FUN HOUSE
Fun House is the second studio album by American rock band The Stooges. It was released on July 7, 1970 by Elektra Records. Though initially commercially unsuccessful, Fun House developed a strong cult following and, like its successor (1973’s Raw Power), is generally considered integral in the development of punk rock. (More from Wikipedia)
By the time their second album, Fun House came along the following year (the first with the iconic Iggy Pop name), their anarchic excesses, particularly the drug use were beginning to catch up with the Stooges. The critics didn’t know what to make of it, often using rather lofty language to describe such a barebones barrage. Robert Christgau called the album “genuinely ‘avant-garde’ rock”; Greg Kot says it is “the Stooges’ punk jazz opus”; and the Rolling Stone review by Charles Burton says that the Stooges sounded “so exquisitely horrible and down and out that they are the ultimate psychedelic rock band in 1970”. The album was not a big seller, nor was the single “Down on the Street”.
There was some turnover in the band in 1971, with a key member joining at that time, James Williamson. Eventually the Stooges quit playing together and basically broke up.
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In retrospect though, most rock scribes view Fun House as the peak album in the short, frantic life of the Stooges, with more than a few calling it the greatest album of all time. As an example, as quoted in Wikipedia: “In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Scott Seward claimed that, although saying so ‘risks hyperbole’, Fun House is ‘one of the greatest rock & roll records of all time’ and that, ‘as great as they were, the Stones never went so deep, the Beatles never sounded so alive, and anyone would have a hard time matching Iggy Pop’s ferocity as a vocalist’.”
As a measure of the popularity of the Stooges album Fun House, as reported in Wikipedia: “In 1999, Rhino Records released a limited edition box set, 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions, featuring every take of every song from every day of the recording sessions, plus the single versions of ‘Down on the Street’ and ‘1970’. On August 16, 2005, the album was reissued by Elektra [Records] and Rhino as a two-CD set featuring a newly remastered version of the album on disc one and a variety of outtakes (essentially highlights from The Complete Fun House Sessions box set) on disc two.”
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(December 2016)
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Items: Fun House
