ctrl-s wrote:you rate Ringo as one of the best rock drummers ever?.

Such a steady drummer.
His clunky fills are awesome.
He almost predates drummers like Jaki Liebezeit and Klaus Dinger with his efficiency over crap drumming.
I was wrong before, Paul Cook is tied with Charlie Watts.

This is Bizarro World to me, this talk of Ringo's drumming. You are welcome to your opinions. If I ever listen to a Beatles record again I'll keep it in mind.

Re Ramones' musicianship: Johnny's early guitar style and DeeDee's STUPID EXCELLENT BASSLINES are as awesome as music can be. Minimal? Yes, sure. Limited and narrow, no question. Incompetence as virtue? Absolutely. Also fucking PERFECT and DEFINITIVE and TRANSCENDENT. Live the Ramones were like a gale-force wind in your face for two solid hours without letup. Now, I gather the Sex Pistols were very, very, very good live too, at times, but it seems to me to have been mostly down to the chaos and physical/discursive violence they perpetrated and were surrounded by; if it equaled the sheer sonic/physical force of the Ramones at their best I wouldn't know.

242sumner wrote:

ctrl-s wrote:Pick one.

Today I'll say: Ramones. They were first.

...the first republican punk band ?

What about Ronnie Biggs? They were still the Pistols then. Ramones never embraced a murderering parasite piece of shit and tried to sell him as a fucking folk hero. Thats far more right wing than anything the Ramones ever did.

More influential, more tuneful, funnier, catchier...The Ramones, 1976.

Comparing frontmen to each other is stupid, because they're so dissimilar.

Better guitar tone...Steve Jones.

Better songwriter...Dee Dee Ramone.

Better groove...up for debate. Pistols had "God Save The Queen," the Ramones had "Blitzkrieg Bop," compare grooves.

Bigger influence, for better and for worse...Pistols.

This is so hard. Never Mind The Bollocks was the first punk album I'd ever heard and I loved it to bits, and the same thing happened with Ramones.

I think I'll go with the Ramones just because I know I'll go with early PiL against most other bands, and Rotten doesn't deserve that kind of support. However, Steve Jones had seriously one of the greatest recorded guitar tones of all time. Chunky, muscular, furious.

SecondEdition wrote:Steve Jones had seriously one of the greatest recorded guitar tones of all time. Chunky, muscular, furious.

I can get behind this opinion 100%.

The Ramones were a necessary prerequisite to the Sex Pistols. The Ramones made more and better records (c'mon, those first four albums are essential, and Too Tough To Die and It's Alive are damn close). The Ramones had the good sense not to fire their best songwriter, and when he quit (Dee Dee), they still had him write stuff for the band. When the Ramones fired their bass player, they got someone who could actually play bass to replace him, not some dead-from-the-neck-up friend of the lead vocalist. The Ramones were tighter, rocked harder and were a lot more fun. And while I dearly love the Sex Pistols (or at least Never Mind The Bollocks), I love the Ramones more, and genuinely believe they were the better band.

Exactamundo. Thank you.

I'm not an expert on the music of these two bands. Both have the image thing that detracts. Musically, you have to go with the Ramones, who wrote good tunes and were a fucking hard working band.

The Sex Pistols have the better marketing package: the look, the band name, the drama, the notorious single tour. They seem to be more of a conceptual band, where I'd rather think about them, than listen to them.

I guess the way I see it, the sex pistols were "high culture" going low, and the ramones were working class making "high culture."

In the end it probably comes down to how you align/see yourself, whether you are of European descent or American.

Pistolles by a country guinea.

Sex Pistols record was actually a rock record.

Ramones were pop.


I like the Sex Pistols.


It is okay to like either.


Which one is more "punk"?


I don't know.


I will say that the Ramones are good, but very repetitive, but I haven't needed to hear them with any regularity since I first spent time listening to them.



I will say that I listen to the Pistols record often.