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Ramones Come Home as Queens Museum Hosts Tribute to Punk Greats

By Katie Honan | February 3, 2016 5:03pm
 A photo of The Ramones hangs in Manny's Music Shop. The band will have a retrospective at the Queens Museum this April.
A photo of The Ramones hangs in Manny's Music Shop. The band will have a retrospective at the Queens Museum this April.
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DNAinfo/Mary Johnson

CORONA — The borough's legendary quartet — and its influence on punk — will be the showcase of an exhibit at the Queens Museum starting in April.

“Hey! Ho! Let’s Go: Ramones and the Birth of Punk” opens April 10 and will showcase the band’s influence on both music and art, including magazine covers and pieces from Arturo Vega, who designed the band’s iconic logo and many of their covers, according to the New York Times.

The Ramones got their start in Forest Hills in 1974 when John Cummings and Thomas Erdelyi — later known as Johnny and Tommy Ramone — teamed up with Douglas Colvin, or Dee Dee, and Jeffrey Hyman, known as Joey. They picked up Brooklyn’s Marc Steven Bell, known as Marky, in 1978.

They played their first show at CBGB’s later that year and helped shape the fast and loud style that defined New York punk.

"The Ramones are not an oldies group, they are not a glitter group, they don’t play boogie music and they don’t play blues,” Tommy wrote in the band’s first one-page biography. 

“Their sound is not unlike a fast drill on a rear molar."

He noted that the four musicians were from Forest Hills — “and kids who grow up there either become musicians, degenerates or dentists,” he wrote.

The  exhibit, which is brought to Queens by the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, runs through July 31.

The Queens Museum did not immediately respond to a request for comment.