Ramones - It's Alive [2xLP] - Used LP

vinyl: VG+

sleeve: VG (nice, but some ringwear and one seam split at top)

Original UK pressing.  

double live 1977! 

they seem to be having a blast, getting the jollies they so much deserved from their UK fans, this marking a rise in their POPularity in England...blasting 1-2-3 through their originals and seeming to especially have tons of fun with their favorite covers from the 1960s ("Surfin' Bird," "Do You Wanna Dance," "Let's Dance," and "California Sun").  The Rainbow Theatre could hold 3000, and I like to picture the venue packed for this New Years Eve show (Tommy reported that Johnny Thunders, Sid & Nancy, and Elton John were there).  (This is the same venue that Bowie had gone to see The Alice Cooper Group in 1971...which I assume had a huge influence on Bowie's performances).  This '77 Ramones tour (and with the UK buying up Ramones LPs in the wake of this tour) must have had a powerful effect on UK music...while USA underground rock might have been trying to destroy the old, they also were clearly celebrating the music of the 1960s, the Brit punks seemed even more bent on smashing the past...but this 1977 Ramones show clearly says that it's okay for a punk band to cover a bunch of old 1960s songs, and that punk doesn't always have to be pissed off.  You can dance and have a great time!  Go figure!  Go go go!  -- winch

If you are wondering how big Ramones and punk were in the USA in the 1970s, consider this: after years of either ignoring or hating punk, finally in 1979, some Americans recognized that punk was perhaps more than just a 3-month fad (and only in the UK but certainly never here), and The Clash were actually accepted as "good" by a small population.  But even at this relative height of acceptance of punk (likely the biggest height of acceptance until the 1990s), and a time when America was simply crazy about double live albums, and the same year that Ramones were featured in a movie and showed up on national TV on the Sha Na Na Show, and this album kicks it out for four sides (who would've even dreamed Ramones would've recorded and released a double album at such a key time in their career!), and the band is such a classic homegrown American maximum R&B (aka rock n roll) band, and both 1978's Road to Ruin and this album hit the Top-40 on the UK charts...still, while this live album was released in 11 countries (Argentina in 1978 as a tape, the others on vinyl in 1979, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Japan, Holland, Scandinavia, Spain), it was never released in the US (at least not until 30 years later when most of the band were gone from this earth).   Somebody else can explain some historical technical reason why, but I think I'm right--they didn't release it in the USA because they knew it wouldn't sell.  Ramones had had a relative surge of interest in the USA in 1977 scoring a mild hit with "Rockway Beach" and Rocket To Russia LP, but I think shortly after they were coined a punk band and interest quickly dropped.  (Of course, the well documented scenes on the coasts were likely still interested in their homegrown boys from Long Island....but that was maybe a thousandth of one percent of the population). This all just goes to show you that you've got to go outside the mainstream to find the good junk--in the good ol USA at least.  (And they may have suffered from this: folks in the underground press and radio stations obsessed with the outsider and fringe, sometimes ignore really good bands...for example, my Michigan AM radio station WIDR introduced me to so many great bands in the 1970s, the bands that would never make it on other radio stations, but I never once heard Ramones on that station.).   -- winch

------

"Four concerts during the UK tour were recorded, but the New Year's Eve one was chosen because ten rows of seats were thrown at the stage after the concert and it was considered the best of the performances at the venue."

"Since it was New Year's Eve, our management brought in some balloons and gave everybody these 'Gabba gabba hey' signs to wave around. It was very celebratory. Johnny Thunders was there, and Sid Vicious with his new girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. Elton John was there, dressed up like Marlon Brando in The Wild One. We'd honed our craft really sharp by then. The Ramones' sound was basically the essence of rock 'n' roll. That's what we were going for." – Tommy Ramone[1]