I GOT A RIGHT
As I have written about previously, the first LP released by Bomp! Records was Kill City, representing music that Iggy Pop and James Williamson put together right after the Stooges broke up. As Greg Shaw tells the story in the liner notes for the double-CD compilation album, Destination: Bomp! in the entry for the Stooges song “I Got a Right”: “In 1976-77, Bomp was about the only established label in America that was actively pushing the new music. For a brief time, I could have had virtually any band that I wanted. It couldn’t last of course, but while it did, it was a real rush.
“But I never dreamed I could have the Stooges, until James Williamson showed up one day with a tale of woe: Iggy, fighting to kick drugs, had finished most of a great new album, but his rep was so bad no label would touch him. Even Sire [Records] had passed on Kill City. Was I interested?
“Even though I had to almost sell my soul to raise the needed cash, I wasn’t about to let this deal pass. To this day, Kill City is the single most important item in the Bomp catalog; but what made it extra nice is that James also threw in a big box of unlabeled tapes that turned out to be mostly demos and rehearsals from the Raw Power days onward – hours and hours of stuff that became the foundation for my long-term Iguana Chronicles project of documenting the unreleased side of this incredible band.”
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In addition to Kill City, the earliest release that could be grouped in The Iguana Chronicles is probably a single by Iggy and the Stooges, I Got a Right, i.e., “I Got a Right” b/w “Gimme Some Skin”. These songs were part of the package acquired from James Williamson, but the single had already been released in 1977 by a small French label called Siamese Records; this company had also been bidding for the rights to Kill City.
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In the liner notes for Destination: Bomp!, Greg Shaw says: “‘I Got a Right’ . . . remains one of Ig’s best songs ever, and one he still performs regularly.” Both “I Got a Right” and “Gimme Some Skin” are included on The Best of Bomp, Volume One (as is the flip side of the first Bomp single, “Him or Me” by the Flamin’ Groovies); that’s where I first heard them.
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For whatever reason, although Bomp! Records received the box of tapes from James Williamson in 1977, and even though both “I Got a Right” and “Gimme Some Skin” were included on The Best of Bomp, Volume One (1978), the records in The Iguana Chronicles series itself were apparently not started until the early 1990’s. The 45 release on Bomp! Records with these two songs is dated 1991 (although Discogs shows a copy with a white label that has a hand-written date of December 21, 1990). The entry on “I Got a Right” in the liner notes of the 1994 compilation album Destination: Bomp! refers to the single that was released in 1977 on Siamese Records.
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The picture cover for the Bomp single I Got a Right – “I Got a Right” b/w “Gimme Some Skin”, and marked “The Classic Raw Power Outtakes” – says that the two songs were recorded in the same June 1972 recording sessions as the songs on the earlier Bomp EP, I’m Sick of You: “I’m Sick of You”, “Tight Pants” and “Scene of the Crime”. These are among the first songs laid down for the Stooges album, Raw Power, but none were included on the album. The single is also marked as being Volume X-1 in The Iguana Chronicles. It has been reissued several times, as recently as 2011.
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A 12” single called I Got a Right was also released by Bomp! Records in 1991; Side 1 had the songs from the original Siamese Records 45, “I Got a Right” and “Gimme Some Skin”, both identified as “Final Mix”. Side 2 had the same two songs from the James Williamson box that appeared on The Best of Bomp, Volume One, both called outtakes, plus a second outtake of “I Got a Right” that was previously unreleased.
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An expanded album based on the 1977 Bomp! Records EP, I’m Sick of You was released in the same time period. The Discogs listing for the I’m Sick of You CD has a date of 1991, but that is in error; both this CD and the I Got a Right CD came out in 1995.
The songs originally released – “I’m Sick of You”, “Tight Pants” and “Scene of the Crime” – are demo recordings by the Stooges that were made in June 1972. Along with “I Got a Right” and “Gimme Some Skin”, they were summarily rejected by David Bowie’s management company MainMan Management, with only “Tight Pants” considered to have any promise; this song was rewritten and included on the Raw Power album as “Shake Appeal”.
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The redo of the 1977 Siamese Records 45, “I Got a Right” b/w “Gimme Some Skin” – and the only one of the Iguana Chronicles albums and EP’s that I don’t have at all, as best I can tell – is like a miniature version of the box set on Rhino Records, 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions that I have mentioned before. Like the songs on the 1977 EP I’m Sick of You, “I Got a Right” and “Gimme Some Skin” are early demo recordings by the Stooges dating from June 1972 that were rejected by MainMan Management for the Raw Power album.
For the I Got a Right CD, Bomp! Records put together every take available of these two classic songs – 7 of “I Got a Right” and 2 of “Gimme Some Skin” – as well as a live performance of “I Got a Right” that was made in Paris on September 23, 1977.
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Writing for Allmusic, Cub Koda says of Year of the Iguana: “This is an interesting collection that’s primarily culled from other Bomp CD collections and 10” vinyl LPs. If you’re into Iggy and the Stooges enough to have made it this far, this collection of alternate mixes (‘Death Trip’), raw rehearsal tapes (‘Rubber Legs’, ‘Head On’, ‘Till the End of the Night’, ‘Wild Love’, and an extended run-through of ‘Raw Power’), and ‘suppressed masters’ from the original Raw Power sessions (‘I Got a Right’, ‘Gimme Some Skin’, and ‘Scene of the Crime’) will almost seem like a greatest-hits package of sorts. And for the new fan who’s just discovered the chaotic magic that was the Stooges – and has heard the rumors that there’s material far more incendiary than their three studio albums – this compilation will serve just that purpose, sifting through the unending maze of unissued Stooges material to make a single-disc package that hits on the spots.”
(December 2017)
