Vector Ramones
The Ramones were the first punk band I ever heard. Weirdly enough, it was a music video for their cover of the Who song “Substitute,” that I saw on a late night, public access show called PUNK TV that I just so happened to randomly click to on the remote, likely while waiting for the commercials during USA Up All Night With Rhonda to be over so my pre-teen brain could be pounded to goo by Troma movies.
Little did I know then that my flippant control of the TV remote would change my life.
I was fucking captivated by these weirdo dudes with matching haircuts and leather jackets. This was vastly different than the Amy Grant and Phil Collins CDs my dad scattered through the house from Columbia House order scams.
This. Was. Amazing.
The title at the end of the video said the song was contained on the album “Acid Eaters,” their late-career covers album, but I didn’t know that, I just knew I needed to hear more, and the only way I was going to get that done in the early-mid nineties was to ask my folks to get this Acid Eaters album for me for Christmas, which they did, under the guise of Santa Clause, likely to recuse my mother of ever having to acknowledge she bought me something with a bunch of long-haired weirdos pouring out of some freaks eyeballs on the cover.
And that was it. I was off to the punk races. I’d watch PUNK TV as much as I could and shortly after that Green Day showed up and blew punk into the stratosphere and me along with it.
I still listen to the Ramones, constantly. They’re the go to band if I don’t know what to listen to. They were, and are, the greatest band of all time.