READY TO DIE
Ready to Die is the fifth and final studio album by American rock band Iggy and the Stooges. The album was released on April 30, 2013, by Fat Possum Records. The album debuted at number 96 on the Billboard 200 chart. (More from Wikipedia)
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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Iggy Pop had moved on and had previously released two solo albums in 1977, The Idiot and Lust for Life; but Kill City was the music that Iggy had created right after the third Stooges album came out, Raw Power. As it happened, James Williamson stayed until the end; besides being in the 21st-Century tour with the Stooges, he was in the line-up when the band created its last album, Ready to Die (2013).
(September 2017)
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The Iguana Chronicles are by no means the only albums by the Stooges that have been released outside of the five major-label albums: The Stooges (1969), Fun House (1970), Raw Power (1973), The Weirdness (2007), and Ready to Die (2013). Because the music was supplied by a Stooges bandmember, James Williamson with the blessing of frontman Iggy Pop, I would view the albums in The Iguana Chronicles as legitimate releases.
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Open Up and Bleed! is still available from Bomp! Mailorder for a bargain price of $5.00: www.bompstore.com/iggy-pop-the-stooges-open-up-and-bleed-1973-w-liners-cd/. Truly, I cannot recommend this album highly enough. With the release of Ready to Die in 2013, the Stooges are well and truly finished, even though Iggy Pop is still around. To my mind, there is no better document of this band’s legacy than Open Up and Bleed!.
(December 2017)
