Album Info Hide Show Artist: Ramones Album: It’s Alive Released: Europe, 2020 Tracklist: A1 Rockaway Beach A2 Teenage Lobotomy A3 Blitzkrieg Bop A4 I Wanna Be Well A5 Glad To See You Go A6 Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment A7 You’re Gonna Kill That Girl B1 I Don’t Care B2 Sheena Is A Punk Rocker B3 Havana Affair B4 Commando B5 Here Today, Gone Tomorrow B6 Surfin’ Bird B7 Cretin Hop C1 Listen To My Heart C2 California Sun C3 I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You C4 Pinhead C5 Do You Wanna Dance? C6 Chainsaw C7 Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World D1 Now I Wanna Be A Good Boy D2 Judy Is A Punk D3 Suzy Is A Headbanger D4 Let’s Dance D5 Oh Oh I Love Her So D6 Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue D7 We’re A Happy Family Info About Buying Vinyl From Our Record Store We are a small independent record store located at 211 High St, Preston in Melbourne, Australia (North of Northcote, between Thornbury & Reservoir) We buy and sell new and used vinyl records – if you have a collection you’d like to sell please click here . We ship Australia wide for a flat rate of $10 for standard shipping or $15 for express post. Free Shipping for orders $150 and over. You can also pick up your order in store, just select Local Pickup at the checkout. We also ship internationally – prices vary depending on weight and location. We ship vinyls in thick, rigid carboard mailers with a crushable zone on either side, and for extra safety we bubble wrap the records. 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You can contact our Melbourne record shop at (03) 9939 3807 or at [email protected] Happy Listening! Description Hide Show There is a special kind of electricity to the Ramones at the Rainbow Theatre in London on 31 December 1977. It is not just the New Years Eve buzz, though you can feel that too. It is the snap of four players at full tilt, everything tight, loud and ridiculously quick, and the sense that New York punk had crashed right into a London crowd ready to shout every hook back at them. Its Alive, released in 1979 on Sire, bottles that night and still feels like the purest live statement the band ever put to wax. The classic lineup is all here. Joey up front, tall and unflappable, Johnny turning his right arm into a downstroke jackhammer, Dee Dee pacing and barking 1-2-3-4, and Tommy keeping the songs arrow straight. The set is a blitz through the first three albums, delivered with almost no gaps. Rockaway Beach surfs straight into Teenage Lobotomy, then the floor drops out for Blitzkrieg Bop, and by that point the crowd is all in. If your picture of the Ramones is three chords and a leather jacket, this record shows what that really meant in a room. The guitars are serrated but not messy, the rhythm section hits like a train, and Joeys voice sits right in the middle, nasal and tuneful, never lost. Part of the thrill is the pacing. They tear through more than two dozen songs in under an hour, and the lack of chatter becomes its own kind of theatre. Dee Dee counts, the band detonates, the last chord hangs for a breath, then it happens again. You get favourites like Sheena Is a Punk Rocker, Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment, Cretin Hop and Pinhead, complete with a joyous Gabba Gabba Hey. The covers land as mission statements rather than detours. California Sun glows like a memory of AM radio pouring out of a Queens bedroom, while Surfin Bird becomes a cartoon sprint that somehow stays dead on the beat. The recording catches the room in a flattering light. You hear the Rainbows size in the crowd roar, yet the band sits forward in the mix. Johnnys guitar has that biting, compressed grind, all economy and zero indulgence. Tommys drums snap and tumble without any arena thud, which suits these songs. Joey sounds present and almost relaxed, even as the tempos race. It never feels sweetened, just well balanced. That is part of why Its Alive has stuck around as a benchmark live album. You can hand it to someone who only knows the Tshirt and say, this is what they were like, and it holds up. It is also a time capsule. The show falls between Rocket to Russia and Road to Ruin, so you get the early catalogue at peak speed, still lean and mean. It is the definitive live document of the original lineup, with Tommy on the kit before he moved into the studio role and Marky took over. You can hear how much these songs meant in London, too. The British scene that would explode in 1977 owed the Ramones a lot, and here the debt gets paid back in cheers and pogoing. The connection across the Atlantic is right there in the room. If you collect Ramones vinyl, this one earns a front row spot on the shelf. Clean copies of Its Alive vinyl tend to vanish fast from a Melbourne record store wall, and for good reason. It is one of those live records you actually reach for, not just a souvenir. If you buy Ramones records online, make sure you are getting a pressing with a quiet floor, because the rush of the set depends on those hard stops and countins. The bands catalogue has plenty of tidy reissues, and Ramones albums on vinyl rarely disappoint, but this is the one that turns a living room into the Rainbow for 50 minutes and change. If you are hunting through vinyl records Australia wide, consider this essential kit for any punk section. The best thing about Its Alive is how unpretentious it remains. No extended solos, no patter to tee up the choruses, no mythmaking required. Just songs that still bite, played at a speed that makes everything else feel slow for a while. Put it on loud and you get the grin that spreads across a crowd when Blitzkrieg Bop starts, the shared breath before Hey ho, lets go. Some live albums ask you to imagine being there. This one makes your room feel like it already is. Product Reviews Hide Show Write a Review