Rhino / Wea
2005
Weird Tales Of The Ramones
About This Album
It's easy to look at Rhino's 2005 box set Weird Tales of the Ramones and wonder whether it's necessary. After all, there are albums for Ramones fans of all stripes: a single disc of hits for the casual fan, a double-disc set for those who love the Ramones but don't want all the albums, then, of course, the original records -- all of the prime Sire albums from the '70s and early '80s were recently reissued in expanded editions by Rhino -- for all true rockers. These should satisfy every different audience the band has, so why bother with a box set? The answer to the question is that Weird Tales of the Ramones isn't really a CD box set, even though it contains three career-spanning CDs compiled by the late Johnny Ramone -- it's a collectable, an object of art, one that's closer to being a book augmented by three CDs and a DVD than a conventional CD box set. More precisely, it's a 54-page comic book hidden inside a hardcover book that's designed like an oversized comic. It will not fit neatly next to the other box sets in your collection, which is appropriate, since Weird Tales of the Ramones is not like other box sets. Although the three discs do a good job of tracing the band's career, hitting nearly all of the high points along with more lows than necessary -- there is a palpable, unavoidable dip in quality that arrives midway through the second disc that no amount polishing or selective editing can save -- the music is nearly beside the point: the discs function as the soundtrack to the myth the entire set sells.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 5,7,12,13,14 and 28)

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Disc 2 (try tracks 2,8,13,20 and 25)

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Disc 3 (try tracks 13,14,15,21,23 and 25)

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Disc 4

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