IGGY AND THE STOOGES
The Stooges, also known as Iggy and the Stooges, are an American protopunk band from Ann Arbor, Michigan, first active from 1967 to 1974, and later reformed in 2003. Although they sold few records in their original incarnation, and often performed for indifferent or hostile audiences, the Stooges are widely regarded as instrumental in the rise of punk rock, as well as influential to alternative rock, heavy metal and rock music at large. The Stooges were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked them 78th on their list of the 100 greatest artists of all time. (More from Wikipedia)
See Also: The Stooges
An even better punk rock band that I have written about several times comes from the Heartland (Cleveland to be precise): the Dead Boys, led by front man Stiv Bators. As Greg Shaw has said (in part) of the Dead Boys:
“For what it’s worth, the Dead Boys were far and away the best ‘punk’ band I ever saw — and I saw them all. Sure, it was largely theatrics. When Stiv [Bators] cut himself open with a broken bottle and had to be rushed to a hospital in the middle of his set (but made it back in time for the second show), he wasn’t doing anything Iggy [and the Stooges] hadn’t done before, and with less premeditation.”
(July 2012)
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Meanwhile, I have a 3-CD player in the same unit, so I started playing CD’s again, including several that had been sitting around unopened for so many months. One trio of CD’s that I put on started off with Laugh in the Dark, the first album by the Invisible Eyes; followed by Iggy and the Stooges’ Open Up and Bleed!, billed as “The Great Lost Stooges Album?” and the eponymous CD, Les Hell on Heels by Les Hell on Heels. That turned out to be an absolutely thunderous combination of albums that occurred quite by accident; I have played that set of CD’s (usually in the same order) a half dozen times at least in the week and a half ever since; I have put them on right now.
(December 2012)
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Angie Pepper grew up as the youngest of three children in a middle class family in Newcastle, Australia. She was always interested in art and music and became part of the Sydney rock music scene. Angie became friends with the bandmembers in Radio Birdman, a legendary Sydney punk rock band that formed in 1974 and broke up in 1978. One of the bandmembers, guitarist Deniz Tek is actually from Detroit and brought the hard-edged Detroit sound of MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges with him Down Under.
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One year ago, this series of Facebook posts took a different turn as the discussions became more free-ranging and as the text was more liberally illustrated with photographs. The UARB in December 2012 was the Invisible Eyes – still one of my favorite bands of the bunch – and I remarked at the time that I first encountered them as the first of a trio of CD’s that also included probably the best of the Iguana Chronicles CD’s, Open Up and Bleed! by Iggy and the Stooges; and the CD Les Hell on Heels by this month’s UARB, Les Hell on Heels. This all-female hard rock band has been on the short list for UARB status ever since, and it is high time for me to get on with it.
(December 2013)
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The band that became the Patti Smith Group was created when Ivan Kral (guitar and bass), Jay Dee Daugherty (drums) and Richard Sohl (piano) joined Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye. The piano player’s name is fitting, since his understated work at the ivories is in many ways the soul of the Patti Smith Group. The proto-punk band Iggy and the Stooges added Scott Thurston as a frantic pianist in 1973, but a keyboard player in a punk rock band is rare.
Many years ago, I wrote of Patti Smith that she resembled nothing so much as the Beat poets of the 1950’s; but that really is only one side of her music persona. She is a rocker pure and simple as well as a poet and a first-rate vocalist and one hell of a writer besides.
(February 2014)
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The name of Hollis Brown is taken from a Bob Dylan song “Ballad of Hollis Brown”. (Did I mention that I have a cover version of “Ballad of Hollis Brown” by Iggy and the Stooges? Quite good also).
(December 2015)
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Motown is of course the best known music from the Motor City, but Detroit has always had a hard-edged rock scene as well. Proto-punk gods Iggy and the Stooges and MC5 (“Motor City 5”) are both Detroit bands that were founded in the 1960’s. Perhaps the hardest rocking 1960’s American band that made it big is Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.
(March 2016)
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The Stooges (also known as Iggy and the Stooges) are the prototype of proto-punk. Like MC5, they are a Detroit band, or more properly an Ann Arbor band. As Stephen Thomas Erlewine observes in his Allmusic article: “Taking their cue from the over-amplified pounding of British blues, the primal raunch of American garage rock, and the psychedelic rock (as well as the audience-baiting) of the Doors, the Stooges were raw, immediate, and vulgar. Iggy Pop became notorious for performing smeared in blood or peanut butter and diving into the audience. Ron [Asheton] and Scott Asheton formed a ridiculously primitive rhythm section, pounding out chords with no finesse – in essence, the Stooges were the first rock & roll band completely stripped of the swinging beat that epitomized R&B and early rock & roll.”
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Continuing in the Allmusic article, Stephen Thomas Erlewine talks about the genesis of the Stooges’ third album: “Early in 1972, [Iggy] Pop happened to run into David Bowie, then at the height of his Ziggy Stardust popularity and an avowed Stooges fan. Bowie made it his mission to resuscitate Iggy & the Stooges, as the band was then billed. Iggy and [James] Williamson were signed to a management deal with MainMan, the firm guiding Bowie’s career, and the new edition of the band scored a deal with Columbia Records. Temporarily based in London and unable to find a suitable rhythm section in the U.K., Iggy and Williamson invited the Asheton brothers to join the new group, with Scott [Asheton] on drums and Ron [Asheton] moved to bass. Iggy produced the third Stooges album, Raw Power, and Bowie handled the mix. Released in 1973 to surprisingly strong reviews, Raw Power had a weird, thin sound due to various technical problems . . . [with] many Stooges purists blam[ing] Bowie for the brittle mix.”
(December 2016)
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After Ron Asheton was found dead in January 2009 of an apparent heart attack, James Williamson was brought back into the line-up, and the Stooges continued to perform concerts around the world until June 2016, when James Williamson announced: “The Stooges is over. Basically, everybody’s dead except Iggy [Pop] and I. So it would be sort-of ludicrous to try and tour as Iggy and the Stooges when there’s only one Stooge in the band and then you have side guys. That doesn’t make any sense to me.” One last album was released by the Stooges in 2013, Ready to Die that was better received by the critics than The Weirdness.
(March 2017)
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Yet another early EP by Bomp! Records, I’m Sick of You by Iggy and the Stooges is discussed in more detail below.
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Besides Kill City, an EP called Jesus Loves the Stooges was released by Bomp! Records at the same time (1977), featuring a dead donkey on the cover (Greg Shaw blames Jem Records for the cover art). On Side 1 are two songs from Kill City, “Consolation Prizes” and “Johanna”; and Side 2 has a previously unreleased jam by Iggy and the Stooges called “Jesus Loves the Stooges” (and I have little doubt that He does!).
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An early release by Iggy and the Stooges on Bomp! Records is a 7” EP from 1977 called I’m Sick of You, consisting of “I’m Sick of You” b/w “Tight Pants” and “Scene of the Crime”. The catalogue number, Bomp EP-113 is in the original sequence for the Bomp! Records 45’s, so I’m Sick of You might even have predated the release of Kill City; anyway, it does not appear to be part of The Iguana Chronicles. The EP came out right after the release by the Weirdos on Bomp 112, “Destroy All Music” b/w “A Life of Crime” and “Why Do You Exist?” (all three massive first-wave punk rock classics by the way).
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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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Cub Koda writes of the I Got a Right CD in Allmusic: “This collection rounds up every existing take of those two titles with a live version of the title cut to round things out. This is Iggy and the Stooges at arguably their peak and well worth seeking out, as the sound is appreciably better than the original 45 issue.”
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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)
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Even with having only a quarterly rather than a monthly schedule, I almost blew off my last post for September 2017 (which didn’t actually come out until mid-November). I was starting to run out of stuff to talk about, or so it seemed to me; and even though I really loved the Tell-Tale Hearts (not to mention the Edgar Allan Poe story “The Tell-Tale Heart” that the band was named after), coming up with yet a third post about Iggy and the Stooges was just not frying my bacon. Once I decided to talk about my early bootleg record acquisitions, however, the words flowed forth like old times. But I am dragging my feet again since I still have not discussed The Iguana Chronicles that I had intended to get into last time.
(Year 8 Review)
