This record is equal parts retcon and concession. Would the Who record a covers album? Or Creedence? Maybe Joey’s beloved bubblegum acts, but Acid Eaters posits a band that ate their Nuggets and grew up strong. Anyway, pulling Joey Levine to sing backup on “Yummy Yummy Yummy” wouldn’t be as cool as tabbing Pete Townshend to bellow in the background of “Substitute,” and thus is it here. American hero Traci Lord does the same on “Somebody To Love,” and American frontman of Skid Row Sebastian Bach knocks off an item on his bucket list with the Stones’ “Out of Time.” It’s mutual fanservice. And it’s nice to see that in this late stage, the Ramones were comfortable enough with their legacy not to fret about notching an alternative rock hit.

Still, that didn’t prevent them from sounding like an alterna-bar band, especially on C.J.’s three vocal features. Marky kicks up a towering cloud on the Joey-fronted “7 And 7 Is,” swallowing his bandmates whole, showcasing the kind of freewheeling style in which he so rarely got to indulge. Johnny’s playing is hit or miss — he turns the chug of the Amboy Dukes’ “Journey To The Center Of Your Mind” into an homage to the Batman theme, but his alley-cat squeals on “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine” belong to a narrower imagination. Then again, Joey can’t match Sky Saxon’s louche dissipation, settling for a coquettish reading comprised of squeaks and dead-Elvis hamminess. To the amazement of all, his Long Island yawp is ideal for CCR’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?,” the most classically Ramones performance on the record. In another time, that honor might’ve gone to “Surf City,” the closing track, but the tuff-guy BGVs are a world away from Jan & Dean’s chippy sociopathy. Joey gifts the “two girls for every boy” line to Johnny’s guitar, which is less an acknowledgement of sexism than a concession to limitations.

If anyone had earned a victory lap, it was the Ramones. In a couple of years, they’d hitch up with Lollapalooza, feted by — and standing out against — a host of alt-rock luminaries. The only video released from Acid Eaters, “Substitute,” was a Cretin-Con all to itself, with cameos by Lemmy, White Zombie’s Sean Yseult, Michael Berryman, and an intro from Lux Interior. But if you want to know what spawned the Ramones, you needn’t look further than the first few records.