Road to ruin

"The 40th anniversary reissue of the album adds many things to entice fans who may already have an edition of Road to Ruin in their collections. The original album is remastered and sounds sparkling; the second disc contains many unreleased rough mixes, single mixes, acoustic versions of "Needle and Pins" and "Questioningly" that will have you reaching for a hankie, and a goofy Ramones-on-45 version of "I Wanna Be Sedated"; and the third disc features a previously unreleased full concert from 1979 that sees the band running through over 30 songs in typical steamrolling fashion. The really interesting inclusions are "demixes" of the album done by Ed Stasium in 2018. He took off all the overdubs, restored the original performances, and remixed the songs. It's Road to Ruin fan service that answers the question of what the songs would have sounded like if done in classic Ramones fashion: flat and a little basic in comparison to the finished product that actually hit the shelves in 1978. Still, it's fascinating to hear, and its inclusion makes this reissue a treat for completist Ramones fans".

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