Popular wisdom has it that the gig that lit UK punk's blue touchpaper was the Sex Pistols' show at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall in June 1976. Not so, according to Simon Price. In a splendid long read for the Quietus, he's made a convincing case for the Ramones' first trip across the pond (and indeed first shows outside the US) exactly a month later as being more energising and inspirational.
The oddball leather-jacketed products of an ailing, near-bankrupt New York initially played at the Roundhouse - sandwiched between the Stranglers and headliners the Flaming Groovies - and then at Dingwalls the following night. Price hails the band's flying visit as "the glue that bound the various factions of the British punk scene together while providing a blueprint of how an assault on the British cultural mainstream was now entirely possible".
As David St Hubbins and Nigel Tufnell muse in This Is Spinal Tap, "[i]t's such a fine line between stupid and clever" - and the Ramones were the band to prove it. Price is right that they boiled down rock 'n' roll to its "base elements", a cartoonish blitz. Their genius was to "take the classic three-minute pop song, trim off the excess bullshit, speed it up, and you've got a TWO-minute pop song". The Ramones' most obvious and principal impact on those who witnessed them on those two nights in Camden was to put a rocket up everyone's arses and get them playing faster.
However, as Price acknowledges, that 1976 visit was actually "a hugely important cultural exchange" in that it also proved to be of benefit to a rabble who were used to modest CBGB crowds: "The Ramones gave London a kickstart. And London gave the Ramones a career, enabling them to leave their mark as one of the most influential bands of all time."
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