It's Alive is the first live album by the American punk rock band the Ramones, titled after the 1974 horror film of the same name. It was recorded at the Rainbow Theatre in London on December 31, 1977, and released in April 1979 as a 2-LP set. The album draws from the band's first three studio albums: Ramones (1976), Leave Home (1977), and Rocket to Russia (1977). Four concerts during the UK tour were recorded, but the New Year's Eve one was chosen because ten rows of seats were thrown at the stage after the concert and it was considered the best of the performances at the venue.
"Since it was New Year's Eve, our management brought in some balloons and gave everybody these 'Gabba gabba hey' signs to wave around. It was very celebratory. Johnny Thunders was there, and Sid Vicious with his new girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. Elton John was there, dressed up like Marlon Brando in The Wild One. We'd honed our craft really sharp by then. The Ramones' sound was basically the essence of rock 'n' roll. That's what we were going for." – Tommy Ramone[1]
The album and concert is referred to as the band at its live peak.[citation needed] The concert was filmed and later released in truncated form on the 2007 compilation DVD It's Alive 1974–1996. The album was certified gold in Argentina in 1993.[2]
In a 1996 retrospective review, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice wrote: "Redundant when it was dropped on the punk-besotted U.K. in 1979, this concert is precious history now—seems so impossibly light and quick it makes you suspect they didn't fully sustain their live pace into their forties after all."[12]
Paul Rigby of Record Collector described the album as a "high energy, one-hour blitz" that attests to "how high-octane they really were".[8]
AllMusic critic Mark Deming deemed It's Alive to be "not only the best Ramones live album," but also "one of the best and most effective live albums in the rock canon, and every bit as essential as Ramones, Leave Home, or Rocket to Russia."[3]
In 2005, It's Alive was ranked number 279 in Rock Hard magazine's book The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time.[13]
It's Alive was first released on CD in the US in 1995. The album was reissued as a 4 CD/2 LP 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition on September 20, 2019, limited to 8,000 copies. The set includes all four concerts that were recorded during the Ramones' UK tour in December 1977 and is housed in a 12x12 hardcover book, with liner notes written by Steve Albini and Ed Stasium.[14]
