Pleasant Dreams. Indeed.

Not sure why but Spotify has really been on my ass about listening the The Ramones’ remastered Pleasant Dreams. 

Not to disparage Pleasant Dreams - it was, after all, the first Ramones cassette I ever got my mitts on as a youth. It suffers because 1) snobs like to complain about the sound of it, so it appears they're blessed with Phil Spector ears unlike everyone else not in the know, and 2) like Psycho Therapy from Subterranean Jungle, lazy motherfuckers just pick out The KKK Took My Baby Away or We Want the Airwaves when, while they're both great songs, ironically the best track on the album is All's Quiet on the Eastern Front, which is sandwiched right between them in the track sequence and contained the best parts of rock 'n roll": super smooth, more roll than rock, and  call & response singing. Why the fuck they didn't play this every show for 15 years with Joey and Dee Dee trading lines, I'll never know.

There's TONS of great melody buried in the album (You Sound Lie You're Sick, Sitting in My Room, You Didn't Mean Anything to Me), one funny, namecheck-themselves-like-only-The Ramones-can song that sounds like a Thanksgiving Day Parade (It's Not My place in the 9 to 5 World) and hell, a slow song whose lyrics I used to fill out answers to a chemistry test and mentions one of their own songs!  Camon.