The Stooges
“The Stooges, man…” – Capn Marvel
“Nyuk nyuk nyuk!” – Curly (courtesy of “Obvious Joke Man”)
“That was a great album…people hated it.” – Iggy Pop, referring to Fun House
Albums Reviewed:
The Stooges are one of the greatest American rock and roll bands of all time. Blasting out of the late-sixties Detroit rock scene, they were originally the area’s black sheep, but time (and Fun House, and Raw Power) has shown they had more than their fair share of intelligence, albeit often masked in primal dunderheadedness. Reading characterizations and descriptions of the Stooges these days, their reputation as just a bunch of untalented proto-“punks” has begun to annoy me, because, during their short life, they showed about 100 times more creativity and smarts than they’re currently given credit for, even though their sheer power is the most compelling aspect of the band. Yeah, their lyrics aren’t exactly poetry, but so what? What matters is that each of their three albums sounds COMPLETELY different from the other two, and progression from album to album (especially from their first to second) is really something to behold. Their self-titled debut is just a really good and groovy, though somewhat repetitive, late sixties garage-rock record. Like the Velvet Underground if they were less avant-garde and had swing, energy, and a pulse. Fun House is an utterly indescribable trip of a record whose genre to this day remains unclear to me, although I half-heartedly and half-assedly try to classify it during its review. Finally, Raw Power is one of the finest expressions of primal rock and roll power I’ve ever heard. If you like and respect the visceral power of rock and roll at all, you really need to own a few Stooges albums (Hell, all of ‘em. There are only three, and combined they won’t take up but 100 minutes of your time).
Lineup! The man sitting down on the left, with his head sort of turned to the side, is lead singer and frontman James Osterberg (later “Iggy Stooge,” and eventually, as you all know him, “Iggy Pop”), the big-dicked iguana himself. He’s not the most gifted singer in the world, but he’s better than Geddy Lee. He’s also certifiably halfway insane (at least on Stooges records), and his vocals are the most distinctive part of the band’s sound (apart from their fucking POWER, man). Apart from him, I actually have no idea who anyone in the picture is specifically, so I’ll just finish up without going “on the left, we have…” or whatever. The original lineup featured the fucking rock-solid rhythm section of drummer Scott Asheton and bassist Dave Alexander, while Scott’s brother Ron Asheton rounded out the quartet on guitar. The Raw Power lineup is slightly different, with James Williamson on guitar, Ron Asheton on bass, and Dave Alexander doing drugs somewhere. And that’s it for lineup changes, but they were only around for like five years. Not that they would’ve turned into Deep Purple or something.
And, onto the reviews!
James Hunter (jhmusicman12@hotmail.com) writes:
Stooges note 1. The
Stooges are back in action with none other than
Minutemen bass God Mike Watt. Don't know how that will work out.
But they
are still wild and they still don't play by the rules of taste like, you
know, "sixty-year-old men should not be shirtless or expose their ugly,
sunken chest." Yeah, man! That image will haunt me for
eternity!
Stooges note 2. A movie is in production about Iggy
Pop. Iggy will be
played by Frodo. Not kidding.
The Stooges (1969)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “I Wanna Be Your Dog”
The first thing I wanna say about this album is that it really sounds like it was made in the sixties. Weak, buried drums. Fuzzy, faux-Hendrix wah-wah guitar poo. Everything mixed very clearly, but nothing mixed all that loudly or powerfully. Since a lot of the power of this band seems a little compromised and sucked out, it also sounds like it was produced by a founding member of the Velvet Underground. Strangely enough, it was! Stupid fucking Velvet Underground John Cale boringness neutering what could be a classic, ripping, “savage, proto-punk” album. Whatever. I can see why Cale got enlisted to produce, I guess, since both the Stooges and the Velvets eschewed that whole late sixties crap “hippy” vibe, and both of them, at least early on, specialized in songs that don’t really have a traditional verse-chorus structure, and sort of just slide along, hammering one idea into the ground for their entire duration. The difference between the two is this: the Velvets, with Maureen “thump, thump, thump” Tucker on drums and about as much energy as my asscrack, mope, drag, and bore when doing this. The Stooges, however, groove, as Scott Asheton cranks out some very interesting drum rhythms to keep things moving, Dave Alexander follows suit on bass, and Ron Asheton never met a weird guitar effect he didn’t like. Then, ofcourse, Lou Reed’s gravelly monotone declaiming is a big difference from Iggy’s somewhat, um, less organized delivery, but Cale keeps a lot of that under wraps for this album, actually, because he’s a damn Velvet Underground boring douche.
He also no doubt (I hope…I’m just assuming the Stooges would never write a piece of crap like this on their own) pushed the band to include “We Will Fall,” probably the most boring and useless 10 minutes of music ever committed to tape, and thus he can go fuck himself. However, as boring as the damn thing might be, that’s all it is. Boring. So just sit back and fall asleep for ten minutes until it’s over, and then resume listening to songs that don’t suck, of which there are PLENTY. A lot of them end up sounding the same, and the whole record smacks of a lot of early Velvet Underground influence (THANK YOU VERY MUCH, Mr. Cale) that turned me off initially, but underneath the energy-sapping production you WILL find an interesting, energetic band. “I Wanna Be Your Dog” really shouldn’t be my favorite song here, since it sounds the most like a vintage Velvets thing of all the tracks, but what can I do? The Velvets were great songwriters. They just sucked at everything else, almost all of which the Stooges are GOOD at, and Iggy’s sneering “I…wanna…be your dog!” delivery is nothing you’d ever find on a Velvets record. So it’s COOL!
OK, I’m gonna stop talking about the Velvet Underground now. They’re a fine band. They write good songs. I just think they’re really boring, and I don’t like how John Cale sort of half-boring-ified a lot of this record, because despite the fact that both bands at their inception hammered one riff into the ground for an entire song and were nihilistic, they had NOTHING else in common. Listen to “1969!” Or “No Fun!” These songs fucking GROOVE, man! And Iggy’s yelling shit like a maniac in the background, which you hear loudly for about a second, before Cale turns down the volume on his microphone because Iggy is using “passion” and “energy,” and that is not compatible with what Mr. Cale is trying to do. But he can’t stop him! And then Ron Asheton like goes off into some weird, multi-tracked, fuzz-boxed, wah-wah, interesting-as-HELL solo at the end of a song, and Cale’s probably sitting there like “Wait…what are you doing? That might actually entertain some people! STOP!” But he was a nice man and met the band halfway. He even let them turn “Ann,” which starts out as a “We Will Fall”-esque boring nothing, into a crazy noisefest that RULES at the end. And he also apparently decided not to tell the band that “Not Right” and “Little Doll,” the last two tracks on the record, just sound like rewrites of every other song on the album that isn’t “We Will Fall” or “Ann.” Fortunately, all of those songs rule, so rewrites of those songs rule as well, and everyone is happy, because they are producing songs that rule.
I’m sorry, I’ve spent this entire review explaining my personal dislike of much of the Velvet Underground’s music instead of my personal enjoyment of much of this band’s music, when the Velvets are in fact a nice band and this is in fact a very good record. I even said I was gonna stop…and then I didn’t! I’m a jackass! For all of this (and more, most of which you don’t know about), I am sorry. This is a very good album. The band has a good batch of songs. Iggy’s cool on vocals, though not quite the man yet. Ron Asheton’s solos and crap are all very cool and interesting (even if they all sound the same). The rhythm section does an excellent job of creating and maintaining a groove. “We Will Fall” is awful, but whatever. It’s like a 10-minute break in the middle, really, so you can go and do some laundry or play Snood or jerk off or whatever you want to do. A 10-minute break less than 10 minutes into a 34-minute album is a little ridiculous, yeah, but that’s what it is! Pretend it doesn’t exist. That’s what you gotta do. When I finish the record, “We Will Fall” is never what I’m thinking about anyway. It’s always Iggy’s sneering or Ron Asheton’s axe-playing or the rhythm section’s rock-solid ability to somehow take one groove, milk it for an entire song, and KEEP IT INTERESTING for the whole time. Could’ve been more powerful, though. Fucking Velvet Underground.
James Hunter (jhmusicman12@hotmail.com) writes:
Sorry, but John Cale is not responsible for "We Will
Fall." He isn't. It was on the band's setlist
before the album was
produced. Unfortunately, "We Will Fall" does suck ass.
You're so great
Iggy, but sometimes you make me so mad!
"I Wanna Be Your Dog"
rules. Kudos to Cale on the sleighbells and piano
pound. 8 (B+)
Fun House (1970)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Fun House”
First
off, kudos on letting someone who was not in the Velvet Underground produce this thing, because I forking LOVE the production on
this album. The drums are so crisp
and clean, and Scott Asheton’s playing on here is so brilliantly simple and
(Brad echoes sentiment of Capn Marvel and Mark Prindle like the sheep he is) groovy and danceable! The main guitar riffs are
fuzzed-up and frigged-out to hell, which allows the solos Ron Asheton places on top to stand out just that much more. The bass is, um, the
bass. And Iggy
is CRAZY. Fucking CRAZY. No more John Cale
to neuter him! A full set of testicles
for Iggy! Good
stuff.
Musically, too, the album sounds
COMPLETELY different from their debut, even on its first few tracks, which
constitute the same sort of groovy garage rock that was on every song on the
debut that John Cale didn’t make them put on it. The first three tunes, “Down in the Street,”
“Loose,” and “T.V. Eye,” are all “1969” and “I Wanna
be Your Dog” quality with the much, much cooler production and
improved Iggy-isms, and I enjoy them very much! And you should too! “And I’ll stick it deep inside…stick it deep
inside…yeah I’m LOOSE! WHOOOO!!!!!!” Iggy clearly wants the whole family to enjoy this
album, and not just the 15 people that bought it because people are stupid moronic
morons that suck. He’s SCREAMING at them
to buy the album. Like how he keeps
yelling “BROTHER!!!!!! BROTHER!!!!
BROTHER!!!!!!” at the end
of “T.V. Eye” (or something, it’s tough to make out, I think that’s what he’s saying). Then
at the end of the record he (along with the rest of the band) goes totally
fucking insane, but we’ll get to that.
After the opening troika of garage-rock tastiness, the album takes an abrupt left-turn towards a type of music I choose not to describe in great detail because I haven’t heard anything like it before or since and I simply can’t come up with the right words. Not all of what’s left works for me, but, hell, it’s so cool and unique and all that I respect it anyway. “Dirt,” for instance, which comes right after the opening trio. I think it’s sort of slow, boring, and overlong. The Stooges are still on their “hammer one groove into the ground for an entire song” mode, and I just get a little tired of the groove in this one sometimes. It’s still cool, just sort of a letdown between the brilliant first couple tunes and the SAVAGE, CRAZY, and INSANE last couple tunes, which sound like proto-punk crossed with jazz fusion shot straight to hell and put through a blender from…um…hell. “1970” starts out innocuously Stooge-y enough, but by its end all these crazy faux-jazz freaky saxes are coming in and out of the mix, over which Iggy is yelling “I FEEL ALRIGHT!!!! I FEEL ALRIGHT!!!!!!” in this scratchy, insane, guttural yelp that must be heard to believe, but the song is just a preview of the title track, an 8-minute absolute tour-de-force of freaky garage-soul straight from the fiery depths of Hades. The groove the rhythm section gets going is my personal favorite on the album, and fucking DRIVES the song along while Ron Asheton lays down licks in one headphone and some saxophone dude lays down licks in another. The song seems like it’s on the brink of exploding for more or less its entire duration, yet it remains incredibly tight and ALWAYS stays together. Fucking brilliant song, it is, and any asinine person (even if they praise the Stooges while doing this and call them “savage” and “revolutionary” and whatnot) who claims Iggy and his boys were talentless drug addicts needs to be directed to THIS song. Talentless drug addicts couldn’t make this song.
However, they probably could make the closing “L.A. Blues,” which is more or less five minutes of avant-garde noise. Normally I would look at something like this and poop on it wholeheartedly, but in the context of the album, I don’t mind it! It even makes SENSE to end the record like this, because the album has this weird, paranoid feel to it that almost NEEDS five minutes of complete chaos to finish it off. Like the first few tunes are just the band playing their vintage rock ‘n’ roll ditties, before they get all pissed off and morbid with “Dirt.” Then, flip over the album (HA! Oh, LP’s…), and they try to just start playing their nice rock ‘n’ roll ditties again, but they can’t do it! So the end of “1970” is the band falling into chaos. The title track is brilliantly restrained chaos, but then it all falls apart and comes crashing down to hell on “L.A. Blues.” It’s a trip, man. Call this one a solid 9. “Dirt” takes a little bit of a shit in the middle of the album, but not a bad one at all, and sometimes the first half (pre-sax freakout section) of “1970” fails to grab me, but the rest of it is A-OK (even “L.A. Blues!”), and I’ve never heard an album that sounds a damn thing like this one. It’s garage-proto-punk-soul-jazz-fusion. If that even exists. Or something. I’m not a smart man…
James Hunter (jhmusicman12@hotmail.com) writes:
Yeah! Better! I
love viola-man, but Iggy was right to get the
guy who was in the Kingsmen (Louie Louie) in the studio. Wild, interesting,
burning flames of passion, grooves as sharp as a knife. Oh yeah.
"1970" is
my favorite, thanks to Scotty's awesome drum pattern. 10 (A)
Raw Power (1973) (1997 Remix)
Rating: 10
Best Song: “Search And Destroy”
Well, Fun House sold worse than the debut, which sold about 50 total copies itself, so Iggy and the boys got booted off Elektra, their record label. Fast-forward a few years, and in comes David Bowie, rescuing Iggy most likely from an early drug overdose death (in which case the Stooges would probably be as popular and revered by the mainstream as Hendrix (who I love, just an example) or something, but let’s leave that issue be). Iggy teams up with his old friend, guitarist James (Scott) Williamson (why didn’t Grady bring you in during game 7 of the Yankees series?), then calls over the Asheton brothers to fill the rhythm section (Ron sliding to bass) and voila! Iggy and the Stooges (now so-named by Ziggy Skinnyspaceass himself) are reborn!
And they sound absolutely NOTHING like the Fun House band! Because Ziggy was all about the glam rock at this point, and avant-garage-soul-fusion wasn’t exactly his cup of tea, he directs the band to play loud, aggressive, decadent, nihilistic rock ‘n’ roll! Having done this, he then made an awful, terrible, shitty mix of the record that I (mostly) don’t have (I got this record on mp3’s from Al. Seven of the eight mp3’s sound farging FANTASTIC, but “Penetration” is about 1/10 as loud and sounds like my rectum. Thus I deduced “Penetration” was from the shitty mix. Unable to locate an mp3 of “Penetration” NOT from the shitty mix online, I’m just pretending the song doesn’t exist when rating the album. I probably could have put this whole diatribe somewhere else without resorting to like a five line parenthesis, but you gotta understand, I’m a poor writer). In 1997, Iggy finally relocated the master tapes and remixed the whole album, making everything LOUD and AGGRESSIVE and DESTRUCTIVE and OVER-THE-TOP. And it sounds INCREDIBLE. If you see a CD of this, make sure it’s the 1997 remix before you pay a cent for it (though it probably is). The seven good mp3’s I have are from this remix. I assume. I mean, if this is the pathetic original mix and my copy of “Penetration” is from the remix, then apparently the definitions of “great” and “shitty” have been, unbeknownst to me, swapped for one another, because “Penetration” sounds like POOOO!!!!
OK, the songs. Well, they’re incredible, all of them (except “Penetration,” I guess, but I’m not counting that one, remember?). I’ve never heard an album that has so much destructive energy. Every instrument is mixed so loudly and over-the-top that, if the volume is turned up high enough, it sounds like your headphones are gonna explode half the time. But it RULES! The whole record is just like a 34 minute uber-shot of adrenaline directly into your heart, made even stronger by the fact that this is also the best bunch of songs you can find on a Stooges record (I even like “Penetration,” too! That’s a good song! The production on my mp3 of it just sucks my dick!). The band sounds like a 50-armed wrecking ball of PURE DESTRUCTION. Just look at the song titles! “Search and Destroy.” “Gimme Danger.” “Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell.” “Raw Power.” “Death Trip.” YYYYYEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!
The thing is, in addition to being energetic, destructive shots of loud, combustible adrenaline, these songs are all superbly-written and arranged! And CATCHY! The “Look out honey, ‘cus I’m usin’ technology!” line in “Search and Destroy” is positively incredible! “Gimme Danger” actually starts out like a softer acoustic thing before building to a super climax! “Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell” is INSANE, as Iggy’s scratchy, perverted (seriously, it sounds like he’s fucking perverted) warble feels like it should be painful, and he squeezes out lines like “I knew right away that I had to get my hooks in yoooouuuuuu!!!!!” “Penetration” sounds like crap, but it’s from the awful original mix, so let’s not discuss it any further! “Raw Power” has a cool tinkly piano note over the main riffage! “I Need Somebody” is like a slow, raunchy shuffle thing! “Shake Appeal” is probably the fastest thing here, and has completely ridiculous handclaps that make absolutely no sense when considered along with the overall tone of the album, but that’s exactly why they’re cool! And “Death Trip” is also really cool! Cool!
I love this album. I love this album. It’s not every day that an album just BLOWS you away on first listen, leaving you totally speechless, but this album did just that to me when I first popped it in. The ENERGY! The RIFFS (which are great, by the way)! The fucking POWER, man! No album has as apt a title as this one. It’s 34 minutes of pure fucking RAW, ROCK AND ROLL POWER. No artsy proto-garage-soul-fusion messing around. No grooves. No subtlety. No breaks. No letups. No time to breathe. It’s relentless (except for my copy of “Penetration,” but it’s from the awful original mix, so let’s not discuss it further!). One of the best pure rock and roll albums ever recorded, even if Iggy looks kinda gay on the cover.
The Weirdness (2007)
Rating: 4
Best Song: “ATM”
Yeah, so this reunion album pretty obviously shouldn’t have happened. And the thing is, do you know how excited I was for this? Rock (in traditional, you know, “RAWK!” sense) is in such a terrible state of affairs that the return of the fucking Stooges, man, with Iggy Pop and the Ashetons and motherfucking Mike Fucking Watt on bass was gonna be so fucking awesome and…dude! OK, so I wasn’t splooging myself over the thought of the Stooges riding in and showing everyone how rock is actually done (given that they’re a combined 879 years old at this point), but I certainly figured this would at least be a solid straightahead garagey rock album, and how many solid straightahead garagey rock albums were there on the horizon anyway? Even the goddamn Who reunited recently and didn’t embarrass themselves, so I figured the kings of proto-dunderheaded garage rock would be able to piece together a pretty good record, especially with Steve Albini producing it. And after one listen, with my preconceived notions that it was gonna be good and admittedly only halfway paying attention to the proceedings, I figured I had been proven right. “No, it’s not gonna change anyone’s world or be as good as Fun House or Raw Power, but it sure seems worthy of a solid 7!” Seriously, I thought this! Of course a little while later I listened to it again and realized it blew ass.
The reason? Simple. Iggy! Iggy Pop is GAWD-FUCKING-AWFUL on this album. The guitars are noisy and lively even if the riffs aren’t the most original or freaked-out things in the world, and the drums are nicely insistent, and maybe I’d give this thing something in the 6 range if a passably unobtrusive singer enunciating mediocre but not-really-bad lyrics had been providing the vocals. However, a completely off-key, horrible-sounding, and LOUDLY-MIXED Iggy Pop is enunciating what have to be the most ass-poor lyrics I’ve ever heard this side of a Creed album. I know I’m not exactly being original in calling this a passably decent album with some flaws dragged down to “fucking bad” singlehandedly by the atrocious frontman duties of Mr. Osterberg here, but seriously! Listen to the man! It’s like he doesn’t even care! He’s not on key for a single word of a single line of a single song on the record! Not one! It’s like he came in off the street and disinterestedly read the lyrics off a cocktail napkin while nodding off to bed. It’s a goddamn joke.
Of course, that’s not even the biggest problem. The lyrics, as I mentioned before, are just abominable. And not in an offensive way (in fact, considering what the Stooges were like in their heyday, it would have been good were the lyrics offensive and/or shocking; that was kind of the whole point of the Stooges). No, they’re just retarded. Completely and utterly retarded. A few samples (and yes, I know this is Prindle’s trick; humor me):
“My dick is turning into a tree!” – from “Trollin”
“My idea of fun is killing everyone!” – from “My Idea of Fun”
“They always clap at the wrong beat, they’re wearing loafers on their feet…greedy, awful people!” – from “Greedy Awful People” (this entire song is stunningly inept lyrically)
“Deep fried! Refried! Stir-fried! I’m fried!” – from “I’m Fried”
“I saw a goddess in a pizza joint! She hit my weak spot at a crucial point! When it’s a black girl you cannot resist! It’s the end of christianity!” – from “The End of Christianity” (that one doesn’t even rhyme!)
“
You get the idea.
Like I said, the backing music is still decent if no better, and Albini did a good job getting a “raw” and relatively powerful sound for the album. The horrendous vocals and lyrics mean that there’s not a single good song, of course, but at least some of them are passably mediocre (notably the ones where Iggy sings less, like “ATM,” which I must have a reason for nominating as best song, though I can’t think of it right now). The title track slows things down and sounds like ass doing it, and a couple tunes at the end try to “swing” (I think…honestly, I’m not quite sure exactly what “Mexican Guy” is trying to do) and add a bunch of squeaking, un-melodic saxophone lines because, hey, didn’t Fun House have that shit? Crazy saxophone squealing at the end? Let’s add some saxophones! It’ll totally be like Fun House!
No, it won’t. It’ll be some really annoying saxophone lines at the end of an embarrassing reunion album that hopefully all your fans will forget exists as soon as possible.
In conclusion, this album is crap.