Gabba-Gabba-Hey! ‘Spaghetti’ Again?

RAMONES

“Acid Eaters”

Radioactive

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The Ramones have always been closer to their roots than Guns N’ Roses. So it’s no surprise that Joey and the boyz’s album of favorite old songs sounds better (if less ambitious) than GNR’s “The Spaghetti Incident?” Let’s face it: The Ramones may have touched off the ‘70s punk explosion and have remained surprisingly strong into the ‘90s, but they’re really children of the psychedelic ‘60s.

The beauty of this collection is the Ramones’ refusal to distinguish between legitimate ‘60s icons (Dylan, the Who, the Stones) and the era’s pop cheese-makers (the Seeds, Ted Nugent’s Amboy Dukes, the Troggs). The group has walked that same line itself for years.

To their credit, the Ramones do more than just give the likes of “Out of Time,” “Substitute” (with Pete Townshend guesting) and “My Back Pages” the 1-2-3-4 treatment, instead meeting the original versions halfway. They do give the speed treatment to Creedence’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” and the Jan & Dean’s “Surf City,” and it works perfectly.

And they get major bonus points for the long-overdue unearthing of “The Shape of Things to Come,” a Mann-Weil number from the 1968 B-movie “Wild in the Streets,” with a hippie-youth-rebellion message that translates perfectly to punk-youth-rebellion.

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).

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