Hey. We just had to say thank you first. Now lets get on with this.

"Best Punk Record of All Time" was hard to define. We couldn't define it. So we left it up to you. That way when the cards fall down and the someone sticks and Ace in their sock, we can blame you for not seeing it. It our little way of saying don't blame us. You guys could have seen Lou putting the card in his sock just as easily as we could have. Multiple votes by a single IP were kicked. This vote was sent out to places like Fark.com and others like it. Threads were started in other pages. So we kind of expected the Ramones to win.

We explained the rules to you before. Nominate, then vote. This isn't VH-1 and this isn't fucking Rolling Stone. We don't have some last say to make everything right. We stepped back on this one. In the other votes, we will admit that we voted like two or three times, but in this one, I voted once, Michele voted once and left the rest up to you.

So who won? What album do you think was the best all time punk rock record?

We've both written about this album before, but the fact that it won this thing means it deserves something new.

I'll be honest, I'm glad Damaged won. Don't get me wrong; I love the Ramones, I'm a big fan from back in the beginning, but "best" is always a subjective term and, for me, "best" goes beyond just being a good, fun record, like the Ramones s/t is.

Damaged was a mind blowing album for me. All the punk I had been listening to before this - The Clash, Ramones, The Damned, etc. - seemed to be missing something in comparison. Damaged was my first real experience with hardcore. And it bit me, hard.

It's a raw album. And not in the way that, say, The Stooges were raw. Not the sound. The feeling. Listening to Damaged was like walking into an open wound. Maybe it was yours. Maybe it was someone else's. But when I listened to this, it was like opening a slit in my arm and letting the blood flow out. It was release. Letting it all out. It was a relentless assault of every part of me, physically and emotionally. That an album could be cathartic, energizing and paralyzing all at once is quite an accomplishment.

Personally, I think the best album really won. - M

What can I say about this album that hasn't already been said. This album was hardcore. The first to define a scene. It was like for the first time you could actually say we were doing something different. Circle Jerks fucked around with it but the never really got it. Don't ask me what X was doing. Something about love and wanting to fuck Lorna Doom. I didn't know where the hell those albums were going. First rule of hardcore. Girls don't exist. Sorry. But it's true. This was a monument to anger and frustration. Everything on here was about how fucked up your life is. You were the one eating cold three day old chow mein. You were the one who couldn't get out of bed cause you hated life. You were the one throwing beer bottles at the TV. You were the one who got arrested all the time. You were the one. You were hardcore. That was Damaged. - T

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