While the Sex Pistols attempt to startle those parts of America that other Punks haven’t reached, their nearest American equivalents are back for less sensational but more predictable success at the Rainbow. The Ramones are hailed as New York’s top punks, thanks to their success at the city’s best know New Wave venue CBGB’s, but it is increasingly difficult to see what purpose the tag fulfils. Their style is totally different to that of the more advanced New York bands, like the excellent Television, and with their Byrds haircuts and leather jackets they’d look quite out of place at joining the would-be punk fashion elite at Seditionaries.

Their music was very loud, very slick and very very simple (almost to the Jonathan Richman level of calculated naivety). There was nothing audibly shocking or dangerous in their lyrics and if the decibel level had been reduced to below the danger limit it could have been more easily appreciated that many of their songs had the straightforward basic style of a nursery rhyme or children’s folksong.

They were performed in all seriousness, though, with the band punching their fists solemnly in the air for the choruses of Hey Ho Let’s Go or Gabba Gabba Hey, while the thunderous accompaniment had the frenzied dedication of Status Quo. Next they will doubtless want to progress and do more than keep their audiences bouncing up and down, but for the moment they were agreeable in small doses, though bafflingly tame and childish.