I always crack up when I hear this song just for the opening line "Do you remember Hullabaloo"

Well I remember it because in addition to being a TV dance/music show of it's time (late 60's), it was also franchised out as a live music club in different parts of the country.  My Dad, along with several of his business friends, invested in the franchise and opened a Hullabaloo club in our little town.  It did OK for a while and introduced me to a bunch of good bands from the DC/Baltimore area.  I helped run the lights and concessions even though I was only 11 at the time.

Unfortunately, for my Dad and his partners, it was a teen dance club that did not serve what most older teens are always looking for; beer.  Eventually it went under due to smaller and smaller crowds of kids that wanted to just dance to live music.  It did however instill a life long love of live music in me and for that I am always grateful.  Thanks Dad 

Here's a review of End of the Century which I pulled off some blog, and I gotta say it's right on:

>>This album makes little sense within the narrative of "The Ramones are the godfathers of punk rock." It would be hard to come up with a producer whose trademark style had less to do with punk rock than Phil Spector. Heck, Phil was the very embodiment of the question I mentioned in the overall introduction ("how much can we add ..."), and thus the philosophical opposite of what the band had done on its first three albums. Teaming up with Phil Spector, it seems, would have transcended any possible accusations of "selling out" and would have entered the realm of "absolutely out of their minds."

On the other hand, though, the album makes a good deal more sense within the narrative of "The Ramones were an interesting modernized update of 50's/60's lightweight pop." Spector was, after all, one of the most sought-after producers of the 1960's, helping to generate hit single after hit single, and in the early 70's he produced albums for George Harrison and John Lennon that are often considered among the best albums of their time. If the band was looking for a new direction for its next album, why wouldn't they consider turning to a man who had helped so many of spiritual musical kin years before?

What made this episode in the band's history so interesting and so volatile was that both narratives had a significant amount of merit and truth to them. These two sides of the band had managed to co-exist just fine up to this point, with both feeding off each other and creating the sound and approach we all know and love, but this album really pitted the two against one another. The "punk" elements are cannibalized and reused in a pretty grotesque way, all in the name of strongly serving the "neo-retro" nature of the songs. The stories from the recording sessions, especially Phil pulling a gun on Dee Dee and Phil making Johnny play a single chord for 8 hours straight, are fairly well-known, and show that this arrangement was a combination that pretty much doomed itself to the stuff of legend from the moment it was suggested. The end result was an album that's one of the strangest I've ever heard, yet strange in a fairly predictable way: endless layers of instrumentation, most individually playing in a punkish manner, but thrown on top of each other until the punk elements disappear, while various other supporting instruments (e.g. saxophone) buoy up Joey's echo-laden vocals.

Truth be told, I really like the overall sound. The main problem I have with the album is the slightly inconsistent songwriting. Songs like "Let's Go," "All the Way" and "High Risk Insurance," as cool as they sound production-wise, and as much as they ostensibly rock, just aren't going to cut it with me when they feel this undercooked in the chord sequences. Plus, I'm still not sure how I feel about "I'm Affected," which is kinda catchy and intense but also sounds kinda ugly to me. I do kinda like the lead slidey parts in the guitars, but I'm not at all convinced Johnny had anything to do with those parts.

Still, there's a lot of great material on this album. The opening "Do You Remember Rock 'N' Roll Radio?" must have thrown everybody for a loop upon first listen, from the opening radio broadcast sounds to the endless layering of instruments to the main sax-driven groove that screams out "50's" loudly with every repetition. The song is incredible, arrangements aside, from a great vocal melody that doesn't sound like anything the band had done before, to the fun looking-back-and-looking-forward lyrics, to just about anything else that Phil buried in the mix just to have. And man, does Joey ever sound great in this context. Another major classic comes later in "Rock 'N' Roll High School," aka the song with the first chord that was played hundreds of times to get it just right. It's largely a rewrite of "Rockaway Beach," but it's definitely a rewrite that I'm glad exists, as the guitar parts and Joey's singing are just oodles of fun. And, well, I dig the opening schoolbell sound, and the totally random explosion sound at the end.

The ballads are represented by "Danny Says" and "Baby I Love You," two songs that are incredibly unlike anything the band had done previously but which I find myself liking quite a lot. "Danny Says" just feels like it should have gone down as more of a classic than it did; it just has a really nice timeless feel to it that I like a lot, and the juxtaposition of the lovely melody with more of the usual Ramones lyrical themes (like sitting around watching "Get Smart" on TV) just fascinates me. "Baby I Love You" is the album's sole cover, of a Ronettes' song produced by Spector in 1964, and while it's more of a solo Joey song than a proper Ramones song (and thus not really a great choice for a lead single), it's pretty nice. I wouldn't have wanted any more songs like this on the album, but it's a neat little novelty.

The remaining songs are pretty nice, overall. "Chinese Rock" is a solid hard stomper that could have fit in well on Road to Ruin, and while "The Return of Jackie and Judy" seems a little too reminiscient of "Judy is a Punk" (and others) for comfort at first, it does have a couple of melody twists here and there that definitely sound like they haven't been used yet. "I Can't Make it on Time" is another bit of mid-tempo rock, and not exactly rousing, but I definitely enjoy the vocal melody. And finally, there's just something incredibly appealing about the "ba ba banana, this ain't Havana" hook in "This Ain't Havana," enough anyway to make me want to give it a second listen once in a while.

Still, for all of the praises that can be thrown out to many of the songs, and for the interesting sound, I just can't give this album quite as high a rating as the last few. There are just a few too many instances where it feels like the cool sound is covering up a clear decline in the songwriting. Still, when everything is put together, I like the album way more than I dislike it, and I happily give it an A. It's definitely the last Ramones album I'd call very good.