Loco Live!

With Brain Drain gone, we have officially made it to the fourth and final era of the Ramones -

Legendary Ramones, an era fueled by nostalgia and a younger worldwide fan base focused in their final attempt to recapture their earlier sounds in order to achieve the one goal that fueled their entire careers - Mainstream Success.

The band's final era got off to a bumpy start with the departure of Dee Dee Ramone. Dee Dee was carrying the group with the ridiculous amount of contributions in each album from Too Tough to Die all the way to Brain Drain, but the endless touring and the abuse from other members made him quit. In typical Ramones fashion the show went on without him, but he still gave the band material for their later albums. His replacement was C.J. Ward, a young chap who grew up listening to the band. C.J. would be the final addition to the band, thus cementing him in the final Ramones line-up of Johnny, Joey, Marky, and C.J.

C.J. would make his debut on Loco Live, the second Ramones live album released during the band's lifetime. The last live album, It's Alive, showcases the band's idealized peak as the four young men from Queens who assaulted the ears of British audiences with blistering minimalist rock and roll. Twelve years later, two of the young men were gone, and the two that were left continued the band despite their deep-rooted hatred for each other and the years of wear and tear that the road had given them. The Ramones that were captured playing in Barcelona for Loco Live are older and brutally fast, lacking the playfulness of their younger selves in exchange for the quickness that can only come from years of experience and continuously playing the same songs.

By this point in the timetable, Johnny and Joey have played Blitzkrieg Bop more than a thousand times. The song had become as intuitive as sleeping than another bit of muscle memory. What started out as a two minute-13 seconds long song, Blitzkrieg Bop was becoming shorter and faster each year they played it. In Loco Live, the band reached a milestone by making the song 1:45 seconds long. Marky and C.J. were probably happy to go along with the speed increases as both held their own ground without skipping a beat. Anything that was on Loco Live will have a noticeable speed increase.

The speed increase is not bad if not for the few pieces were Joey doesn't completely sing the songs and instead stretches the chorus or does some sort of scat singing. He does have his growl on some of the tracks, but it does not offend as it did on the later studio albums. Another issue with the speed increase is actually something that has bothered me since End of the Century. Johnny Ramone was an excellent rhythm guitarist, but he had some trouble playing lead guitar pieces. If a song had a complicated, note-driven riffs on the studio tracks, they most likely would have been recorded by someone else and later played offstage by a roadie live or pre-recorded. The faster playing has resulted in some of their later songs losing their riffs and solos, such as "Somebody Put Something in My Drink" and "I Believe in Miracles". I enjoy these stripped versions as that's probably the way those songs would have been played during their minimal years. The songs that benefit from this arrangement are "Pet Sematary" and "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg", songs that were so overproduced and long on the albums that the reduction makes them tolerable, and in "Sematary"'s case, enjoyable.

I can't complain much about the setlist. The first nine songs, minus "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" were the Ramones standard from Loco Live on to We're Outta Here. They never changed position and were ingrained in their subconscious, so there's nothing much to add. Ramones is mostly represented here, followed by Rocket to Russia and the rest. Pleasant Dreams, Subterranean Jungle, and Halfway to Sanity are the least represented with one song each. It's unfair to both Pleasant Dreams and Halfway to Sanity, as those albums had more than one good track on them. Two omissions that I found interesting were "California Sun" and "We're a Happy Family", songs that have been played live for years. "We're A Happy Family" would return in We're Outta Here, but "California Sun" was gone. They still played it around that year and it was actually part of the Greatest Hits Live full recording, but it doesn't appear again on future live recordings.

In general, the band as it's portrayed in Loco Live are men who have mastered their craft of live playing. While Loco Live may not have the acclaim or romanticism of It's Alive (or the gritty authenticity of NYC 1978), what you're getting is a good album full of rare songs that you would not have heard them play again, mixed with the usual Ramones repertoire that had been sped up a bit.