It's easy to look at Rhino's 2005 box set Weird Tales of the Ramones and wonder whether it's necessary. After all, there are albums for Ramones fans of all stripes: a single disc of hits for the casual fan, a double-disc set for those who love the Ramones but don't want all the albums, then, of course, the original records -- all of the prime Sire albums from the '70s and early '80s were recently reissued in expanded editions by Rhino -- for all true rockers. These should satisfy every different audience the band has, so ...
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It's easy to look at Rhino's 2005 box set Weird Tales of the Ramones and wonder whether it's necessary. After all, there are albums for Ramones fans of all stripes: a single disc of hits for the casual fan, a double-disc set for those who love the Ramones but don't want all the albums, then, of course, the original records -- all of the prime Sire albums from the '70s and early '80s were recently reissued in expanded editions by Rhino -- for all true rockers. These should satisfy every different audience the band has, so why bother with a box set? The answer to the question is that Weird Tales of the Ramones isn't really a CD box set, even though it contains three career-spanning CDs compiled by the late Johnny Ramone -- it's a collectable, an object of art, one that's closer to being a book augmented by three CDs and a DVD than a conventional CD box set. More precisely, it's a 54-page comic book hidden inside a hardcover book that's designed like an oversized comic. It will not fit neatly next to the other box sets in your collection, which is appropriate, since Weird Tales of the Ramones is not like other box sets. Although the three discs do a good job of tracing the band's career, hitting nearly all of the high points along with more lows than necessary -- there is a palpable, unavoidable dip in quality that arrives midway through the second disc that no amount polishing or selective editing can save -- the music is nearly beside the point: the discs function as the soundtrack to the myth the entire set sells. And make no mistake, this is all about myths and comic book heroes, what fans wanted the Ramones to be -- what the band seemed to be, on their first four albums -- rather than what they actually were. It's the antidote to the blunt, honest, wholly depressing feature-length documentary End of the Century, which made no secret of the bandmembers' disdain for each other and their business-like approach to being in a band. Such animosity and discord are gleefully ignored by the 25 comic artists whose interpretations of the Ramones are the heart and soul of this set. John Holstrom, a co-founder of Punk magazine who provided illustrations to Rocket to Russia and Road to Ruin, appropriately gets the keynote story and dispenses with a cartoon version of the basic history -- which is then augmented by Jordan Crane's brief run-through of the band's lineup changes -- but that's it as far as hard facts go. After that, it's all rock & roll fantasy: tales of the Ramones riding around the world as a gang, having outlandish adventures; stories of meeting a Ramone, usually Joey, in the flesh; wondrous re-creations of classic comic art, the flashiest being a 3-D homage to EC horror comics by Steve Vance and John Vankin, but that's topped by Wayno's sublime "Sea-Markys" send-up of Sea Monkeys. There are illustrated anecdotes, one too many allegories of how the band saved rock & roll, pictures of the band drawn as Dr. Seuss characters, encounters with Betty & Veronica and Homer Simpson, while Mad's Sergio Aragones draws a typical chaotic scene of a Ramones concert. There's such a wide range that Johnny Ryan's cheerfully moronic, violent, and vulgar comic strips sit comfortably next to Steven Weissman's story of Liz Fox, a 15 year old who is the outcast at her high school and finds not just solace in the Ramones, but how the group suggests that there is a bigger, better, smarter world out there. These two stories coexist comfortably because the Ramones represented both extremes simultaneously -- sure, they celebrated bad taste and danced with danger, but their music was smartly stupid, knowing, and knowledgeable about pop music. In their heyday -- and, truth be told, also in the years just after their heyday, when they trudged through the '80s as a working band, turning out muddled records yet still retaining their '70s mystique -- being a Ramones fan meant that you were an outsider, something different from the norm. Once that...
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Seller's Description:
Very Good. Very Good condition. audioCD. Case Very Good. Booklet Very Good. 4 disc set. Quality guaranteed! In original artwork/packaging unless otherwise noted.
