28. Ramones, ‘It’s Alive’ (1979)

This amphetamine-paced double-LP served as a Ramones career retrospective, smack at their peak, and shows the Queens crew almost stumbling across hardcore around the same time California was inventing it. Over four nights in 1977 at London's Rainbow Theater, the punk pioneers blasted through 28 songs from their first three albums. (Thanks to their tidily short length, they squeezed in nearly all of 'em.) The final LP version came mostly from the last night, charged with an energy so electric that fans are said to have ripped seats from the floor and thrown them at the stage in enthusiasm. It's no surprise, as the entire record pulses with American punk's promise, a spittle-spewing Joey Ramone barely pausing between "Pinhead," "Do You Wanna Dance?" and "Chain Saw." He even barely pauses long enough to get out all the lyrics, the band buzzing away behind him like they're in a machine shop. During post-production, the speed was something with which even the band itself struggled to keep up. In his book, Hey Ho, Let's Go: The Story of the Ramones, Everett True writes that Dee Dee needed extra fuel to record bass overdubs: an extra-heavy helping of black coffee. Arielle Castillo