The Ramones

"I'm just a guy who likes to get drunk/I'm just a guy who likes to dress punk," Joey chants as side one fades away, incisively and affectionately locating the real audience he's brought into being after all these years of mythos and stabs in the dark. And despite one hopeless lyric (Dee Dee on Disneyland) and one dubious cover (token pure pop to balance off double-O soul remembrances of the Chambers Brothers and the Music Explosion), this is more worthy of an audience than anything they've done in the '80s. Not a mass audience, certainly not a great audience, maybe not even a cool one--just guys who have finally discovered a taste for the raw roar the Ramones invented (bigger now but no less tuneful) and are smart enough to know that when Joey goofs his way through the five syllables of "psy-che-del-i-cized" he's some singer. (Grade - A-)