OPEN UP AND BLEED (Song)
I have already discussed Metallic K.O., a 1976 release on the French label Skydog Records that was taken from live performances by the Stooges at Michigan Palace in Detroit on October 6, 1973 and February 9, 1974. Allmusic gives the album a 5-star rating, with Dave Thompson’s review of the double-CD reissue Metallic 2xK.O. stating: “Metallic K.O. means the world – to anyone and everyone who ever sat down and unsuspectingly dropped needle onto wax and then reeled back in horror; this ain’t rock & roll, it’s a snuff movie. And the fact that it all sounds so tame these days just shows how much it’s become a part of the language. . . . [T]hrough lurching takes of ‘Open up and Bleed’, ‘Heavy Liquid’, and the ever-inspiring ‘I Got S--t’ (all of which are new to the package), past the familiar dissolution of ‘Head on the Curb’, ‘Rich Bitch’, and ‘Cock in My Pocket’, and into the nightmare closure, this remains rock & roll so far out on the edge that you get dizzy just listening to it. And, by the time the last glass explodes at the end of the world’s greatest ‘Louie, Louie’, you’ll be ready to take on anything.”
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For Open Up and Bleed!, which has a subtitle “The Great Lost Stooges Album?”, Bomp! Records collected available recordings of songs that were written and developed by the Stooges after the release of Raw Power in February 1973. The first six songs – “Rubber Legs”, “Open up and Bleed”, “Johanna”, “Cock in My Pocket”, “Head On”, and “Cry for Me” – were made during practice sessions at CBS Records in New York in 1973 and are taken from the only tape that has surfaced from these rehearsals. The liner notes for Open Up and Bleed! by Frank Meyer state that “Head On” is also known as “Head on the Curve”, but not “Head on the Curb”, as the song is called on the Metallic K.O. albums.
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For some reason, Year of the Iguana is not shown as an Iguana Chronicles album in its Discogs listing, though it is clearly marked that way. The songs are mostly taken from finished masters and rehearsals (“Open up and Bleed” is a live recording) and are often but not always alternate versions of the same songs on the other Iguana Chronicles albums.
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California Bleeding is probably my favorite of these live albums and likely the one of most interest to collectors. The first four songs – “Search and Destroy”, “I Need Somebody” (which has probably never sounded better), an extended performance of “Open up and Bleed”, and a shortened version of “Johanna” – are taken from the five-night stand (two sets a night) by the Stooges in September 1973 at the landmark nightclub Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.
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One tape that was found in the James Williamson box is from the only known show by the Stooges in San Francisco (at Bimbo’s in January 1974). The liner notes by Frank Meyer say that there are only four songs on the tape, with “Open up and Bleed” being incomplete, so the other three songs – “Wet My Bed”, “I Got Nothing” and “Head On” – are included here, with the versions of the last two songs never being previously released. The California Bleeding album closes with three songs from the September 15th show at the Whisky, “She Creatures of the Hollywood Hills” and “Heavy Liquid” / “New Orleans” (the Gary U.S. Bonds classic) – the first concert performances of these songs ever.
(December 2017)
