs... so I won't say that, the extras do allow some useful contextualisation of the main event's music.