The Ramones: Leave Home (Sire)

ROCK CRITIC or not, your reviewer resides in the Midwest, and doesn't make it up to Noo Yawk any too often (last such trek occurring back in 72, when my wife's cousin got hitched in a Goodbye, Columbus shindig way out on L.I.; highlight of that trip being us hopping into a cab in the wilds of Manhattan and finding a Blue Oyster Cult hooked-cross symbol affixed to the cabbie's partition) and like all you other true believers out there, all I know about the new wave of N.Y. bands is what I read in CREEM and ogle at in Rock Scene.