I met the Ramones (Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, Marky) when I was 16 on their Road to Ruin tour. I lied to the club's promoter/press contact and told him I was there to interview the ramones for my high school newspaper. I spent five hours with them before the show watching them warm up onstage, then backstage again in their dressing room. It was literally me, and the Ramones, all four of them, alone in their dressing room, with Marky pounding on a folding chair instead of his drums while they plowed through the whole set in an hour. I then got to watch them play the whole set from the side of the stage, and then partied with them after the show for a couple hours. I actually took 100 black and white pictures of the whole thing, but somehow in the last 20 years they have disappeared.

I remember vividly skipping off the curb near the fabled (and long-gone) Zebra Records location in downtown Austin that bright spring day in 1980, having ponied up my $5 to see the Ramones at Armadillo World Headquarters. The Armadillo, a converted airplane hangar, had nurtured both Austin's long-haired hippie contingent and the upstart outlaw country folks, and the synergy there still reverberates, is still responsible for making Austin the music mecca it is. By the late '70s, the club featured all kinds of stuff—classical music, dance recitals, young buck singer/songwriters, legendary concerts by the likes of Van Morrison and Talking Heads, and a lot of the touring new wave.

Jeff Barringer

April 15th, 2001: Punk Rock has a huge gouge in its ugly, scratched veneer today. Joey Ramone is gone. Like any semi-celebrity/icon, I didn't know him, but yet I did. He accompanied me on some very odd goings-on in my life, and he didn't even know it. I picked up Rocket to Russia in a bargain bin in Oxford, MS for $4. I wasn't even sure if I knew who they were—I just loved their look and the gritty sensibility that I intuited from the cover. Listening to "Sheena is a Punk Rocker" doesn't seem much like rebellion now, but anything grimy or dirty in the 80s was so antithetical to Duran Duran or A Flock of Seagulls. The Ramones were a hair band (when that meant something quite different than Tesla) unparalleled. I tried for that hair—died for that hair—my hair would only frizz out so far. But the idea stuck. Ever since that cover, I ask my stylist for Barbara Streisand with a tinge of Joey Ramone.

One night in 1989 we set out in the Quarter to find the garret where Johnny Thunders died. We listened to "Do You Wanna Dance" before we left. You would have thought we would be priming the pump with "Personality Crisis"—but no. Somehow, discovering the apartment where Johnny had died could only be done with the help of The Ramones and ample quantities of acid. Yes, we found the apartment and much more trouble. A fitting soundtrack.

They say that the Lord can heal the sick, cure the wounded. A friend of a friend idolized Joey Ramone—he unabashedly displayed concert tickets, T-shirts and a coveted autograph. The FOF had a very pronounced stutter. But when he spoke of Joey or imitated him, there was no stutter—no stammer—no hesitation. Just pure Punk. For a few tangible, elusive, sweet moments, he could speak without tumbling over himself. If Joey could do that for him, I wish he could have healed himself. Alas.

Blythe Christopher

Summer 1976: I spent the summer in Mobile, Alabama with my mother's family, as I always did when I was a youngster, and under the influence of my slightly older cousins. It was a summer spent stealing beer from convenient stores, smoking pot and vandalizing neighborhoods with golf balls and bowling balls. I saw a Peter Frampton concert and I listened to a lot of Grand Funk, Foghat, Bad Company and Aerosmith, usually stolen 8-tracks from K-Mart, in my cousin David's Camaro.

I also had a job for the first time in my life, the only white boy working in the kitchen washing dishes in a restaurant where one of my cousins was a waitress. The job afforded me to buy a quarter-pound of Mexican weed, a distortion box go to with the guitar and amp my dad had bought me the previous summer and, in what had to be the hippest bookstore in Alabama, the latest issues of Rock Scene magazine. Spending most of my days that summer getting stoned and trying to play along with the Yardbirds records I bought, I also spent a lot of time reading Rock Scene, digging all these cool pictures of bands I had never heard of: the Ramones, Television, Blondie, etc.

When the summer of '76 was over I was shipped back to North Carolina. My mother picked me up at the airport and since my birthday is in August she took me to the mall and let me buy two records. Now after reading about this new scene in New York all summer long I was very interested in hearing this band the Ramones. They were touted in Rock Scene as the most exciting, energetic band in New York. I thought they looked cool...skinny, black leather jackets, t-shirts, ripped up jeans and sneakers. They had some wacky song titles: "Blitzkrieg Bop," "Beat on the Brat." That day in Greensboro, NC I had the willingness to take a chance and buy The Ramones. I took my records, including the Rolling Stones' Get Yer Ya Ya's Out as the safe bet, home, staring the whole way at The Ramones cover. I couldn't wait to hear this record, to put the music with the pictures and articles I had been reading all summer.

When the needle hit that vinyl, it was fast, really fast, and hard! The guy's voice sounded funny and all the songs sounded the same, but I LOVED IT. I had never had this kind of visceral experience listening to music. It was really working for me, the songs were amazingly catchy and the lyrics were simple but great. I couldn't wait to play this for my friends. Well, much to my surprise, not many people liked it! "How can you not like this, what's not to like about it?" Listening to it one night a friend of mine began laughing so hard he started crying, "Every song sounds the same...ha, ha, ha...I can't believe it!" (It might have been the acid because I couldn't stop laughing either.) This person eventually turned me on to other punk rock music so the sonic assault of that night was not lost on him.

Looking back I have to admit that buying The Ramones album was probably the most enlightening musical occurrence of my life. It opened me up to all kinds of music that I never knew existed. Much like getting into Howling Wolf after listening to and reading about the Stones. It was the Ramones that let the Dolls, the Stooges, MC5, the Velvets, ad infinitum into my consciousness. They opened the door for new things come.

Joey Ramone was a true American original, a rock 'n' roll genius and I think most of all, a liberator!

Brad Rice

One Friday night in Savannah, GA, my friend Jon organized a Ramones Tribute Nite at our fave waterin' hole, The Velvet Elvis. The crowd and tribute bands ranged from age-appropriate fans to a younger generation of punk rockers, all inspired by this late great. In true DIY fashion, the bands were unprepared and incestuous, save one group, but the integrity of performance art was on fire. We homaged with pit jumps and stolen gulps, waterguns and ripped t-shirts, proving our love for the spirit of the night! Even though his body is gone, Joey Ramone still gives us kids a reason to wear black leather and rock! Thanks Joey, and one more thing: I wanna be your girlfriend!

Shelley Pellegrin

I remember vividly skipping off the curb near the fabled (and long-gone) Zebra Records location in downtown Austin that bright spring day in 1980, having ponied up my $5 to see the Ramones at Armadillo World Headquarters. The Armadillo, a converted airplane hangar, had nurtured both Austin's long-haired hippie contingent and the upstart outlaw country folks, and the synergy there still reverberates, is still responsible for making Austin the music mecca it is. By the late '70s, the club featured all kinds of stuff—classical music, dance recitals, young buck singer/songwriters, legendary concerts by the likes of Van Morrison and Talking Heads, and a lot of the touring new wave.

That spring I'd seen Rock and Roll High School—a B-movie classic that captured the times like nothing else coming out of Hollywood those days. But that did little to prepare me. Arriving early, me and my friends staked out a spot about ten feet from the gargantuan stage, and took turns buying pitchers of ridiculously cheap beer and plates of the Armadillo's famous nachos.

Then the lights went off. In the pitch black, I heard a slow, gurgling voice that seemed to come from underneath the stage. "That's right, we are...the Ramones." And with that, all hell broke loose. The band kickstarted into, well I don't know what. Mighta been "Rockaway Beach." Mighta been "I Just Wanna Have Something To Do." But by the first clanging surge of the guitars, it felt like the earth was shaking. The sheer force, the ungodly power of that band, at that moment, is something I know I'll never feel again.

They whiplashed through dozens of classics, barely pausing for breath. Considering the massive pulse of humanity crushing the stage (not to mention my belly full of Lone Star and nachos), I had to move away. I finally grabbed a (very) slightly less chaotic spot, and tried to take in the spectacle of it all. Joey was a force of nature without really having to move a muscle. Dee Dee and Johnny were kinetic, frenetic. The songs blurred into one another, yet were completely unforgettable in themselves. "Pinhead" was the emotional release—"Gabba Gabba We accept you/One of us."

It was an open invitation. It was community. It was threatening. It was fun. It tore open a hole in the universe, a place for those who felt they'd never, ever fit in.

Life was never the same.

Luke Torn