A Night To Remember

A momentous year, 1977 had over-delivered on its promise. Customarily fuelled on pure adrenaline, we prepared for its final act.

The Rainbow was heaving, the foyer’s fountain was dry but the gent’s toilets were flooded. We padded through piss to our cheap seats, sick with anticipation. A dazzling Rezillos rose to the occasion, before Generation X – too pop for the hard-core – posed hard to muted response.

Then, there they were. The ultimate exemplification of the D-U-M-B punk ideal. The leather-jacketed stormtroopers of the three-chord apocalypse. 1977 had been a year of rapid-fire six-string assaults. Blurred fists pummelling at over-cranked humbuckers. Automatic-weaponry tempos. Angst, amphetamines, fury. But nothing, not even their records, could prepare you for the original Ramones at their peak.

Drilled like a crack military unit, they dispatched 28 songs, including three encores, in 54 minutes. Sometimes there was space between songs for star-jumping Dee Dee to rattle of a “one-two-three-four”, before Johnny brutalised their next selection, sometimes not. Hunched Joey