And there were 27 of them - 27 songs in a head-snapping 52 minutes. Which is to say, every song was a hit (Well, you know what I mean). And so every song they played that night was drawn from three of the most flat-out fabulous records in the annals of punkdom. And the songs! Cresting off its first two albums, Ramones and Ramones Leave Home, the band had only recently released its third, the formidable Rocket to Russia. I don't know if I actually saw this show (it was the Seventies, who can remember?), but I can tell you that this is exactly what they sounded like: no guitar solos, no pointless gab, just a tsunami of sound - great breaking waves of guitar roar. I saw The Ramones a lot back in those particular days. If It's Alive is the greatest of punk concert albums, then this one is…what, the co-greatest? Whatever. A New York vibe, I guess you could call it. A New York crowd, all dizzed out about having them back in town, and about being part of that big punk takeover too (so they thought). A New York band, embarked on leading the great punk conquest that never quite happened. And I think that's what sets this show slightly apart from the one captured on It's Alive. The crowd, as you can hear, was mightily jacked up. One week after the Rainbow show, The Ramones were back home in New York, booked into the Palladium, a wonderful old dump on then-still-scummy East 14th Street. You have this album, right? Let's move on. It was recorded at the Rainbow Theatre in London on New Year's Eve 1977, when both The Ramones and punk rock itself were at a dizzying peak. The band put out four live albums over the course of its career, and the first of these, an import called It's Alive, is one of the most explosive rock concert documents ever released. But if you never saw The Ramones live, well, you never will. (If 'formal triumph' isn't too poofty a term to impose on four guys who probably couldn't have cared less about such a thing, and might not even have grasped it.) So, you can still hear the records.

The first four Ramones albums are indispensable artifacts of the late-Seventies punk world-quake the first two, especially, with their thunderous fusion of Black Sabbath, bubblegum pop and other pinhead preoccupations, are exhilarating formal triumphs. Fortunately, the records remain, and they don't sound quaint or dated, not at all. the following year (and two years after that, Johnny also died from cancer).

Joey Ramone died of cancer in a New York hospital in 2001.

A Ramones reunion was probably never in the cards, but now it's off forever. In 1996, 20 years after the release of their first album, they pounded out their final performances on a Lollapalooza tour. This is a time when bands like Green Day, The Offspring and Rancid - bands a generation younger than The Ramones, but still fiercely inspired by their music - were selling multi-millions. Their last album, Adios Amigos, true to form, tanked. Never breaking through - not big-time, not the way they deserved to - but never giving up. A million nights spent banging down the highway in a cramped van, hauling their over-worked butts from one dismal gig to the next. Fourteen studio albums, several of them classics, 2,262 live shows. The Ramones were a great, great American band. Joey Ramone - lead vocals Johnny Ramone - guitar Dee Dee Ramone - bass, backing vocals Tommy Ramone - drums

The ramones songs 1978