Ramones – Rocket to Russia [Stereo] (VMP Essentials Series Edition)

Released in November 1977, just a little more than a year after their debut album, the Ramones’ Rocket To Russia is a testament to the very thing art is not supposed to do: stay the same. In fact, their persona, let alone their first three albums, suggests practically zero progress at all — and that’s the point. Zero. Nothing. Rinse and repeat, at best. Even with producers whose sonic vision varied greatly, their albums churn the same cauldron of loud and fast with perfectly sequenced “slow” songs that make the fast ones seem even faster.

The album landed right at the dawn of these debates about what punk was or wasn’t. Those disputes raged not only in the corporate label and promotional worlds eager to monetize the trend, but also between fans themselves, even to this day, about authenticity.

Depending on your crowd, the Ramones’ sound might be harmless bubblegum pop or raw power directly descended from the fearsome thicket of noise The Stooges created, which is probably why the Ramones’ reputation and legacy have only strengthened with time — they exist in the hard-to-reach space between the approachable and the radical. Listen to Rocket To Russia with an open ear, and its sonic reference points offer up new vistas of sound and desire each time. It’s the paradox of how great art functions: singularly meaningful and yet radically open to meaning-making.

(Above description from VinylMePlease.com)