By the mid-1970s, rock music had become huge and complicated. Bands used long guitar solos, giant stage shows, and albums that took months to record. Then four friends from Queens, New York, did something completely different. They called themselves the Ramones. On April 23, 1976, they released their first album. It had fourteen songs, and not one lasted longer than two and a half minutes. The whole album was recorded in about a week for less than seven thousand dollars. That was astonishing at a time when most rock bands spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the studio. The Ramones played fast, loud, and simple. Most of their songs used only three or four chords. The lyrics were short and fun. Songs like "Blitzkrieg Bop" had a raw energy that made listeners want to jump around. People started calling this sound punk rock. The Ramones did not sell millions of albums right away. But their influence was enormous. Bands all over the world heard their music and thought they could do it too. The Ramones proved that music did not need to be elaborate to be powerful. Sometimes the simplest songs hit the hardest.