Ramones

The Ramones invented punk rock. That sentence is a simplification, but not by much. When their self-titled debut landed in 1976, its fourteen songs in under twenty-nine minutes annihilated every assumption about what rock music needed to be. Johnny Ramone's relentless downstroke rhythm guitar — a buzzsaw wall of distortion played on a Mosrite Ventures II through a Marshall stack — created a sonic template that launched a thousand bands. The songs themselves were miracles of economy: three chords, breakneck tempos, and choruses designed to lodge permanently in the listener's brain. Blitzkrieg Bop, Sheena Is a Punk Rocker, I Wanna Be Sedated, and Rockaway Beach proved that simplicity could be revolutionary. The Ramones never achieved mainstream commercial success during their career, but their influence is immeasurable — without them, there is no Clash, no Sex Pistols, no Black Flag, no Green Day, no punk rock as a cultural force.