Bowie did it with Pinups, Guns n' Roses with The Spaghetti Incident? — delivered supercharged covers of the music that influenced them. Now the Ramones, fondly revisiting the proto-grunge of '60s gods (Stones, Animals, Who), cult faves (Love, Troggs) and crazies (Amboy Dukes, Seeds), offer the pyschedelectable Acid Eaters. The rockers smoke, but it's the riskier picks that surprise (Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love," with ex-porn star Traci Lords; Jagger-Richards' "Out of Time," with Skid Row's Sebastian Bach backing up Joey Ramone's touching Mick mimicry). Even when the songs aren't Ramoned by the group's patented steamroller backbeat and fifth-gear riffing, they're lifted into a helium air of goofy celebration.

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"