The Ramones - Adios Amigos! (1995)

As the Ramones pass their twentieth anniversary together, the Queens, New York foursome that was long considered a one joke, "here-today, gone-tomorrow" band has managed to outlive most, if not all of their critics. During the past two decades, the Ramones have been no more or no less consistent than any other artists during the same time period, and the fact that they're still alive and kicking in 1995 says something about the band's genuine love of music than many of their more "serious" artistic peers can lay claim to. That the Ramones can still kick out the proverbial jams with an album as hard-rocking and vital as Adios Amigos! after all of this time is a further testimony to the fountain of youth that is rock & roll.

Adios Amigos! draws heavily on material penned by former bandmate Dee Dee Ramone, with six of the album's thirteen songs either written by or co-written by Dee Dee. The manic energy of these songs, with their pop culture obsessions and slightly off-kilter sense of humor is matched perfectly with the band's current musical mix of high-energy, three-chord punk rock and slightly more complex, metal-edged hard rock. The Crusher is, perhaps, the best rock tune ever written about pro wrestling, while Cretin Family and Born To Die In Berlin revisit various periods of the band's history, their '70s roots and their more cynical '80s-era material, respectively. Avid record collector and '60s pop devotee Joey Ramone contributes a wonderfully innocent slice of psychedelic-edged bubble gum in Life's A Gas while Marky offers the wonderfully offbeat Have A Nice Day. A secret bonus cut tacked onto the end of the CD has the band running through an electric cover of the vintage '60s theme to the Spiderman animated Saturday morning cartoon.

Most telling, however, is the inclusion of Tom Wait's I Don't Want To Grow Up as the opening cut on Adios Amigos! Much has been said about a rumoured Ramones break-up, that after twenty years of constant touring and studio work that the band has run its course. From their very first early-70s performances at New York's legendary C.B.G.B.'s, the Ramones have been a staple of youth culture, a major influence on the hardcore scene of the '80s as well as the current pop punk artists of the '90s. As the various members of the Ramones approach middle-age, however, it's got to be harder and harder for them to get energized for another tour or another album. The song's line "how the hell did it get here so soon?" easily becomes much more than a rhetorical question when sung by frontman and founding member Joey Ramone. With it's fierce denial of the inevitable passage of time, I Don't Want To Grow Up, is a song particularly suited to the seemingly ageless icons that are the Ramones. (Radioactive Records/MCA Records)

(Click on the CD cover to buy Adios Amigos from Amazon.com)