“You know you like it when the music's loud.”
- Ramona/The Ramones
444, that's the number of songs about or that namecheck The Ramones. It's close, anyway. Nobody knows for certain, but that's the exhaustive list that a fellow named Uli Hesse has compiled. 444 songs, that's pretty good for some unrelated kids from Queens who decided to don black leather motorcycle jackets and torn jeans, take the same surname and start a band: Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy…The Ramones.
They stayed together for 22 years (1974-1996), played 2,236 concerts, released 14 albums containing 146 songs that averaged two-minutes - each one a sonic blitzkrieg of adrenaline, none of which was ever a hit. They had bitter internal feuds and Joey and Johnny's relationship was so malignant they didn't speak to each other for most of the band's history. They endured changes in personal, a murderous touring schedule, drug and alcohol issues and Joey's crippling OCD. Most of the music world rejected them or thought they were a joke, in part because they shined a light on the bloated, lazy and boring thing rock music had become. They were forerunners of the Punk movement but their influence had a much greater reach. Rolling Stone Magazine said they “likely inspired more bands than anybody since the Beatles." In the end there was no denying them; they were elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the first year of their eligibility, 2002. All the original members are now deceased but today there are statues, streets and museums in America and beyond, named in honor of…The Ramones.
Here's three of those 444, plus the boys themselves.