you nailed it Ed.. Garage Rock at it's purest form.. and they knew it.. DeeDee was once asked why he played so fast.. "band rule.. all songs no longer than 2 minutes".. Joey once said.. "Yeah we suck, but we rule at suck, don't like it, F*** you!".. they put on no airs at all.
And you are right, if they got longevity, they had something goin on.
I see Ramones bumper stickers on a lot of kids cars at the local High School.

Anybody get Howard TV?.. I understand he has all the old Ramone interviews & performances, unedited, from the old show, on the PPV list.

It certainly was raw. Early punk was as much a rejection of the music culture as it was of society.

Popular music in the pre-punk era was populated by musicians with a high level of virtuosity. Bands Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Peter Frampton, etc, usually the musicians that made it were either prodigies, classically trained, or both. The talent required had a discriminating quality to it.

Punk said, “All you need is three chords and something to say.” Rap and Hip-Hop are offshoots of this social rejection; but without the three-chord prerequisite. They’ll run a beat track behind you and you can rhyme without the burden of music lessons. Punk taught us that style is substance.

"Beat the Brat with a baseball bat"

Jim Carroll, wow a blast from the past how about Pop O Pies? "Bake those donuts with extra grease this batch is for the chief o police"