It's Alive is the first live album by the American punk rock band the Ramones, titled after the 1974 horror film of the same name. It was recorded at the Rainbow Theatre in London on December 31, 1977, and released in April 1979 as a 2-LP set. The album draws material from the band's first three studio albums, Ramones (1976), Leave Home (1977), and Rocket to Russia (1977). Four concerts during the UK tour were recorded, but the New Year's Eve performance was chosen because ten rows of seats were thrown at the stage after the concert and it was considered the best of the performances at the venue. The album and concert is often referred to as the band at its live peak.[citation needed] The concert was also filmed and later released in a truncated form on the 2007 compilation DVD It's Alive 1974-1996.
The album was certified gold in Argentina in 1993.[1] It is the only live album by the band that does not feature the concert intro music "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" or the outro music "The Ecstasy of Gold," both of which are from Ennio Morricone's score to the film The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.
In a 1996 retrospective review, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice wrote: "Redundant when it was dropped on the punk-besotted U.K. in 1979, this concert is precious history now—seems so impossibly light and quick it makes you suspect they didn't fully sustain their live pace into their forties after all."[11] Paul Rigby of Record Collector described the album as a "high energy, one-hour blitz" that attests to "how high-octane they really were."[7]AllMusic critic Mark Deming deemed It's Alive to be "not only the best Ramones live album," but also "one of the best and most effective live albums in the rock canon, and every bit as essential as Ramones, Leave Home, or Rocket to Russia."[2] In 2005, It's Alive was ranked number 279 in Rock Hard magazine's book of The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time.[12]
It's Alive was first released on CD in the US in 1995. The album was reissued as a 4 CD/2 LP 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition on September 20, 2019, limited to 8,000 copies. The set includes all four concerts that were recorded during the Ramones' UK tour in December 1977 and is housed in a 12x12 hardcover book, with liner notes written by Steve Albini and Ed Stasium.[13]
^[...], Rock Hard (Hrsg.). [Red.: Michael Rensen. Mitarb.: Götz Kühnemund] (2005). Best of Rock & Metal die 500 stärksten Scheiben aller Zeiten. Königswinter: Heel. p. 102. ISBN3-89880-517-4.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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