Ramones Blitzkrieg '76 (1989)

In a way, the Ramones are an ideal band to anthologize. No matter how cohesive their records were (or not), their albums always played like collections of singles and since singles are easy to anthologize, it stands to reason that the best of the Ramones' songs will sound good in nearly any context; hell, the haphazard Ramones Mania proved that. However, Rhino's double-disc Hey! Ho! Let's Go: Ramones Anthology has much greater goals than being just another collection – it strives to be the final word on the Ramones.

Appearing one year after Rhino's Ramones box set Weird Tales of the Ramones, and appearing four years after Rhino's first single-disc Ramones collection Loud, Fast Ramones: Their Toughest Hits – which itself appeared after Rhino's excellent double-disc Hey! Ho! Let's Go!: The Anthology – Rhino's 2006 collection Greatest Hits serves up 20 of the group's basics. Unlike 2002's Loud, Fast Ramones, Greatest Hits makes no attempt to cover anything other than the group's peak period: the first 16 songs cover 1976's Ramones through 1980s End of the Century, with a selection apiece from Pleasant Dreams ("The KKK Took My Baby Away"), Subterranean Jungle ("Outsider"), Brain Drain ("Pet Sematary") and Too Tough to Die ("Wart Hog").

Wild, raw, rough-edged Chicago slide guitar blues, this is jumpin', partyin' music in the tradition of Hound Dog Taylor and J.B. Hutto (Lil' Ed's uncle). Recorded live in the studio with no overdubs, it includes nine original compositions plus covers of Hutto and Albert Collins tunes.

Uncritical admiration is appropriate for these Schubert Lieder, where no forcing, no technical difficulties, not even a single spoiled note are to be found. It is not possible to perform Die schöne Müllerin and the other songs more heartily, more expressively than Fritz Wunderlich and his congenial, subtle accompanist Hubert Giesen do and, fortunately, will be able to do again and again, on these two records that every music lover will have to listen to stirringly.