Upon hearing that the popular pop-punk band Blink-182 had broken up, I wondered, for a split-second, where I was going to get my fix of fast, loud punkish music. Then I realized I was being an idiot. I didn't like Blink-182 particularly and they weren't too great to begin with. Upon thinking about it some more, I realized that there is only one great punk band, and that band is The Ramones. If you don't know who The Ramones are, you shouldn't be allowed to live, or should stop reading this immediately, because this rant is about how great The Ramones are and you will be like a lost child adrift at sea with ravenous sharks at your heels if you read this and don't know who The Ramones are.

In the 1970s, disco and rock were competing on a furious stage for supremacy. Then out of left field came something new and different: punk. It was loud and angry and fast, almost a tribute to early rock music. But punk was different. There wasn't any particular skill behind it. All you had to do was grab a guitar, learn maybe two chords, crank your amp to 11 and play as fast as possible. But the music needed a band to back it up. That band was a group from the Queens area of New York City called the Ramones. They weren't too fast on the albums, but they produced a wall of pure noise when they played live. At the CBGB in New York, where the group played often, they once played 20 songs in 17 minutes. Most people would say, "That's impossible. Nobody can play that fast because I listen to boring music and I decided what is possible." Whoever says that is an idiot. The Ramones could play faster than the speed of light. The speed of light is roughly 3 times 10 to the eighth meters per second. THE RAMONES COULD PLAY FASTER THAN THAT! And the music, in addition to being extremely fast, was also ridiculously loud. Windows would shake for blocks surrounding a club wherever the Ramones played.  But being fast and loud is useless if your band is awful. The Ramones were excellent. All the songs may have sounded alike, but they were catchy and could have been played in the 1950s were it not for the fact that you could become deaf at a Ramones’ concert. The band occasionally covered bubblegum classics such as "Let's dance" and "California Sun," proving that they could play anything in the loud, angry style that made them famous. Classics such as "I Wanna Be Sedated," "Rock and Roll High School," "Blitzkrieg Bop" and others have been used to sell products, but are still essential in any music fan's collection.

The Ramones not only invented punk music, but helped it to survive for so long. The Ramones played from 1974 until 1996, having only one or two member changes in those 22 years. The formula for each show was exactly the same. They would go out on stage, the bassist (whether it was Dee Dee Ramone or, toward the end, CJ Ramone) would yell out the usual "ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR" and they would be off, playing fast and furious power chords that would leave weaker musicians praying for the sweet release that only death can provide. It was a beautiful and brilliant display of pure rock music the way it was meant to be played. This was the simplest music in the world, but at the same time, the most difficult you could ever imagine. There were no solos, no complex bridges, no areas of improvising. It was just straight, lightning-quick rock that left you blown away and unable to hear, a small sacrifice for seeing the Ramones pump out ton after ton of rock.

A large number of bands today pretend to be punk or hardcore. This is essentially what the popular Warped Tour is all about; pretenders. The Ramones were not fake. Ever. Even if for some sick reason they wanted to be fake, their rock blood would not allow it. I see a lot of bands listing their influences. Besides listing awful bands, they put themselves as Punk or Screamo or whatever kids with too much time list themselves as, who say things like, "We totally sound like _______. They're, like, the best punk band ever." These people are idiots. All the bands they listen to have probably borrowed something from the Ramones, and if they haven't, there is something wrong, regardless of what music they play. If you're a punk band, you have been influenced by the Ramones, and denying that fact makes you a liar. In a perfect world, we would all be holding hands in a peaceful manner and rocking to the Ramones as much as humanly possible. So I, Eamonn "Rocktacula" Rockwell, urge you, as music fans and citizens of this great country (America), to buy and listen to as much live Ramones’ music as you can. You will love it, or you will die.