THE WEIRDNESS - The Stooges (Virgin)
For most of the past 38 years, I’ve been a true believer, as ready to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid as any cultist has ever been, thinking nothing of seeking the meaning of life and occasional salvation within the grooves of a Stooges record. Have to draw the line at “L.A. Blues,” though. That song just makes me anxious.
What’s most unsettling about “The Weirdness,” the first true Stooges album in over three decades, isn’t that it falls just this side of noteworthy but that the world outside of the cultural vacuum that is Detroit (and certain parts of Australia) appears to have finally caught up with the band, Madison Avenue strip mining their back catalog for advertising fodder and Hollywood scrambling to bring Iggy Pop’s squalid back pages to IMAX-quality, THX-sound fruition, stat. Or at the very least, touch the hem of his garment.
Regrettably, Iggy, Ron Asheton, and Scott Asheton are no longer our own dirty little secret, their grass roots fan base of the mentally-flummoxed, seriously drug addled, and outright violent prone - with the occasional record geek thrown in for texture - now given way to an army of whey-faced downloaders whose idea of having their collective finger on the pulse is appropriating anything with the subtle trace of the Motor City cleaving to it and filing it tidily in a folder marked “garage.” What better opportunity for the band, then, to throw the world a hanging curveball and truly live up to their reputation as the skid mark on society’s underwear, even if just for old times’ sake?
The first sign these aren’t your brother’s Stooges are the plugs for their myspace.com web site and ringtones on the back wrapper, bringing to mind images I just can’t seem to wrap my arms around: Brianna and Courtney’s cell phones parping out “Idea of Fun” while they swap links for photos of that hottie Jimmy Osterberg, sipping an energy drink and rocking the Fall Out Boy on the iPod. Someone shoot me now…
It seems The Stooges were laboring under the impression when they wrote this album that Virgin was paying them by the word, guitar chord, and drum beat because it’s one busy, claustrophobic affair, Iggy tub thumping with one eye on the studio wall clock, falling ass over tea kettle to riff on whatever crosses his radar before the tape runs out. The vaunted production of Steve Albini, in combination with whoever fumbled the mix job, doesn’t leave much breathing room for the tribal drums and wah pedal violation that made “The Stooges” and “Fun House” so overwhelming. Where’s Don Gallucci when you need him?
And therein lies one of the problems with the post-maturity droop version of The Stooges: nary a groove in sight. Even the most hopelessly drooling, mouth-breather could tap his feet along to “Down on the Street” or “No Fun.” And where’s the build-up, the tension? As soon as the “record” button’s pushed, the singer goes from 0 to Iggy in mere nanoseconds.
Part of what made these guys so damn lovable - not to mention liberating - the first time around was their knack, whether authentic or a guise, for STOOPID. “And now I’m gonna be 22/I say oh my and a boo-hoo,” anyone? Here it seems so forced, Iggy all too proud to expose his grey matter going up in flames, the smoke punching another hole in the ozone layer. Are we really to believe he spends that much time thinking about ATM’s? Or anything else? What a concept!
It’s not that “The Weirdness” is that deplorable, but it’s a wooden stake through the heart of the 12-year-old Stooges fan that still beats in my chest to see them playing it so safe, Iggy’s tenancy in Miami and daily regimen of tai chi, macrobiotics, and nothing more toxic than a few glasses of Bordeaux apparently a bit less inspirational than psychedelics, life in a Midwestern college town, and breaking bread with the MC5.
For the casual listener who’s not carting the staggering amount of emotional Stooges baggage as yours truly, someone willing to step out from under the long, dark shadow they’ve cast over two generations now and into the light, there may very well be plenty on “The Weirdness” to recommend. I just can’t seem to remember where I put my sunglasses. - Clark Paull
OK, let’s get some perspective on this one.
Forget the Detroit-drugs-and-glamsploitation backstory. Forget that they invented punk back in ’71, when the world at large had written ‘em off for a lost cause and was diggin’ prog ‘n’ boogie. Purely on its own terms, this rekkid is what it is: a band of AARP eligibles playing hard, aggressive, angry-sounding, non-hyphenated rock’n’roll. If that sounds like an oxymoron, tell it to Link Wray, if you can find him. Who the fuck else is doing that in 2007? At least on the major label/festival circuit level? (And I’m someone who generally could give a rat’s ass what’s happening in the music world outside my local.) No one else. Only the Stooges. They still stand alone, just like they did in ’73 and ’70 and ’69.
Since the reunion that nobody thought would happen DID happen back in 2003, they’ve toured the world, from Europe to Japan to the Antipodes, and cashed in for all the bands and rockcrits that started namechecking almost immediately after they imploded back in ’74. In doing so, they attained a level of tightness (NOT slickness) and focus to match (sone would even say surpass) the monomaniacal fury of their youth. Clean and healthy, they can wipe the floor with bands less than half their age. If this was a new band, we’d all be doing handsprings and cartwheels and hailing the arrival of a new, um, Stooges. But because there are ghosts present (the ones of Iggy ‘n’ the Ashetons’ earlier selves), a different yardstick gets applied.
Compared to the canon, how does it measure up? While it doesn’t have the inadvertent pop sense (and hyper-clean postmodern production sound) of The Stooges, it also doesn’t have a 10-minute song that everybody (admit it) skips through after the first time they spin the rec. It doesn’t have the slinky, sexy acid-funk menace of Funhouse, but how could it? That was the sound of trailer trash losers and no ‘count mama’s boys finding their balls and learning their craft by pounding big stages coast-to-coast. The best moments on that album were accidents that they couldn’t replicate now, even if they wanted to, because 37 years down the road, they’re too skilled; have been for years, which means you get a level of consistency accompanied by a reliance on muscle memory that wasn’t present in those earlier embryonic stages. Rock Action has been slamming the same solid four-on-the-floor since Sonic’s Rendezvous Band daze, and while Ron Asheton hasn’t added any new tricks to his trick bag since around Destroy All Monsters time, he hasn’t needed ‘em, either – why add to perfection?
The Weirdness doesn’t have Funhouse’s totally organic live sound, either; rather, the rec it resembles the most, sonically speaking, is evabody’s least favorite Stooges album, Raw Power, specifically the 1997 Iggy remix. It’s a wall of noise without a lot of bottom end, although repeated listenings reveal more sonic detail than seemed to be there the first time. (How many times did you have to listen to Raw Power – either mix – before you realized how weak the bass and drums sounded?) The songs here hit the same way Raw Power’s did, too – have the same relentless forward motion, although they’re simpler than Williamson’s most complex chord constructions. They go straight for the throat.
If Iggy doesn’t have the same feel for the Zeitgeist as a pampered 60-year-old that he had as a 20something drug punk, is that really so surprising? And while there’s no “streetwalkin’ cheetah with a heart full of napalm” here, some of the Ig’s more silly-ass verbal constructions, replete with self-aggrandizement and pop culture references, are surely no sillier than “I took a ride on a red hot weiner.” Stooges lyrics, even at their most perceptive and smart-dumb, were always just a SOUND. Being a drummer his own self, Iggy understands that every instrument is a rhythm instrument, including your voice. He only rolls out the annoying Bowie opera-voice on two out of 12 songs, and even those are starting to grow on me.
Bottom line: If you’re new to the Stooges, you donwanna start here – get the classics first. But if you’re one of US, who willingly endured 23 takes of “I’m Loose” and all of Bomp’s barrel-scrapings, then you should see this as a godsend. I was prepared not to like this rekkid. Nasty narrowminded jade that I’ve become, I figured Ig and the Asheton boys were just making bank, which is fine – they’ve certainly earned it over the years. But this really is Something Entahrly Other. It’s more than we had a right (any old time) to expect, a logical progression from where they left off, untainted by the stench of compromise, and in 2007, that is a damn rare thing. Bloodied but unbowed, the world’s forgotten boys stand up on their hind legs and roar, one more time.
- Ken Shimamoto
THE STOOGES FIGHT POVERTY IN SECRET!
the price
Well, there’s this. Day of release, I head down to the Virgin store on Market Street, figuring (correctly) they would have their master’s product at the best price. Sure enough, I get my copy of THE WEIRDNESS for a mere $10.00 USA. Plus tax.
For those of you keeping score at home, at today’s rates, that’s €7.63, £5.16, AU$12.84 and 70.65 SEK. If you need it in Japanese currency, I can’t satisfy that yen --- it’s too volatile right now.
but what a bargain. a full-on Stooges long-player, after a long play of 33 or 37 years, take yr. pick. At just two seconds over 40 minutes, it completely shuts down the hour-plus ooze emanating from the long-named weepy bands of today, no matter how much they fall out to clap their hands in the stone age black fire. Still, that’s just .24/cent per second, or something like that, you figure it out.
the package
It was 1982 when Buick, aka the ‘old man’s division’ at General Motors, the Detroit car concern, came out with their Regal Grand National. The latter day muscle car coupe with the post-breakdown rococo design was transformed by huge turbo charging, and only available in a wicked all black costume. It would appear in years later from time to time, but always only that barely glossy spread-on wet black finish.
If you too got in early on THE WEIRDNESS you know that same finish is all about this CD. There’s a small sliver of chrome framing the front page and the boys on the back, and our most distinctive logo of the late 20th century (did anybody ever get credit for that?) also shines but the rest is slathered on black. It’s a texture more than a design.
And by the way, on the Grand National the rear spoiler was only available as a dealer installed option.
the process (sound)
If you didn’t have the scratch, or maybe you’re just a cheap nerd saving up for Windows Vista or vintage vinyl and “downloaded” (hey, I do that every morning) your copy of THE WEIRDNESS via some compression thing, you’ve missed out. This disk slipped out like Iggy’s hip, recorded live and to the point, a mix meant to be OUT LOUD, like a Stooges show for example. You’ve got to take a ride on the music, and you can’t do that in private on a podcast. The Asheton Bros. grew up inside each other’s sound, OUT LOUD, and the record is all that. Whatever Albini’s studio at the other (Chicago) end of I-94 added, this sound starts long ago with experiments and experience in and on stage, live, in front of people and everything from those people, and adding the 75 worldwide gigs the, err... mature band has played in the 21st century. This is sonic sophistication not just songwriting. The drums are nothing but Rock Action, with maybe one or two gratuitous fills, and they sound purely great. In combination with his brother’s steely shards of soundscape, bouncing from channel to channel, we get an almost elemental swing. At times an entire song functions as a giant call & response completely inside itself, especially adding Iggy’s emphasis. The world’s forgotten boy premier front man does surely present a visual scheme that can’t be done, recording-wise, but lyrics can be there, no matter how couched deliberately by a survivor’s intellect.
Recorded live, and maybe made up on the spot with all hanging out, there’s plenty of encouragement from a guy who’s not afraid to challenge conventional expectations of basso profundo rockism singing. goddamn it, it’s a throat. So from a sublime opening grunt to final fry-dom, there’s plenty of hey, hey’s, yeah’s, and wordless wonder.
We can thank the knob-twiddler for hearing all of that.
the picture (lyrics and ‘tude)
And make no mistake, knob twiddling comes up hot ‘n heavy, from the cut that leads off THE WEIRDNESS “Trollin’” , about that favorite pastime of the older world-weary type, fishing, not to mention of course seeking the fountain of pussy juice youth. Iggy launches the whole thing with a natural world metaphor about wood that’s gotten so much press, and seems determined to carry on, loose, to the final 40th minute, because after all -- you can’t tell him it’s not a suave thing to do - I know you do it too. And rock critics don’t like it at all.
He should believe in honey flowing from the rock but it ain’t been that way for our hero.
The ATM song manages to spit out about money like everybody in the West knows by now, but out of mid-point maelstrom the lyric rises as a brilliant star with sheer garage grace - “in the midnite hour .... when the truth comes down .... I don’t need no doctor ... hangin’ around ... can I get a witness ... can I come on strong ...” Nobody else would dare sing that stuff today, that way, not even a soul singer. Especially combined with Ron outrageously splitting the right channel, the syncopation of Scott’s sock, the Stooges fight poverty in secret. Don’t bullshit the bullshitter. This song proves Iggy deserved that French medal, if he still has it. Maybe it’s on the dashboard of his Rolls.
If that’s enough, we get the details on an idea of fun. Perhaps its the unsmoothified vocal tone that turned ‘em off on MySpace (awwwww), but if Iggy can’t comment on America’s growing up shamed, who can? Rock hits killing everyone hard, and a grand symphonic sturm und drang lays out another dual channel sonic lead adventure by Ronald Frank Asheton that plays right to today’s news. Did you really want to hear a song about a high school romance from Mr. Pop?
I can go on, and probably will, if the Bar is still open, but these songs keep coming on strong. THE WEIRDNESS title cut sways in a little too much, but with a beautiful new tone that was probably invented fresh along with Ron’s latest custom axe. As a love story the song might sound as good in Spanish as it sounds. Once again, it’s a mature theme that just about saved your correspondent’s life today at work. The sing-song close gives being weird roots and finally Mackay’s soulful sax reflection reminds us to stay strong.
Y’all reading this where the great highways don’t all begin in “I” may not like hearing about being free ‘n freaky in the USA. But once again Rock Action has it in the pocket like nobody else can but him, before JIM drifts around and moans about being nasty. And USA comes to the old mold and just wants more, busts it open in fact with a blurting off-chorus guitar blast. It’s their fault the beer ain’t cold! To make sure you get the message, here comes simple rhyme about the issues and tissues today, all laid out with that blister Fender attack. Rock ‘n roll is American music! So if you don’t get this, send us your money. We’ll use it to buy gas.
That could make Iggy feel more comfortable but if he can’t hack his income, he’ll go back to your ass. European or not. Playing live it’s got to be psychedelic, if the money don’t count (and it doesn’t, do you really think Stooges care about their cut of the ring tones – they just care about the ring tones). Every instant lead gets ruined, Asheton’s gonna cry about it like nobody else.
Okay, we get the breakup song, but that’s just because Mr. Up Front Dirty is starving like an unsung bard. Still, the Singer is convincing us along with Rock’s unison chorus, done up in deep rock revenge. And more unsinging, backed up by maybe the one non-Stooge cherub Benson. He sounds OK, not alright – it’s a breakup. Iggy does some more R&B with an uncoupled couplet of urging pushed on by more brilliant Ron and more tenor saxman Steve to provide brass roots to the vox. And Watt is SO there, he’s got the goods to update Stooge swing. Way to go, Watt!
Next up, an apocalyptic grindathon trumpets the end of cross and double cross worship with what else other than more short shorts sex talk, set off with syncopatic lyrics and repetition inside the verse, inside the chorus, inside the bar, inside Ron’s tone. These guys are at the top of their game, they are playing it all. You don’t get to hear that often, most acts are too busy making sure they play their notes, not their sound. Or at least they think it’s their notes. Don’t they usually sound like everybody else’s?
Let’s not beat a dead horse, although the singer’s styling rap as we head toward the out grooves (how WILL this sound on vinyl’s endless vibration?) flogs convention for sure. But then with a simple respectful aside, Iggy sets Ron up perfectly for his career understated patented atmosphere thing, which only enhances the line about brain police. This is all the way live, it comes off gen-u-wine. Only the hairdresser knows for sure.
the end
Should you still be reading, enough. Life’s tough in the city, ain’t it?
Stooges achievement is here today and you might not even recognize it in a passing cloud. Is there a light in your window? At least give it a try.
Have you seen the show? Word is they’ll play a grand total of 4 of these new songs. This is a band to hear, with friends and strangers and stranger strangers... LOUD. In front of you and around you.
THE WEIRDNESS a recording that records a moment in Miami, in Ann Arbor, Chicago, London, Buenos Aires, Ancient Greece, wherever else in a summer air of the political and geographic and historic earth, one among the many, together and in memory together, a sonic reminiscence brought along to us
Here today.
THE STOOGES FIGHT POVERTY IN SECRET!
so you don’t have to. - ig ("eye-gee")
How I wanted to love this album. First one in 33 years blah blah blah. First one in 37 years if you track things back to this line-up. Maybe the expectations based on what had gone before were much too high, but I can't help thinking that the most striking thing about "The Weirdness" is that it's so ordinary.
Ordinary songs, ordinary production. Steve Albini's reputation behind the board is for playing it laissez faire - turn it up and let the tape roll - which probably suited his Igness down to the ground. You can make a case that Iggy should have dropped his own control freak complex and ceeded control to someone who could give a few orders. Some quality control was badly needed. Mike Watt's the consummate bassist but his thud is M.I.A. in this soundspace. Rock Action's drums are desert dry and quite up front, but Ron Asheton's guitar has been relegated to a scuzzy rhythm bed with his all-important wah-wah leads compressed to within an inch of their life.
But the weakest link (apart from the tunes) is Iggy's vocal. The Stooges may have been rock and roll's most nihilistic, slothful, dumbed-down band - the antithesis of suburban boredom and a template for what would be eventually be described as punk - but you can't turn the clock back and sound like a terminal loser if you live in relative luxury in Florida, drive a Rolls Royce and enjoy fine wines. Iggy sounds like he's trying to feign dumbness/futility and it just isn't working. Half the vocals sound like guide tracks, the rest so studiously disinterested at times as to be absurd.
A few people I know have heard this album and their comments have ranged from "it's no worse than a lot of his solo albums" to "it's OK". Me, I don't give a fuck that Iggy should have died a thousand times or has been through the fires of self-induced scum drug hell to still be with us today, a testimony to the powers of human resilience and/or dumb luck. That's fine and I'm happy he made it, but he (they) needed to take some chances of a musical kind. I wanted to hear molasses thick layers of guitar and awe-inspiring solos, the foundation thud of Rock Action's kick drum and singing that, if not entirely unhinged, at least points to some darker malevolence. Songs about consumerism, ATMs, trolling for girls and cash don't cut it. Iggy needed to be angry, rail at the state of the music industry, the crappiness of the toys they give you with kids meals at McDonalds or the cattle class quality of US domestic airline travel. He just sounds moderately bummed out.
You can take a few of these songs at face value ("Idea of Fun") and run down the lyrics ("My idea of fun/Is killing everyone") for being too self-consciously nihilistic. The opener "Trollin' " is a taut rocker with a bit of swing. The title track is the obligatory crooner with some nice askew guitar underneath. "Greedy Awful People" sounds like an Iggy & the Trolls outake that simply grates so much that Ron Asheton's muted solo doesn't have a hope in hell of saving. "The End of Christianity" is too lyrically banal for words. At least "Mexican Guy" has a groove to it.
Let's switch to the Big Picture and the problem is this: The Stooges were defined by their environment and how they reacted to it. They really were the original musical slackers, at times inept but never fake. Everything's changed since then - including the players - but there's no real centre to these songs, no unifying force other than the desire to make another record. They tried to make it a great one and didn't get there.
The Stooges of 1970 were psychedelic and drug-fucked. (N.B. "Drug fucked" does not necessarily equate to "great music".) The Stooges 2007 are clean and a very good, metal-tinged punk band. Some people say Sum 41 is too. The Stooges are still probably better than 90 percent of whatever else is out there, but they ain't the same as they were. I didn't want them to be - but I did want them to play on the things that could still make them different. Like Steve Mackay's sax, which makes only fleeting appearances (notably on "The Weirdness".) Or Ron Asheton's incandescent solos. Speaking of, did I read the New York Times online story right when it quoted Rock Action as saying the new record shouldn't have too many solos or it would sound like everyone else (and the writer opining that too many had made it to tape?) Pass the smelling salts...
I'll still play "The Weirdness" and I'll be at the Stooges shows if they make it down my way. - The Barman
1/2
THE
STOOGES – The Stooges (Elektra/Rhino)
FUNHOUSE – The Stooges (Elektra/Rhino)
In the liner notes to Rhino’s souped-up reissue/remaster of the
Stooges’ wide-eyed, dribbling debut, Detroit native Alice Cooper (whose
albums with the original Alice Cooper band are in dire need of a sonic upgrade)
confesses that the Stooges were the only band he never wanted to follow largely
in part to Iggy Pop’s wild streak of unpredictability.
Only 12 when “The Stooges” was released and 14 when the original
band gave up the ghost, I never had the pleasure of seeing them live but I
have seen Iggy solo several times, dating back to “The Idiot”
tour, and “unpredictable” isn’t an adjective which seems
to fit much unless you consider Iggy staring down challenges from paying customers
and eventually introducing them to “Little Iggy” abnormal.
I’ve seen the guy’s dick more than I’ve seen my own and
believe me, I’m not proud of it.
Given the musical climate at the time, however, The Stooges were something
of an anomaly when that first album dropped its anchor back in 1969 because,
as Brother Wayne Kramer has so bluntly pointed out, the Summer of Love didn’t
stop in Detroit. The race riots which reduced much of the city to so much
cinder just two years previous apparently hadn’t even registered as
a blip on the radar of Ann Arbor’s favorite sons, whose insular world,
created just a short trek down I94 from the city proper, rotated on alternating
axes of mindless fun, boredom, psychedelic escapism, ostracism, and pleasures
of the flesh.
Although the world has spun a few times in the ensuing 36 years, “The
Stooges” still seems to defy explanation and/or context, a big-bang,
primordial collision of monosyllabic angst and convulsing, tribal rhythm.
There are those who feel all warm and fuzzy inside by anointing the Stooges
harbingers of punk, but that seems woefully inadequate, perhaps even misguided.
“No Fun,” “1969,” “Real Cool Time,” “I
Wanna Be Your Dog,” and “Not Right” stake out a section
of real estate entirely their own, oscillating between grey areas of alienation,
tedium, and outright dementia, Iggy yammering, grunting, and howling over
the Neanderthal lockstep laid down by drummer Scott Asheton and bassist Dave
Alexander and the fuzzy, buzzing, angry hornet six-string dissertation of
Ron Asheton.
Plain and simple: these guys weren’t fooling around.
There’s a bonus disc which gathers John Cale mixes of several songs
which were deemed “too arty” by the band and later re-twiddled
by Iggy and Elektra president Jac Holzman, and full versions of “Ann”
and “No Fun,” the latter which fades out much too soon at the
6:50 mark with Asheton stomping his wah pedal flat.
Most of what you’ll need in order to fully comprehend 1970’s “Fun
House” lies somewhere between Iggy’s admission that he dropped
acid every day during recording sessions, with an occasional psylicibin or
Peruvian pink cocaine chaser, and the strident squawking, bleating, and screeching
which punctuates “Down On The Street,” “Loose,” “1970,”
“T.V. Eye” and the title track.
Producer Don Gallucci’s decision to record Iggy’s vocals with
a hand-held microphone amplified through a mini PA, along with Iggy’s
coercion of Steve MacKay to add saxophone stylings, resulted in coating the
album with a sheen of raving lunacy, Asheton cutting back on the fuzz but
not the menace, Rock Action and Alexander forced to pick up the beat a wee
bit in order to keep pace.
There’s a few curves here; “Dirt” is just what you’d
expect the blues to sound like if filtered through the psyches of four guys
cooped up indoors all winter in Michigan and although “L.A. Blues”
has always caused me no small amount of heartburn, it ain’t a bad way
to clear a wedding reception.
The bonus disc will be familiar to owners of “1970: The Complete Fun
House Sessions”; demos, multiple takes, and spit polishing of various
album tracks as well as single mixes of “Down On The Street” and
“1970.”
And in an entirely unintended moment of hilarity, you get Jack White in the
liner notes trying to distance himself from those who “watch a music
TV station that’s never heard of ‘T.V. Eye’” and “shop
at record stores where those who have only imitated Iggy’s power are
selling by the truckload.” Whatever you say, Jack, whatever you say…
The recent glut of Stooges manna begs the question just what might still be
laying around out there waiting to be uncovered. The sphincter tightens in
anticipation. - Clark Paull
- The Stooges
- Funhouse
HEAVY
LIQUID – The Stooges (Easy Action)
Don’t wanna labour the point but the opening years of this century
really are turning into The Golden Age of the Stooges, what with the band’s
resurrection, the recording of new songs, deluxe re-issues of the first two
albums popping out of the pipeline, a live album kicking around and the prospect
of a new studio effort. This six-disc box set from UK heritage label Easy
Action really does spoil confirmed Stoogeaholics.
You might be sceptical and you’d have a right to be, such is the confusing
array of re-issued, re-booted and, in many cases, shoddy Stooges material
out there. French labels Revenge, Fan Club and Skydog, plus
US company Bomp, did us a huge favour by keeping the Stooges in front
of the public for many years, but they also unleashed a few offerings that
were mutton dressed as lamb. (I’m thinking Bomp’s most
recent “Wild Love”, which reeked of bottom-of-the-barrel in a
big way). And while Rhino’s “Funhouse” box set
was probably for the truly obsessed (like, how many takes of “1970”
can you listen to back-to-back?), “Heavy Liquid” manages to mix
things up a little more, drawing from live and rehearsal aspects of the “Raw
Power” period.
Three of the discs are previously released material, but albums one, two and
five are where the going gets interesting. The first is a series of scorching
multi-track rehearsal tapes from July 1972 at London’s Olympic Studios
(a home to the Stones) and probably demos for the album sessions that followed.
Disc two is unreleased material from 1973 Michigan rehearsals with short-term
Stooges pianist Bob Scheff which resembles some of the stuff that’s
already out there. Disc five is from the October ’73 run of shows at
Los Angeles’ Whisky-a-Go-Go and has never been aired, while there’s
a speed-corrected chunk of live audio from the ’74 show at Bimbo’s
Casino that Bomp released on “Open Up and Bleed” that’s
better sounding in this form.
So should you sink your hard-earned into this one? That depends on whether
you’re into the “Raw Power” Stooges, who were an entirely
different animal to earlier incarnations. With Ron Asheton on bass (and it
has to be said that he’s just as much a killer on four strings as six)
and the installation of James Williamson on guitar, there was a shift into
what most people would regard as a more “musically structured”
direction. Iggy explains the essential differences in guitar approach in the
accompanying booklet as one of Ron’s lyrical playing versus James’
brutality, and who’s to argue? Personally, I rate “Funhouse”
as one of the four or five greatest and most primal things ever recorded,
but I still listen to “Raw Power” (even the re-mix, if you’re
asking) so I had to plonk down the cash to grab this.
Part of the attraction is undoubtedly the Car Crash Syndrome. You know the
way people slow down and stare when they motor past a traffic accident on
a busy highway? You have to ask how the Stooges managed to function as a unit
once the Mainman money and CBS support dried up and the hard drugs kicked
in. Iggy set the meter to Self Destruct and circumstances condemned the band
to playing in shitty bars across a largely uncaring Middle America. So what
headspace were these guys occupying, and how did they manage not to kill themselves
(or be killed)? You can liken the Stooges of that time to a trashed and unregistered
car that no-one wanted to steal, spinning its bald tyres on black ice just
inches away from a precipice, but the dope-sick reality was much less romantic
a notion than that. No Future, indeed.
Of course it should be about the music and it ranged from bar room blues to
what we can now retrospectively dub proto-punk, and as such was several years
ahead of the curve. Some of the tracks on “Heavy Liquid” are curiosities
- it has to be said that their rehearsal versions of “Money” and
“Louie Louie” are looser than a Hollywood groupie - but the duplicated
outtakes of the “I Got a Right” sessions are different enough
to avoid monotony. It’s those songs and the 1973 Michigan rehearsal
that do it for me. While the latter may not be all that different from what
you’ve hear on “Rubber Legs” or “Open Up and Bleed”,
this version sounds a touch hotter. If Iggy and Co put this much into a practice,
how intense must the shows have been?
No kitchen sink
included but you do get a sticker, a booklet with new insights from Iggy,
Rock and Ron plus a booklet of photos from Mick Rock (looking like a plug
for the new edition of his Stooges portraits). Impressive stuff.
"Raw Power" notwithstanding, "Heavy Liquid" is the definitive,
late-period Stooges release. -
The Barman
Back in the 70’s,
Iggy Pop’s father taught honors English at one of the high schools in
my suburban Detroit hometown of Dearborn and the senior Osterberg would greet each new crop of students with good news and bad news:
yes, Jim was his son and no, he didn’t want to talk about it. Now that the Stooges are no longer Detroit’s dirty little secret, it seems
no-one can stop talking about him.
To most, initial exposure to the Stooges is akin to being sucked through the
roof by a twister and deposited, shocked but intact, in some odd and blissful world. Never mind the Mars probe – one listen to “The
Stooges,” “Fun House,” or “Raw Power” provides
all of the evidence you’ll need that life exists elsewhere in the universe and occasionally visits Earth.
Although the image of Iggy as a one-man primer on a comprehensive litany of
anti-social behavior has always been an iconic one, it’s taken 35 years
of hindsight, analysis, and fine tooth combing to spotlight the contributions
of Messrs. Asheton, Alexander, MacKay, Thurston, and Williamson, without whom the band’s legacy would be secure.
“Heavy Liquid” is a lovingly compiled, stoked-out (what the Brits
would call “top gear”) six-disc mini box set that captures the
Stootches during a period of flux (July 1972 – January 1974), still gaining their sea legs
after welcoming (“welcome” being a relative term when it came
to Ron Asheton, who grudgingly switched over to bass) guitarist James Williamson
into the inner sanctum after the original line-up – Asheton, brother
Scott, and Dave Alexander - crashed and burned in a shitstorm of bad dope and slight
mental problems in 1971.
Like Rhino Handmade’s “1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions”
box, this one’s targeted at the voyeurs; fly-on-the-wall adventures
through a landscape of murder city nights, rehearsal sheds in London, Ypsilanti, and
Detroit, and on the boards and under the lights in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, Iggy steadfastly struggling to re-invent The Stooges on
Mainman’s dime.
“Heavy Liquid” takes major steps toward putting to rest the band’s
image as a bunch of college town ne’er-do-wells entirely consumed with
cheap thrills and even cheaper drugs, plugging in, tuning out, and grunting
like cavemen inventing the wheel. The Olympic Studio (London) Tapes reveal
Iggy The Taskmaster, knuckling down and leading the band through multiple
takes of “I Got A Right,” joining in on some and standing back
and taking stock on others, honing a black lump of coal into a hardened, sharp
diamond, Rock Action’s double snare tap cueing up Williamson’s
six-string meteor storm and what sounds like background noise from a Tarzan
movie. To break up the monotony, there’s half-hearted passes at “Surfin’
Bird,” Barrett Strong’s “Money,” and a short, punch
drunk “Louie Louie.”
Back on terra firma in the Great Lake state, in an Ypsilanti barn called Morgan
Sound Studios owned by Scott Richardson of SRC as well as an unnamed Detroit
location, University of Michigan music instructor Bob Scheff gets a quick
tour of Planet Stooge, his insistent boogie-woogie piano struggling to raise
its head above the din laid down by Williamson and the Ashetons, an interesting,
but ultimately unnecessary attempt to add a bit of texture to “Raw Power”
staples like “Search & Destroy,” “Gimme Danger,”
and “Death Trip” as well as early workouts of “Wild Love,”
“Open Up & Bleed,” “Jesus Loves The Stooges,”
“Rubber Legs,” and “Cock In My Pocket.” Williamson’s
guitar snarls, slobbers, and showers sparks over the proceedings, Ron and
Scott venting their spleens and other internal organs, and Iggy, well, doing
what Iggy does best.
If the live photos depicting Iggy as a bi-polar, shirtless, prima ballerina,
complete with tights, sash, and slippers are any indication,
it’s no surprise that patrons of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Farm,
far to the west of Detroit, straight down Michigan Avenue, incensed by his
baiting one particularly cold February night back in 1974, showed up loaded for bear the
next night at Ford Auditorium, the ensuing battle of wills scrapbooked for posterity on “Metallic K.O.” Coincidentally (and even less
surprising), the Rock ‘n’ Roll Farm was just a short jaunt down
the road from the sprawling Eloise complex, at the time one of the country’s
largest mental hospitals, known throughout the industry for progressive treatments like hypnosis, electroshock treatment, and music therapy (!).
Despite the singer’s on-stage foibles, the live material unveiled here
is as close to the holy grail as you’re likely to get unless somebody
in Ann Arbor stumbles across a strongbox filled with tapes buried somewhere
along fraternity row. The Max’s Kansas City and Whisky A Go Go performances reveal four guys intent on laying down the gauntlet, recapturing the mojo,
and riding off into the sunset, string of scalps hanging from their belts.
Iggy’s attempt at a bit of soul purging, a heartfelt lament on how the
band never got any help (ever…), is usurped by a drunk who screams “Your
roots are showing!” Shrugging their shoulders and throwing up their
hands, the only appropriate response from the Stooges seems to be scorching
a few inner ears with an outright malicious flogging of “Search &
Destroy.” Run credits…
If you’re as obsessively, compulsively preoccupied with packaging details
as I am, comfort awaits within. Easy Action have packed “Heavy
Liquid” with stickers, a booklet full of photos and liner notes from Creem magazine hacks, a second booklet of Mick Rock photos, and individual cardboard picture sleeves for all six discs. Nicely done all around.
Until that long-promised/rumored/anticipated new Stooges studio album raises
its ugly little head, “Heavy Liquid” is a classy stopgap, another trip in the wayback machine with all dials calibrated to "Palookaville."
Stash all items in the overhead compartment, fasten your seat belt, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye. -
Clark Paull
TELLURIC
CHAOS – The Stooges (Skydog)
A new album and this should send more than a ripple of excitement through
the worldwide ranks of Stoogeaholics. It’s not the expected studio effort
- have patience ‘cos the word is that’s still happening - but
a presumably legitimate release of a 2004 show in Tokyo, courtesy of French
label Skydog.
Skydog has borne the brunt of criticism over the years and I can’t
pretend to have any insights into the rights and wrongs of the sources of
their releases or their payment of royalties. What I do know is that the label
should garner a degree of respect, if only for both championing punk rock
on the Continent and for keeping the Stooges’ name alive. Ever heard
of “Metallic KO”?
“Telluric” means “organic” or “from the earth”
and it’s a fitting title. The 2005 Stooges are a way more structured
entity than the pothead sloths that schlepped into an LA studio with little
more than some riffs and a well-defined sense of their outsider status, to
record the masterpiece that is “Funhouse”. With today’s
Stooges shows you know there’s going to be an invitation from Iggy for
the audience to invade the stage most of the time; that they’ll reprise
“I Wanna Be Your Dog”; that he’ll ask for the lights to
go up so he can see the crowd; that’ll he’ll rail against something
or someone. It’s all part of the ritual. Even allowing for that, there’s
still an earthy sensibility to all that the Stooges do that can’t be
denied. Put it down to Rock Action’s lead-weighted feels or Brother
Ron’s oft-recycled but massively influential lead break (singular),
the Ig’s unique vocalising and his focal point status as an energy source.
It’s A Timeless Thing and very definitely Real O Mind.
On “Telluric Chaos”, there’s the usual slew of pre-“Raw
Power” tunes: Pop-Williamson co-writes are a no-go zone – and
fair enough since that edition of the Stooges was a completely different band
to the early versions. What is here is delivered in a way that will delight
anyone who hasn’t had access to the many contemporary unofficial recordings
that are out there.
Having heard about 15 reunion shows - including this one, which has been booted
and shared in not-for-profit form between fans - Tokyo rates as one of the
best. Bassist Mike Watt is by now right at home, and the rest of the band
pushes outside the confines of familiar material in places – tacking
a new intro onto “1970” for example – while Steve Mackay’s
sax honking has a solid place.
It’s the quality of the new material coming down the pipeline that will
ultimately determine how this re-grouping of the Dum Dum Boys will be viewed
over time and on that score, the jury is still out. This live version of “Skull
Ring” has Steve Mackay’s adornments and wears them well, despite
sounding lighter and less primal than its studio cousin. “Dead Rock
Star” is also from the “Skull Rings” album, and is no better
or worse live. It’s Iggy in croon mode and that upsets some purists,
but I have to confess to being indifferent. The surprise here for most will
be the previously unheard “My Idea of Fun”. The nihilism of a
line like “My idea of fun/Is killing everyone” unavoidably sounds
forced, coming from a Dostoevsky-reading Rolls Royce driver from Miami but,
hey, not every lyric has to be read literally. The song’s brutal melody
works for me.
Sonically,
I'd put this on a par with the exisiting boot and it's easier to procure,
so there aren't too many reasons not to grab a copy. You need reasons? -
The Barman
1/2
WILD LOVE: THE DETROIT REHEARSALS & MORE - Iggy & the Stooges (Bomp)
Well, at least now I know why I didn't buy all those Euroboots of Stoogestuff.
Maybe it IS a finite universe, after all. (And I'm not even gonna tell ya
about the MC5 boot I copped recently - on the "Trademark of Quality"
label, a logo to conjure with to an early-seventies vinyl bootleg fan - that
consisted mainly of stuff that I've already had two or three different ways,
latest and best on Alive/Total Energy. Anal retentive completism makes fools
of us, sometimes.)
One of the highlights of my life as an obsessive compulsive record junkie
the past few years has been Bomp's Iguana Chronicles series, which since '93
has surfaced a series of mostly great, previously unreleased rehearsal and
live recordings of the James Williamson-period Stooges. The '97 compilation
"The Year of the Iguana," in particular, is a damn-near-definitive
summation of the period, while Y2K's "Michigan Palace" is probably
the best-SOUNDING live Stooges document extant.
The next sound you hear will be the bottom of the barrel being scraped. While
up to now, the least exalted volume in the Iguana Chronicles was "Rough
Power," what amounted to a bunch of cassette dubs of the "Raw Power"
songs (some recorded off the radio), this new one will really, finally, once
and for all serve to separate the sheep from the goats as far as Stooge fandom
is concerned.
Guitar alchemy aside, James Williamson's real contribution to the Stooge canon
was SONGS. Prior to his arrival, they really didn't have any (although they
were undoubtedly the greatest jam band to ever pound the boards); the eight
released "Raw Power" songs, combined with those demo'ed for that
album back '72 and the batch that gradually supplanted them in the Stooges'
'73-'74 tour repertoire ("I Got Nothin'," "Rich Bitch,"
"Cock In My Pocket," "Wet My Bed," "Heavy Liquid,"
"Johanna," "Open Up and Bleed") constitute a pretty impressive
canon for a songwriter who never did anything else band-wise before or since
(notwithstanding the fact that "Sick of You" borrowed heavily from
the Yardbirds' "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago," or "I Need
Somebody" borrowed heavily from "Saint James Infirmary"). Bro.
James used chords, LOTS of 'em, to create rhythmic (rather than harmonic)
movement like no one else this side of Blue Oyster Cult. The songs still sound
not just contemporary, but DANGEROUS.
There's none of that here. What you DO get (aside from inferior versions of
the title track and "Til the End of the Night" from "Night
of the Iguana") is a lot of the Stooges (often just Iggy and James, with
a DRUM MACHINE, even) jamming in the studio, waiting for inspiration to kick
in. We've heard some of these loosely-structured jams before ("Pin Point
Eyes," previously released on "Open Up and Bleed" as "Cry
for Me," and "I Come from Nowhere" AKA "Born In a Trailer"),
basically just Iggy emoting over skeletal band grooves, but nothing as primitive
as the piss-take versions of Skip James/Cream's "I'm So Glad," Howlin'
Wolf/Paul Butterfield's "Mellow Down Easy," or Bo Diddley/the Yardbirds'
"I'm a Man." Things get REALLY, uh, "free-form" with "Delta
Blues Shuffle" and "Old King Live Forever," which are basically
James experimenting with his guitar (occasionally with a slide) while the
tape rolls. Jimi Hendrix usedta do this kinda thing a lot, and it wasn't particularly
compelling to hear Him to it, either. Almost the best things here are the
drum machine pieces - a cover of Bob Dylan's murder ballad "Hollis Brown,"
and a promising riff tune called "Look So Sweet."
In short, this one's for die-hard fans and collectors only. - Ken
Shimamoto
