Born; 1977 in Detroit, The Ramrods, witnesses to the best rock ever made in the history of the world bring the power and the fury of their own; “I Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, “Here It Comes”, “Gimme Some Action”, “There’s Nothin’ ta Do in Detroit Anymore” and the classic; “I’m A Ramrod (baby)”. Peter James- Guitar, Mark Norton a.k.a. Ivan Suvanjieff-voice, ‘Bootsey” Bob Mulrooney on drums and Dave Hanna on bass guitar. Blowin’ out their engines on the I-94 . . . This collection was put together for their thirty year reunion in Detroit. This is high-energy studio stuff and amazing live tracks. Feedback, fist-fights, beer and bedlam.
1977
Detroit and the surrounding suburbs also had several important punk rock bands and included one of the first hardcore punk scenes in the nation. One of these short-lived but talented punk bands was the Ramrods that was formed in 1977. Bandmembers were Mark Norton (vocals), Peter James (guitar), Dave Hanna (bass), and Robert Mulrooney (drums). According to Wikipedia, the last official Ramrods show was on January 28, 1978. Before the band broke up, Ramones manager Danny Fields and Seymour Stein of Sire Records had been interested in signing them.
Robert Mulrooney and Dave Hanna were first in a band called Streets that later evolved into the Deviates; Mulrooney says of that period: “We were a bar band playing covers, four nights a week, but we’d throw in stuff like Television’s ‘Venus De Milo’, and as long as [the audience] didn’t know it was ‘punk’, they’d dig it.”
Surprisingly little is available on the Internet about the Ramrods (and also the Lovemasters for that matter); I cannot find so much as a 45 that was released during the band’s brief history. The best information that I have found is in a November 2014 post by John Perye on a website called berlinlovesyou.com; it includes a quote from drummer Robert Mulrooney: “The Ramrods were the first band in Detroit to play in the style of the Ramones.” Perye also writes: “I have heard countless stories from many Detroiter’s who argued that during the 1980’s there was no better soul-funk-party-new-wave band than the Lovemasters.”
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A retrospective album by the Ramrods called Gimme Some Action finally came out in 2004 on both LP and CD, but it is already so rare that popsike.com reported an auction in 2012 with a final bid of $32. Including the live medley mentioned below, the album has just 9 tracks.
Writing for the Detroit Metro Times website, Ben Blackwell writes of the Gimme Some Action CD: “The Ramrods are the name of Detroit frontline punk warriors. . . . Ramrods lead howler Mark J. Norton barks like a bored kid with an armload of bulldogs while guitarist Peter James’s scarred-yet-smooth soloing informs us that [the Stooges album] Raw Power was safely tucked under his pillow. While the ’Rods studio output is brief, the highlight of the disc is easily their 1977 live medley: ‘Helter Skelter’ [by the Beatles] catapults into a punk-painted ‘My Generation’ [by the Who] and declares the obvious in ‘Search and Destroy’ [by the Stooges] and cements its place in rock lore by adding the archetypical ‘I’m a Ramrod’.”