It's Alive [Vinyl]

You've barely blinked before you realize that the first half-dozen songs have already raced past, their backdraft sucking the oxygen out of your lungs. "Rockaway Beach," "Teenage Lobotomy," "Blitzkrieg Bop," and "I Wanna Be Well" practically melt together in a three-chord melange, Tommy never letting up on the frantic beat and Joey pausing barely long enough to breathlessly shout, "Onetwothreefour!" before launching into the next set. The longest song here clocks in well short of three minutes, and many are hardly longer than one. Twenty-eight songs clock in under 48 minutes. Talk about a land-speed record. No subtleties of production or tweaking are needed here to capture the Ramones' live sound. Plug 'em in, turn everything up to 10, and let it rip. The sound of the manic crowd is practically organic. It's Alive is not just the best Ramones album, it is easily the best live punk-rock album of all time, and perhaps one of the best live albums ever set to wax. --Tod Nelson