The Ramones were hardly the "great grand-daddies of punk". The Velvet Underground were around in 1965 and Stooges in 1969. The MC5 were around in the late sixties, and the Troggs, the Count Five, and numerous other UK and Pacific Northwest bands were recognizably punk long before the Ramones existed. The Ramones were more directly influenced by the immortal New York Dolls (and don't forget the Dictators) who also preceeded them; see the fine book Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain (no relation to the admirable and ill-fated presidential candidate). The Ramones really were an important band and they were cool as all hell, but they weren't "first" at much of anything except buzzsaw pop, which within a decade had mutated into a genre unto itself with bands like the Undertones, the Hard-Ons, the Buzzcocks, and a cast of thousands.