#Ramones blitzkrieg bop series#

Yet despite the songâ€™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: â€œLightning War,â€ wherein tanks, supported by bombers, strike aggressively against opposition using speed and superior firepower as their main tools. But, Tommy and Dee Deeâ€™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. â€œHey, ho, letâ€™s go! Shoot em in the back now!â€ is sung almost like a nursery rhyme. Kicking off with Jonny Ramones' iconic buzzsaw guitar before collapsing into Joey Ramonesâ€™ famed battle cry, â€œHey! Ho! Letâ€™s Go!â€ the song had a sort of bubble gum structure. The band, as they would later write, missed the rip-rockers heard on Murray the Kâ€™s program, so they did their best to emulate and evolve from the first wave rockers. Paul Simon and Barry Manilow were at the top of the charts during the winter of â€™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 theyâ€™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). All rights reserved.You can argue for days whether or not â€œBlitzkrieg Bopâ€ was the first punk single, but what's undeniable is that the song served as the building block for all punk to come after. Grohl and Kurstin first launched Hanukkah Sessions in 2020, and covered songs by eight different Jewish artists to celebrate each night of the holiday: Beastie Boys, Drake, Mountain, Peaches, Bob Dylan, Elastica, The Knack and The Velvet Underground.Ĭopyright © 2021, ABC Audio.

You can watch the “Blitzkrieg Bop” cover streaming now on YouTube. “Once upon a time, two nice Jewish boys from Queens named Jeffery Hyman and Thomas Erdelyi changed the world forever with their music…as Joey and Tommy Ramone!” Grohl says. In contrast with their night one black metal rendition of Lisa Loeb’s “Stay (I Missed You),” the Foo Fighters frontman and the producer stay pretty much note-for-note true to the original punk staple, though they do change the iconic “Hey ho/Let’s go!” chant to a more holiday-appropriate “Hey oy/Let’s goy!”

#Ramones blitzkrieg bop series#

Dave Grohl and Greg Kurstin‘s Hanukkah Sessions series continues on night two of the Jewish holiday with a cover of the Ramones classic “Blitzkrieg Bop.”