Ramones Raw

I bought the DVD. As described elsewhere, this has a lot of drummer Marky's hand-held videos. So it could have been REALLY bad. Fortunately, the massive pile of video has been well-edited, and it flows about as well as is possible. The video segments are broken about every 5-10 minutes by live performances, cartoons, etc. There are many TV appearances and a great 11-song live show from Italian TV.

For non-fans, it is worth owning for live performances by this mighty band. If anyone could possibly not know: their first four albums jump-started punk and new wave in the late 70's -- they were directly responsible for English bands like the Clash and Sex Pistols. The Ramones were four guys in leather jackets and blue jeans who pretended to be brothers, to be stupid, to sniff glue for fun, and to be Nazis. None of those things were true, but the image is a blast and the whole thing is played in front of heavy metal surf music: great melodies, slashing guitar sounds, indecipherable lyrics, fast-thumping-unstoppable drumbeat, played TIGHT. And they make it all look easy.

FANS: gotta have this. From what I've heard about the documentary in theaters now, "End of the Century", that is a must-own. RAW is EOTC's ugly sister: not as pretty but every bit as valuable. Get 'em both.