No. 364: The Ramones - "Ramones" (1976)

I spend half an hour on the treadmill in my back shed every morning of every day (well, most mornings) - and its rare that I can listen to a complete album on my iPod in that time.
Ramones clocks in at 29:04 and contains a lazy 14 songs - all fast, raucous and extremely catchy.
The Stooges and the New York Dolls helped pave the way, but this was the album that introduced the world to Punk Rock: fours dudes from Queens New York in matching jeans and black leather jackets singing songs about girls, glue-sniffing and beating up brats with baseball bats. Poetry!
The formula was simple yet effective: Johnny Ramone played three chords really fast (with no guitar solos) while singer Joey Ramone tried to keep up and cram all the lyrics in.
They released 14 albums over 20 years - all remarkably similar - but this is the best of the bunch by a long shot. "Hey Ho Let's Go" is Shakespeare for the ADD generation.

No. 365: Jimi Hendrix - "Live At The Fillmore East" (1999)

It's Day 1 - the Ground Zero of this year-long exercise - so I decided to kick it off with an album which contains some of the finest live guitar playing ever committed to record.
Released in 1999, this album features live material that Jimi Hendrix recorded with the Band Of Gypsys across four shows on New Year's Eve 1969 & New Year's Day 1970 at the Fillmore East in New York. Hendrix knew all the gigs were being recorded for a live album, and as a result turned in some of the most amazing performances of his short career over these 2 days. Six tracks from these concerts were released as the Band Of Gypsys album in 1970 - but most of these tracks weren't heard until this official release nearly 30 years later. "Hear My Train A Comin'", "Izabella" and "Earth Blues" are the highlights, as well as alternate versions of "Machine Gun" and "Power Of Soul" - all powered along by thumping drums from Buddy Miles and the tight bass grooves of Billy Cox. Hendrix's playing is the centrepiece throughout though - have a listen to the guitar solo he tears into at around the 2:30 mark of "Stone Free" - it is what every rock guitarist has been striving for ever since.
Hendrix was dead before the end of 1970. Had he lived it would have been amazing to see where he would have taken his guitar in the 70's & beyond. Every time I hear this album it always inspires me to pick up my own guitar ..... and I always end up putting it down minutes later with a feeling of "why bother!"