It’s not everyday legendary punk rocker CJ Ramone comes to Liverpool, but when he
announced that he’d be playing at The Magnet as apart of his tour supporting his latest album American Psycho you can be sure we were hyped for what would be a legendary
night.

But before we get to the main event there was some support to add to the already fantastic night. The first of which was local pop-punkers Branch to Root. 

They played a nice short set, while they played a great set it must be noted that they weren’t exactly fit for the punk-rock set as their set sounded a lot more like Brand New, the band even acknowledged the fact that they were not fit for the bill saying “We really shouldn’t be on this bill”. It would’ve
been much more fitting to have someone like Generation or Queen Zee and The Sasstones open. However, their set was highly enjoyable despite this.

Next up was Canadian punk-rockers Isotopes. Their set was filled with pure balls to the wall energy, racing through their set with songs like “Situation
No No” and “Hasta La Vista Baby“. If you didn’t know that it was a CJ Ramone show and wondered in by accident, it wouldn’t be a bad mistake if you thought that it was their show it was that lively and energetic.

They ended their set with a blast and threw bubble gum out to the audience in similar style to our very own Salt The Snail, but this time they were thrown out of one of the member’s underpants, luckily the bubble gum has their own individual wrappers on.

Then it was time for the main even of the night, CJ Ramone himself, you could feel the suspense in the audience as they waited patiently for the man himself to walk on stage. His set was opened with “Let’s Dance” from The Ramones’ debut album and was quickly followed up by “Let’s Go” from End of The Century and then was followed by “Yeah Yeah Yeah” from CJ’s latest album American Beauty.

He powered through his set list which contained a good mix of songs from the Ramones discography (including some deep cuts such as “Shock Therapy“) along with plenty of his own solo work which gave the set list a nice even balance. About halfway through his his set list he jokingly said “When I was in the Ramones I always wanted to play some of the love songs but Joey wouldn’t let me because he wrote them all about Johnny’s wife” before playing “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend“.

CJ occasionally changed songs which were on the written set list to other songs from the Ramones discography to keep it fresh and give us something different than that which other cities have received, which was a nice change and made the show even more special. His set lasted for around 90-100 minutes and was surely a legendary night which will be
remembered for a long time to come.

Photos and words by Pip Johnson. Stay tuned for our interview with CJ Ramone.