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He portrayed himself, vocally, as a sort of pinhead, when really, like all four of the original Ramones, there was great intelligence behind the words. And, that was sort of the fun of the band. Despite his lanky frame, his vocal style had a sort of meathead, Queens brawler vibe to it. Joey Ramone’s vocals introduced a new style into music. But, then again, being mainly a Tommy Ramone composition, it’s equally likely that the song has a very direct meaning, but due to Tommy’s frustration with the band, he never felt lile truly explaining it, or perhaps even had a certain glee in knowing that desperate Ramones fans would never truly understand the tune.
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It could be that it has no one, true meaning and is a collection of images that seem to fit together. At one point, it seems Tommy is writing about kids going to concerts in New York City, “They’re forming in a straight line/they’re going through a tight wind/the kids are losing their mind/the blitzkrieg bop.†But, at another section, it seems to be about teenage romantic encounters, “they’re piling in the back seat/ they’re generating steam heat/pulsating to the backbeat/the blitzkrieg bop.†The band never really let on as to what the song is about. Yet despite the song’s title, the body of the lyrics seem to float in a sort of ambiguity. Tommy Ramone, who was Jewish, and Dee Dee, who was a military brat on a German airforce base, played with the menacing threat of German warfare tactics: “Lightning War,†wherein tanks, supported by bombers, strike aggressively against opposition using speed and superior firepower as their main tools. But, Tommy and Dee Dee’s lyrics betrayed much darker image. There was a clear appreciation for stuff like Freddy Cannon and Bobby Freeman and the Ramones, in the midst of the complexity of bands like Kansas, reminded everyone how much snap there is to these literally timeless rhythms. “Hey, ho, let’s go! Shoot em in the back now!†is sung almost like a nursery rhyme. Kicking off with Jonny Ramones' iconic buzzsaw guitar before collapsing into Joey Ramones’ famed battle cry, “Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!†the song had a sort of bubble gum structure. The band, as they would later write, missed the rip-rockers heard on Murray the K’s program, so they did their best to emulate and evolve from the first wave rockers.
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Paul Simon and Barry Manilow were at the top of the charts during the winter of ’76, and the bop was a direct reaction against that gentle, quiet music. Released in February 1976, a mere one month after its recording, the song made a statement that has resounded through punk, and pretty much all music since then: simplicity, power, and meaning are the only things required to make a good song, and maybe they’re the only things that should be in a song. And still, it remains as the benchmark against which punk bands are often judged (and 99.999% of them come up short). You can argue for days whether or not “Blitzkrieg Bop†was the first punk single, but what's undeniable is that the song served as the building block for all punk to come after.