By the middle of the 1970s, popular music had changed. The punchy bub-blegum sound of the 1960s was gone. Instead the scene was dominated by musicians who wanted to elevate rock to the status of high art, with concept albums, rock operas and overblown guitar solos. A typical track from the Sixties might be four minutes long; by the mid-1970s, ten minutes or more was not unusual. Many fans despaired, feeling that rock had become bloated, pompous and pretentious. The counterblast began on August 16th 1974, in front of a tiny crowd in a seedy New York bar called CBGB. Four young men-Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee and Tommy Ramone-walked on stage. The concert they gave was shambolic; they spent as much time shouting at each other as playing. But they improved rapidly, and it soon became clear they had hit on something.
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