The years go by and the legacy left by the Ramones still puts down more and more roots in the great history of the pop music of the twentieth century. The false brothers from Queens have actually never taken their dirty and used Converse elsewhere than down the beaten path of a certain rock’n’roll tradition going from surf music to girl groups. With stupidity as philosophy, teenage insouciance as credo, supersonic guitars as weapons of mass destruction, their albums—binary in their form, really enjoyable in their content—give birth to hymns of bubble-gum pop on amphetamines that are a lot more serious than they seem. Just like this Leave Home, their second studio album released in January 1977, only nine months after their first one! A good thumb in the nose of the rock scene, with, in the role of the icing on the cake, classics like I Remember and, above all, Pinhead, from which comes their famous battle cry: Gabba Gabba Hey! In 80 titles splits on 3 CDs, this generous deluxe remastered edition celebrates the fortieth birthday of this masterpiece that couldn’t have been more influential, overloaded with demos, B sides, remixes and live titles recorded in 1977 at the CBGB, the New-York punk mecca. In short, our verdict is in: gabba gabba hey! © MZ