Road to Ruin

by

Ramones

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Don't listen to the likes of Legs McNeil (whose inappropriate liner notes all but damn this album as some kind of sell-out. Note to Rhino: why be so apologetic?). The fact is, you can pretty much defend any Ramones album as being their best, well beyond the indisputable classics of the 1970s (my other favorites - "Halfway to Sanity," "Brain Drain," and "Adios Amigos," none of which are considered great by allegedly in-the-know rock critics). In many ways, "Road to Ruin" is their best album, the one that truly marks the end of an era for the band, their euphoric highs with their disenchanted lows. It mixes strung-out nihilism with gooey bubblegum so deftly that its simplicity, once again, somehow managed to fly way over people's heads. In any case, the greatest punk was founded on bubblegum aesthetics, and the Ramones knew this better than anyone on the planet at the time...and "It's A Long Way Back" is the greatest album closer ever.

This is a weird record. On the one hand, it's got some fantastic tunes, such as "I Just Wanna Have Something to Do", "I Wanted Everything" and "I Wanna be Sedated" -- but it's also has some truly horrible, misguided songs that reek of parody ("I'm Against It", "Go Mental") or, worse yet, expose the band's limited reach (the cringe-worthy ballad "Questioningly"). Plus, although this was only the 4th album, the boys sound jaded and more than a tad bored for much of this -- and I'm not talking about the ironic boredom of the detached hipster pose of the first couple of records, either. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted....