Ramones

The Ramones — four unrelated men from Forest Hills, Queens, who all took the surname “Ramone” — formed in 1974 as a conscious reaction against everything that rock had become: the concept albums, the extended solos, the stadium productions. Their prescription was radical minimalism. Two minutes. Three chords. Fast. Loud. Done.

Their debut album Ramones (1976) — fourteen songs in twenty-nine minutes, recorded in seventeen hours — was one of the most influential records of the decade, selling poorly on release but sending shock waves through every city it reached. In the UK it convinced the young musicians who became the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Buzzcocks that they could make records. In the US it ignited the CBGB scene that had already been gathering around Television, Patti Smith and Talking Heads.

The Ramones maintained their formula with unusual consistency across fourteen studio albums: Joey Ramone’s adenoidal melodies, Johnny Ramone’s down-stroked power chord attack, Dee Dee Ramone’s bass and shouted countoffs. They toured relentlessly — 2,263 concerts in 22 years — without ever having a Top 40 hit. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. For this graph they are the zero point of punk rock: the act that made the template.