YEAR OF THE IGUANA
In fact, as the legend of the Stooges began to grow almost as soon as the final notes were played by the band in their last concert in Detroit on February 9, 1974, putting together albums by the Stooges has become something of a cottage industry. Discogs shows a total of 29 albums of Stooges music, including two CD’s that were released in 2017. Allmusic lists an amazing 54 albums. Cub Koda writes in his Allmusic review of one of the Iguana Chronicles albums, Year of the Iguana: “[The Stooges] have found themselves being exhaustively documented, with seemingly every scrap of magnetic tape bearing their imprint coming up for reissue air at one time or another.”
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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.
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.”
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Buying Wild Love first is certainly not the route most people would follow if they wanted to start buying albums in The Iguana Chronicles series. I imagine that Rough Power would be the best album to start with for most people, since it features the original mix by the Stooges on the Raw Power album; and/or Open Up and Bleed!, a presentation of a potential fourth album by the Stooges. Then one or more of the live albums – California Bleeding, Double Danger, and Michigan Palace 10/6/73 – would likely follow. As noted above, Year of the Iguana serves as sort of a greatest-hits set of the Iguana Chronicles albums. Perhaps someone whose interest had been piqued would then check out the more in-depth examination of the Stooges demos that were rejected by MainMan Management on I Got a Right and I’m Sick of You. If you already have Kill City, you wouldn’t even need Jesus Loves the Stooges unless you just wanted to hear what a song called “Jesus Loves the Stooges” sounds like.
After all of those purchases or selected ones, only people who would be referred to by rock critics as “Stooges completists” or “diehard fans” would likely go for Wild Love. Unless the idea of getting Stooges songs that have hardly been heard at all by anyone is appealing to you, like it was for me.
(December 2017)
