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The Ramones: Ramones (Sire SASD-7520)

Paul Nelson, Rolling Stone, 29 July 1976

IF TODAY'S Rolling Stone were the Cahiers du Cinema of the late Fifties, a band of outsiders as deliberately crude and basic as the Ramones would be granted instant auteur status as fast as one could say "Edgar G. Ulmer." Their musique maudite — 14 rock & roll songs exploding like time bombs in the space of 29 breathless minutes and produced on a Republic-Monogram budget of $6400 — would be compared with the mise en scene of, say, Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly or, better yet, Samuel Fuller's delirious Underworld U.S.A.

Total word count of piece: 458

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