The Rewind Button is a group blogging project that I’m participating in. We’re taking on Rolling Stone‘s Top 40 albums of all time and writing our own reviews of them.

Have you ever been told to drink water or eat salad to cleanse your palate between dishes? Ramones is my palate cleanser. After weeks of albums that have been so-so for me, the Ramones offer me refreshment with their debut album. In fact, I’d rather just have it for a full meal.

While a lot of the artists reviewed in this project have presented great examples of expanding what an artist can do with pop/rock music, the three-chords-and-the-truth of the Ramones is more appealing to me than making an artistic statement. Okay, okay, sure,  they were making a statement when they chose this route. I’ll admit that. And I’ll admit that I prefer it over seven-minute Dylan songs, no matter how great the poetry is in his lyrics. I’d rather slam-dance than sit around in a circle discussing the ins-and-outs of a line.

Usually, I’m not that way. I often prefer debates and great talks deep into the evening about literature. So, what is it about Ramones that makes me prefer it over much of what we’ve reviewed from the late 1960s and earlys 1970s? It’s possible that I’ve become bored with what we’ve been listening to for this project. The Ramones offer a change of pace, something that gets my dopamine flowing. That’s exactly why this album is on the Rolling Stone list, because it shook people out of their serious stupor.

I wish more albums of this caliber were on the Rolling Stone top 40 list, because I think it would have given it variety and added some excitement to the mix. Even if the magazine doesn’t list this as a top 10 all-time album, I’m tempted to do that. Question is, do I place it above other artists’ albums that I think are better, but have been influenced by it (anyone else notice the stoner-rock rifts that come in during “Now I Wanna to Sniff Glue”?), or do I put the original influence first? It’s a question that I will think about as I get closer to the end of the list and contemplate my own rearrangement of it.

Please visit these other blogs participating in The Rewind Button project: