Summer 1975: 17 songs in 20 minutes – the Ramones lay the foundation for punk and their career in CBGB
In the summer of 1975, in a tiny rock club in Downtown New York, 26 evenings rose the modestly baptized festival “New York’s Top 40 Unrecorded Rock Talent”. The club, CBGB, belonged to a stocky moving entrepreneur named Hilly Kristal, had previously been a biker bar. And even before that, a Bowery meeting point for drinkers of all kinds. The Rolling Stone stated in that autumn: “A basic smell of piss and disinfectant remains.”
Rarely had a single event location had such a resounding effect on music history. It is hardly exaggerated to name the CBGB the Ground Zero of the punk and New Wave movement. Blondie belonged to the line-up of the festival mentioned alone. The Talking Heads (with one of your first appearances). Television. And of course the unofficial house band of the CBGB, the Ramones. “The first time Blondie invited us, which were still called Angel and the Snake at the time,” recalls original drummer Johnny Ramone.
“They had nice melodies, but above all they just didn’t stop. And that was somehow a shock “
“We played for the bartender, a few drunk, Hilly and Hillys dog.” “I definitely didn’t want to leave her on stage again,” says Kristal. “What should I say? They played worse than television. And television were really bad at the time. They constantly stopped and continued again, their amplifiers broke. She screamed. But you just learn. ” He laughs. “When they decided to get through their set without interruptions, through something like 17 songs in 20 minutes, it was somehow … I don’t know how to describe it. Nobody had ever done that. They had nice melodies, but above all they just didn’t stop. And that was somehow a shock. “
The club quickly became a scene, attracted artists, Bohemians from the district and, as Tommy Ramone says, “lots of curious”. Lou Reed dropped by. Patti Smith, the Dead Boys and also a drag act called The Cockettes … As far as the fashion of time is concerned, Kristal says: “The only difference to the hippie era was that they generally wore the hair briefly. You dressed unadorned, but the holes in pants and shirts had really real to do with the recession at the time. There were many second-hand shops, a jeans were received for one or two dollars, a T-shirt for a dollar. ”
“The Ramones do a few drops of piss in everything they serve their guests”
At the festival, the Ramones raced through a set with early songs such as “I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement” and “Judy is a punk” and sixties bubblegum covers such as “California Sun” or “Let’s Dance”. A little later, they took up their debut album only one week and for $ 6,400 and went on their first European tour. A nervous Johnny Rotten visited the band backstage in London. He apparently thought that the Ramones was a real street.
To calm down, the band invited him to a beer. A dubious honor, as Dee Dee Ramone later revealed: “The Ramones do a few drops of piss in everything they serve their guests as a little joke. Hahaha! “