Gabba gabba yay! Ramones subject of night

The Ramones played at Friars in Aylesbury multiple times, including a Christmas show – and speakers on the night will be music journalist Kris Needs and Craig Leon, who produced the band’s first album and will bring along test pressings.

At the event there will be a listening of the album, as well as music from electronic pioneers of the same era Suicide – on high-end equipment from Deco Audio.

Kris said: “It was July 1976 when The Ramones first came to the UK and we got to know them.

“I’d given them one of their first enthusiastic reviews in zigzag [a British rock music magazine], and we were friends after that and I went on several UK tours with them. I really loved Joey, he was a complete sweetheart.”

He added: “The Ramones were completely unlike anything and within a year everyone was writing songs like that, we hadn’t seen anything like that at all.”

The New York double header also features lesser known but influential band Suicide. Kris, who wrote Suicide’s official biography, said: “Suicide were one of the most important electronic bands to come out at that time – they were so confrontational and you can hear them now in every electronic record. Because they were from New York there are lots of influences – there is doo wop in there and there was punk in there, and no audience could get the better of Alan Vega – he was wilder and more fearless than Iggy and Iggy would agree with that.”

The event takes place at 7.30pm at Temple Street Wine Bar, Aylesbury on March 13.