THE STOOGES on ELEKTRA 1969-70
by Harry Young
Site Assistance: Loren Dobson, author
'Steve Macay The Forgotten Stooge'
Black To Comm #22, 1997
the stooges:
james newell osterberg, jr.
b. april 21, 1947
ronald franklin asheton
b. july 17, 1948
d. january 6, 2009
scott randolph asheton
b. august 16, 1949
david michael alexander
b. june 3, 1947
d. february 10, 1975
left the stooges before
the fun house lp
was released
(see below,
billboard august 29, 1970)
replaced by zeke zettner
Order October 25, 2010
Ship November 22, 2010
THE STOOGES
HAVE SOME FUN:
LIVE AT UNGANO'S
Rhino Handmade RHM2 525148
Product #603497949335
01. Going To Ungano's
02. Loose
03. Down On The Street
04. T.V. Eye
05. Dirt
06. 1970
07. Fun House
08. Have Some Fun / My Dream Is Dead
~~~
Billboard
August 29, 1970
STOOGES Ungano's, New York
Iggy and the Stooges returned to Ungano's Aug. 18 and the Elektra Records artist was as intense and erotic as ever. The club was full as this group is picking up quite an underground following.
Iggy, with his jeans more tattered, sang, screamed, crawled, danced, played, mouthed suggestive and obscene comments, gyrated, cavorted, coaxed, demanded and, in short, gave a complete performance with heavily sexual overtones. The group is even more overpowering than before with the addition of Steve Mackay on saxophone. He added to the performance's high pitch with lead guitarist Ron Asheton and bass guitarist Zeke Zettner, another new Stooge, using feedback effectively in wave after wave of sound. Drummer Scott Asheton also contributed to the unit's power.
However, the story was Iggy, a young performer who has to be seen to be believed. Unfortunately, that also creates a problem since perfect vantage is almost impossible as he directs his energies toward various members of the audience, often while not standing. Dirt, from the Stooges' forthcoming Elektra album, was among the top numbers.
~ Fred Kirby
~~~
Record World
August 29, 1970
Club Review
Stooges Score
New York -- Someone made a very good comment at Ungano's the other night in the middle of the Stooges performance. He said, "Two hundred years ago people would have been locked up for acting like that; now he's [Iggy] a star." The statement is true and we should be glad that Iggy is not behind bars for Iggy's absence would be a great loss to theater.
The Stooges, who record for Elektra, are a rock and roll band in every sense of the term. They play excruciatingly loud music as Iggy screams, sings, beats himself, jumps and (invariably) falls. Their sound is the sound of frustration and children's rage; their sound is also incredible.
It is impossible to make a value judgment vis a vis the Stooges; they simply exist and that is a pretty strong factor in their favor. As Iggy grovels and wretches about and half the audience laughs as the other half is hypnotized, we are reminded of a society as a whole in which half the population finds horror and violence amusing (TV, Viet Nam, etc.) and the other half finds it absolutely enthralling.
Some mention should be made of the Stooges sax player who apparently has been strongly influenced by many of the avant garde jazz figures of our time including Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, etc. This man really has it together -- as together, perhaps, as Iggy who is always in control of the situation. That's life and show biz.
~ Bob Moore Merlis
Order October 25, 2010
Ship November 16, 2010
THE STOOGES
1970:
THE COMPLETE FUN HOUSE SESSIONS
Rhino Handmade
Product #081227770723
142 Tracks (Including
133 Previously Unreleased)
A 7-CD Boxed Set
With Six 8-Page Folders
And A 9.5 x 19 Inch
[24 x 48 Centimeter]
Mini-Poster
September 14, 2010
THE STOOGES
180 Gram Vinyl Replica
Cut From The Original Analog Masters
White Plastic Lined Sleeve
Red Label Elektra EKS 74051
Rhino Product #081227979430
THE STOOGES
FUN HOUSE
180 Gram Vinyl Replica
Cut From The Original Analog Masters
White Plastic Lined Sleeve
Butterfly Label Elektra EKS 74071
Rhino Product #081227979423
April 23, 2010
Retail:
November 16, 2010
THE STOOGES
(COLLECTOR'S EDITION)
Rhino Handmade RHM2 523612
*Previously Unreleased
Disc 01 (71:57)
01. 1969 4:08
02. I Wanna Be Your Dog 3:11
03. We Will Fall 10:17
04. No Fun 5:17
05. Real Cool Time 2:31
06. Ann 2:59
07. Not Right 2:51
08. Little Doll 3:27
09. I Wanna Be Your Dog
Mono Single Version 2:47
10. 1969
Original John Cale Mix 2:57
11. Not Right
Original John Cale Mix 2:40
12. We Will Fall
Original John Cale Mix* 11:03
13. No Fun
Original John Cale Mix 5:02
14. Real Cool Time
Original John Cale Mix 2:43
15. Ann
Original John Cale Mix* 3:15
16. Little Doll
Original John Cale Mix 3:06
17. I Wanna Be Your Dog
Original John Cale Mix 3:45
Disc 02 (61:05)
01. Asthma Attack* 6:28
02. 1969
Alternate Vocal 4:50
03. I Wanna Be Your Dog
Alternate Vocal 3:30
04. We Will Fall*
Alternate Version 11:25
05. No Fun
Full Version 6:51
06. Real Cool Time
Takes 01 and 02* 6:37
07. Ann
Full Version 8:03
08. Not Right
Alternate Vocal 3:34
09. Little Doll
Takes 01 - 05* 9:47
Asthma Attack Pt.1 (2:50) /
Asthma Attack Pt. 2 (3:46)
Elektra Vinyl Single
RHM2 523612
December 9, 2009
Japan SHM CDs
2005 Remastering:
Dan Hersch and Bill Inglot
WPCR 13729 (34:44)
WPCR 13730 (36:40)
October 2009
The Stooges:
The Authorized And Illustrated Story
Robert Matheu
Jeffrey Morgan
Dave DiMartino
Ben Blackwell
Ivan Suvanjieff
Brian J. Bowe
Machine Rock
Joel Brodsky
Ed Caraeff
Mick Rock
Lisa Gottlieb
April 18, 2009
Record Store Day
The Stooges
1969 (4:05) / Real Cool Time (2:29)
Elektra / Rhino R7 518566
March 6, 2007
THE STOOGES
THE WEIRDNESS
(Virgin 7243864628 VRN 64648) 40:02
01. Trollin'
02. You Can't Have Friends
03. ATM
04. Idea of Fun
05. The Weirdness
06. Free and Freaky
07. Greedy Awful People
08. She Took My Money
09. The End of Christianity
10. Mexican Guy
11. Passing Cloud
12. I'm Fried
March 27, 2007
THE STOOGES
THE WEIRDNESS (Vinyl)
(Virgin Records America 7243864628 VRN 64648)
SIDE A
01. Trollin' 3:06
02. You Can't Have Friends 2:22
03. ATM 3:15
04. My Idea Of Fun 3:17
05. The Weirdness 3:45
06. Free & Freaky 2:39
SIDE B
01. Greedy Awful People 2:07
02. She Took My Money 3:48
03. The End Of Christianity 4:19
04. Mexican Guy 3:29
05. Passing Cloud 4:04
06. I'm Fried 3:44
SIDE C
01. O Solo Mio 6:16
02. Claustrophobia 3:09
03. I Wanna Be Your Man 3:39
04. Sounds Of Leather 2:38
Billboard
March 10, 2007
The Stooges don't reinvent their particular sonic wheel on their first all-new album in 34 years and that's just fine. "The Weirdness" offers more of the Iggy Pop-led band's prototypical cro-magnon Raw Power, with Scott Asheton's muscular drum attack propelling brother Ron's arsenal of guitar riffs. It's a tightly woven scheme whose anthemic simplicity is deceptive and leaves room for sophisticated (but still fierce) arrangements such as the doo-wop style swing of the title track, the Bo Diddley groove'n'roll of "Mexican Guy" and the jazzy dynamics of "Passing Cloud." Pop lets loose with plenty of sociopolitical beat poet commentary on tracks like "Free and Freaky," "Greedy Awful People" and "The End of Christianity," but that will register mostly after you stop stomping and pumping your fists to the likes of "Trollin'," "She Took My Money" and "I'm Fried."
~ Gary Graff
2006
Replica Edition
Rhino R2 74805 (36:40)
2005 Remastering:
Dan Hersch and Bill Inglot
"The Stooges" And "Fun House" Get A Makeover
Co-Producer Ben Edmonds Explains
***
The Stooges' Two Elektra Albums Reissued In Expanded Editions
August 16, 2005.
1969's "The Stooges" and 1970's "Fun House," which remain landmarks documents of the pre-punk American hard rock, both feature a second disc's worth of rare tracks.
"The Stooges" includes 10 previously unreleased cuts on its second disc, such as producer John Cale's original mixes of "No Fun," "Little Doll," "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and "1969," a full version of "No Fun" and three alternate vocal takes.
The bonus disc that graces "Fun House" sports material only previously available on the now out-of-print Rhino Handmade release "1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions." This includes demos for "Slide (Slidin' the Blues") and "Lost in the Future" (which did not appear on the original album), single mixes of "1970" and "Down on the Street" and three alternate takes.
THE STOOGES (DELUXE EDITION)
Elektra / Rhino R2 73176
Remastering:
Dan Hersch and Bill Inglot
Disc One (34:44) Stereo
01. 1969 (4:07)
02. I Wanna Be Your Dog 3:12
03. We Will Fall 10:16
04. No Fun 5:18
05. Real Cool Time 2:32
06. Ann 3:00
07. Not Right 2:51
08. Little Doll 3:23
Disc Two (43:13) Stereo
01. No Fun (Original John Cale Mix) 4:42
02. 1969 (Original John Cale Mix) 2:44
03. I Wanna Be Your Dog (Original John Cale Mix) 3:25
04. Little Doll (Original John Cale Mix) 2:48
05. 1969 (Alternate Vocal) 4:47
06. I Wanna Be Your Dog (Alternate Vocal) 3:28
07. Not Right (Alternate Vocal) 3:11
08. Real Cool Time (Alternate Mix) 3:22
09. Ann (Including The Dance Of Romance) 7:51
10. No Fun (Full Version) 6:49
Track #s 01 - 10 Previously Unreleased
FUN HOUSE (DELUXE EDITION)
Elektra / Rhino R2 73175
Remastering:
Dan Hersch and Bill Inglot
Disc One (36:40) Stereo
01. Down On The Street 3:43
02. Loose 3:34
03. T.V. Eye 4:17
04. Dirt 7:03
05. 1970 (5:15)
06. Fun House 7:47
07. L.A. Blues 4:57
Disc Two (73:28) Stereo
Except #s 13 & 14 Mono
01. T.V. Eye (Takes 7 & 8) 6:01
02. Loose (Demo) 1:16
03. Loose (Take 2) 3:42
04. Loose (Take 22) 3:42
05. Lost In The Future (Take 1) 5:50
06. Down On The Street (Take 1) 2:22
07. Down On The Street (Take 8) 4:10
08. Dirt (Take 4) 7:09
09. Slide (Slidin' The Blues) (Take 1) 4:38
10. 1970 (Take 3) 7:29
11. Fun House (Take 2) 9:30
12. Fun House (Take 3) 11:29
Bonus Single Mixes
13. Down On The Street 2:43
w/ Organ
14. 1970 (3:21)
THE STOOGES (DELUXE VINYL EDITION)
UK Elektra 8122-73237-1
Side One
01. 1969 (4:07)
02. I Wanna Be Your Dog 3:12
03. We Will Fall 10:16
Side Two
01. No Fun 5:18
02. Real Cool Time 2:32
03. Ann 3:00
04. Not Right 2:51
05. Little Doll 3:23
Side Three
01. No Fun (Original John Cale Mix) 4:42
02. Little Doll (Original John Cale Mix) 2:48
03. Not Right (Alternate Vocal) 3:11
04. Real Cool Time (Alternate Mix) 3:22
05. I Wanna Be Your Dog (Alternate Vocal) 3:28
Side Four
01. 1969 (Alternate Vocal) 4:47
02. Ann (Including The Dance Of Romance) 7:51
03. No Fun (Full Version) 6:49
FUN HOUSE (DELUXE VINYL EDITION)
UK Elektra 8122-73238-1
Side One
01. Down On The Street 3:43
02. Loose 3:34
03. T.V. Eye 4:17
04. Dirt 7:03
Side Two
01. 1970 (5:15)
02. Fun House 7:47
03. L.A. Blues 4:57
Side Three
01. T.V. Eye (Takes 7 & 8) 6:01
02. Loose (Take 2) 3:42
03. Down On The Street (Take 8) 4:10
04. Dirt (Take 4) 7:09
Side Four
01. Lost In The Future (Take 1) 5:50
02. 1970 (Take 3) 7:29
03. Fun House (Take 2) 9:30
The Stooges
2005 Singles
1970 (Original Mono Single Mix) 3:21 /
Not Right (John Cale Mix) Stereo 2:32
Elektra / Rhino Vinyl single R7 73206
I Wanna Be Your Dog (Stereo) 3:12 /
Real Cool Time (John Cale Mix) Stereo 2:40
UK Elektra single 8122-73213-7
Down On The Street (Mono Single Mix) 2:43 /
T.V. Eye (Take 9) Stereo 4:17
UK Elektra single 8122-74551-7
THE STOOGES
1970:
THE COMPLETE FUN HOUSE SESSIONS
142 tracks
including
133 previously unreleased
a 7-cd boxed set
iggy pop
skull ring
november 4, 2003
tracks 1, 3, 5 & 9:
iggy & the stooges
Record World
July 19, 1969
Elektra Plans Stooges Push
Jac Holtzman, President of Elektra Records, has announced an extensive promo program to accompany the release of the premiere single and LP of the Stooges, a four man hard rock group.
The campaign is being designed to "bring the group on strong in the essential areas of airplay, publicity, wholesale and retail outlets and live appearances." Coordinating Elektra efforts will be STEVE HARRIS, Director of Special Projects for the company, who will oversee the campaign in conjunction with Elektra Sales Manager Mel Posner; Art Director William S. Harvey; Publicity Director Dennis Murphy; and Fan Liaison Specialist Josephine Mori. Harris will also work closely with Danny Fields, National Representative of the group, who introduced the Stooges to the label last winter.
The first single from the Stooges will be I Wanna Be Your Dog b/w 1969. It and the album are due for release in mid-July. The Stooges have been together for to years.
Cash Box
July 19, 1969
Elektra To Spotlight Stooges
New York--The outlines of an extensive promotional program to accompany the release of the premiere single and LP by the Stooges, a four man hard rock group, were announced last week by Jac Holzman, president of Elektra records. According to Holzman, the campaign is being designed to 'bring the group on strong in the essential areas of airplay, publicity, wholesale and retail outlets and live appearances." Coordinating Elektra efforts will be STEVE HARRIS, Director of Special Projects for the company, who will oversee the campaign in conjunction with Elektra Sales Manager Mel Posner; Art Director William S. Harvey; Publicity Director Dennis Murphy; and Fan Liaison Specialist Josephine Mori. Harris will also work closely with Danny Fields, National Representative of the group, who introduced the Stooges to the label last winter.
Record World
July 26, 1969
Single Reviews
Four Star Picks
THE STOOGES - Elektra 45664
I WANNA BE YOUR DOG (Paradox, BMI)
The Stooges will make their mark with this John Cale-produced heavy rocker that just won't quit.
Cash Box
July 26, 1969
THE STOOGES (Elektra 45664)
I Wanna Be Your Dog (2:42)
(Paradox, BMI Stooges)
The production effect achieved by uniting sleigh bells with an acoustic guitar gives this debut single from the Stooges a sensational listener impact. The original sound, teen material and potent performance impetus make the side an excellent FM / top forty effort with the look of a winner. Flip: no info supplied.
'I Wanna Be Your Dog'
2:42 on Mono 45
vs. 3:10 on Stereo-only LP
B Side: '1969'
timing unknown.
Variety August 6, 1969
THE STOOGES...I WANNA BE YOUR DOG
(Elektra)
The Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog" (Paradox) is a mediocre hardrocker, with fuzz guitar backing that may capture some airplay. The review disk had the same flip side.
Cash Box
July 26, 1969
THE STOOGES Elektra EKS 74051
Hard rock that is hard simply for the sake of being loud is a rather false invention, but the Stooges, because of the intensity of their musicianship, are at any volume hard and hot. This debut set is an exciting premiere from a new group whose inventive lead singer Iggy brings to every cut dimension, energy, and drama. Especially outstanding are the bizarre but lovely Ann, the over-ten-minute We Will Fall, and the group's just-released single 'I Wanna Be Your Dog.' Could be a break-out.
Words & Music
for all songs on
The Stooges
(except 'Real Cool Time')
Copyright July 11, 1969.
Billboard Review
August 2, 1969
THE STOOGES
Elektra EKS 74051 (S)
The Stooges featuring Iggy Stooge on vocals, will benefit from a big push from the label to cop the same sales power of their best-selling Doors. A 10-minute 'We Will Fall' highlights the rock quartet's debut album, as they feature a rough and raw Rolling Stones-type sound that glitters with the addition of strong lyric content and sophisticated pop execution. '1969,' 'No Fun,' and 'Ann' will boost the Stooges to the top.
The Stooges LP
~ Monarch Pressing
Delta Numbers:
13669 / 13669-X
The Stooges LP entered Billboard August 23, 1969, peak #106 and
did not chart in Cash Box
Cash Box Ad
August 30, 1969
'...The Stooges, because of the intensity of their passion and the integrity of their musicianship, are at any volume hard and hot...' CASH BOX
'...The Stooges are a hot new group, and understandably so after hearing this collection of definitive hard rock...' RECORD WORLD
'...The Stooges, featuring Iggy Stooge on vocals...sound that glitters with the addition of strong lyric content and sophisticated pop execution...' BILLBOARD
THE STOOGES / EKS 74043
Also on all tape configurations by Ampex
THE STOOGES
Rolling Stone
September 6, 1969
The Stooges LP ad
1969...THE STOOGES
The dangerous psychedelic Stooges manage to quickly get down to the nitty gritty of sensual frustration for all of neo-American adolescent malehood...
1969, the lead song on the disc, is the perfect expression of the oldest complaint of rebellious anarcho/crazy youth. Iggy sounds alot younger than twenty-two for the horny American youth whose fantasies he summarizes...
I WANNA BE YOUR DOG is reminiscent of early Velvet Underground music carrying it into even more bizarre levels...
NO FUN is a crazed song of repressed American boy/girl crazies...
NOT RIGHT features some physically abusive guitar playing by Stooge guitarist Ron Asheton. Throughout the album Asheton reveals himself as an insane master of the power the Stooges channel into their music. This is probably the guitar style of the future...
The music is all 1969; Iggy and the boys doing Stooge music.
~ Creem August 1969
Melody Maker
October 4, 1969
THE STOOGES (Elektra)
This sounds like a third-rate Doors and doesn't really offer anything that, musically, gives them a case. One title, "We Will Fall," wins this month's prize for the most boring track.
Disc And Music Echo
November 1, 1969
The New LPs
THE STOOGES follow the fashion of having their name as the title of their album. They are somewhat Rolling Stones-like, but lacking the punch. In fact, this four-man line up's album is repetitive and empty in its sound. Forget it. (Elektra) One star (= Poor LP, Not Recommended)
Rolling Stone
October 18, 1969
The Stooges LP review
by Edmund O. Ward
Cash Box
September 6, 1969
IN STOOGING: On September 3rd, at the Pavilion in Flushing Meadows Park, the earth will shake as never before as Elektra recording artists the Stooges make their first New York appearance. Led by dynamite lead singer Iggy, the Stooges are sure to upset a few heads with their basic, gutsy, intensely passionate rock. Heavy, hard, hard, hard, the Stooges should have the United States of New York dancing in the aisles before it s over. The wizard of Ig is upon us. Also with the Stooges will be the MC5 and the Frost.
Billboard
September 20, 1969
EXCITEMENT MC5 KEYNOTE -
STOOGES MAKE N.Y. DEBUT
NEW YORK While much of the interest in the Pavilion's show of September 5th centered on the New York debut of the Stooges, it was the driving MC5 who showed they rated their headliner billing.
The erotic performance of Elektra's Stooges was coolly received by most of the 2,000 in attendance. The group also had the difficulty of following a surprisingly entertaining set by Elektra s David Peel and the Lower East Side, who are little more than a sometimes musical street gang.
The Stooges, led by Iggy Stooge (That s his billing!), have an act that is geared to appeal to all sexes. At times Iggy appeared like an extension of Mick Jagger and, at times, like a burlesque parody of Jagger. Iggy, clad only in cut-away blue jeans, swayed and gyrated, caressed and licked his mike stand, flung it into the audience, scratched his bare chest to the point of bleeding, rolled on the floor with lead guitarist Ron Asheton, among other things.
In the long finale, 1969, Asheton and bass guitarist Dave Alexander joined in the erotic display. The stage activity took precedence over the quartet's music, which may be good. With drummer Scott Asheton s solid support, the set did move. The act probably goes over better in the more intimate surroundings of a small club.
~ Fred Kirby
Record World
March 7, 1970
Stooges Ungano's
Billboard
March 7, 1970
STOOGES Ungano's, New York
The Stooges, fronted by Iggy, gave an active, erotic set at Ungano's, Feb. 24. Iggy, who uses Stooge as his last name, danced, gyrated, leaped and sprawled on front tables and floor while singing and shouting lyrics.
Iggy also used microphone and microphone stand and, in one number, even lead guitarist Ron Asheton, for erotic effects. Even persons sitting at front tables were not spared. The unusual act curiously worked as the large weekday crowd tried to anticipate Iggy's next move.
The strong support received from Asheton, bass guitarist Dave Alexander, and drummer Scott Asheton almost were lost sight of as Iggy, one of the most erotic performers around, performed in multi-sex style. Elektra Records has quite an act here!
~ Fred Kirby
Disc And Music Echo
May 16, 1970
Hollywood Scene
By Judy Sims
Has word of the Stooges reached England? They're a quartet from Detroit who became notorious last year for their anarchical frenzy, especially that of their lead singer/dancer/freak, Iggy.
Iggy performs without a shirt and has obviously studied Master Mick. He leaps, jumps, crouches, poses, and uses the microphone in a most unusual manner.
For his opening night at the Whisky he wore no shirt and long gold lame gloves. The trio of musicians created a solid wall of sound (which I thought had gone out with Blue Cheer) so that tonal textures and subtleties, even melodies, were impossible to hear. It all sounded like a bass rhythm section playing a few simple chords - loudly. Iggy is, no doubt about it, a performer (for his performing climax he took a candle from a table and poured hot wax down his chest) but I wonder just how relevant such performing is beyond its immediate startling shock value.
I felt like a voyeur watching some strange sexual rite without being remotely titillated. (See Iggy freak out. Isn't he weird? Yeah.)
On the same bill with the Stooges were Clouds, the Scottish trio who have been touring with Jethro Tull.
Rolling Stone April 2, 1970
The Stooges
~ 3 page article by Eric Ehrmann
The Stooges were about ready to crash out after a long day. Iggy stands up on one of the hotel beds and and goes into some of his pre-bedtime acrobatics. Bouncing up and down in the bed, as if it were a stage, he points a scornful index finger down to the ground.
"Used to do these moves back home with ? (Question Mark) and the Mysterians when they'd come through town. They were a bunch of Puerto Rican dudes from Saginaw, and a killer group," Ig remembers. "They were being what they really were, but nobody stopped to figure them out. They were 'out kids' just like us. After '96 Tears,' everything was a drag for them. That's what happens when your music gets misunderstood."
The Stooges
Elektra EKM-45695
Down On The Street (3:10) /
I Feel Alright (1970) 3:18
Released July 20, 1970
as per Rhino Handmade Fun House Box Annotation.
Record World Review
August 29, 1970:
Continuing in the tradition of Question Mark and the Mysterians,
the Stooges put down some tasty
destructo music on your heads.
Not reviewed in Billboard or Cash Box
but Elektra EKM-45694 Rhinoceros,
Billboard review July 18, 1970.
Title also 'I Feel Alright (1970)'
in Library of Congress Copyright Journal.
DOWN ON THE STREET (Stereo Album Version) 3:42 (Rhino Handmade Fun House Box, Take 15, Disc 03, Track 31) or 3:43 (Rhino Deluxe Edition, Disc 01, Track 01)
DOWN ON THE STREET (Mono Single Version WITH Organ) 2:47 (Rhino Handmade Fun House Box, Disc 7, Track 01) or 2:43 (Rhino Deluxe Edition, Disc 2, Track 13; UK Elektra single 8122-74551-7) See Stooges Single Tape Box (Rhino Handmade Fun House Box, Disc 06)
DOWN ON THE STREET (Mono Single Version WITHOUT Organ) 3:10 (Not Available On CD) Elektra Single EKM-45695, Wax: EKM 45695 - A (Scratched-out B, Scratched-out A) - SP (With Super-imposed Scratched-out A), (Mark Possibly E /), (Mastering date) 7-8-70 BM [Half Specialty Pressing Mark: Backwards Big S With Small R Inside Top Loop]
1970 (Stereo Album Version) 5:15 (Rhino Deluxe Edition, Disc 01, Track 05) or 5:17 (Rhino Handmade Fun House Box, Take 08, Disc 5, Track 06)
I FEEL ALRIGHT (1970) Mono Single Version 3:18 (Rhino Handmade Fun House Box, Disc 7, Track 02) or 3:21 (Rhino Deluxe Edition, Disc 02, Track 14; Elektra / Rhino Vinyl single R7 73206), Elektra Single EKM-45695, Wax: EKM 45695 - (Scratched-out A) B SP (Mastering Date) 7-8-70 [Full Specialty Pressing Mark: Backwards Big S With Small R Inside Top Loop And Small C Inside Bottom Loop] BM
For Steve Harris and Iggy, see
Please Kill Me:
The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
Cash Box July 18, 1970
HARRIS NOW VP WITH ELEKTRA
NEW YORK Elektra Records has appointed Steve Harris vice president of the label with specific duties in the area of artist development, according to an announcement by general manager Bill Harvey.
Harris, who joined Elektra five years ago as national promotion director, has worked on such Elektra artists as the Doors, Love, Tim Buckley, Judy Collins. Tom Paxton, and Tom Rush.
Two years ago, Harris was appointed director of special projects, and, as part of his responsibilities in this area, was placed in command of Elektra's radio station, WCCC in Hartford, Connecticut. In December, 1969, Harris was appointed director of publicity and artist relations (Cash Box, December 27, 1969). Steve Harris later became director of artist development for Columbia Records (Cash Box, February 3, 1973).
Billboard And Cash Box
July 25, 1970
Full page ad announcing
Elektra's new butterfly label design
~ as on first pressing of Fun House LP
Billboard August 29, 1970
STOOGES Ungano's, New York
Iggy and the Stooges returned to Ungano's Aug. 18 and the Elektra Records artist was as intense and erotic as ever. The club was full as this group is picking up quite an underground following.
Iggy, with his jeans more tattered, sang, screamed, crawled, danced, played, mouthed suggestive and obscene comments, gyrated, cavorted, coaxed, demanded and, in short, gave a complete performance with heavily sexual overtones.
The group is even more overpowering than before with the addition of Steve Mackay on saxophone. He added to the performance's high pitch with lead guitarist Ron Asheton and bass guitarist Zeke Zettner, another new Stooge, using feedback effectively in wave after wave of sound. Drummer Scott Asheton also contributed to the unit's power.
However, the story was Iggy, a young performer who has to be seen to be believed. Unfortunately, that also creates a problem since perfect vantage is almost impossible as he directs his energies toward various members of the audience, often while not standing. Dirt, from the Stooges' forthcoming Elektra album, was among the top numbers.
~ Fred Kirby
Fun House LP released August 18, 1970
per Rhino Handmade box set
annotation.
Words & Music
for all Fun House songs
(except 'L.A. Blues')
Copyright
August 27, 1970.
Billboard review
For week ending
September 19, 1970
STOOGES Fun House
Elektra EKS 74071 (S)
Steve MacKay and his magic tenor saxophone leads the Stooges through various rock changes and provides for a good jam setting on tunes such as 1970, and Fun House. The group has attained a grand musicianship with their second album which will probably outsell their first successful disk. Hard rock and good improvisation are the settings of the album and the Stooges bring this off very well.
Record World
September 19, 1970
Iggy Sexiest?
In a poll held during July, 1970, Iggy Stooge of Elektra Records' the Stooges was voted The World's Sexiest Man by the Patterson, N.J. Teenage Girls' Club.
Iggy and the Stooges, currently on tour, have just released their second Elektra album, Funhouse.
Fun House LP center gatefold photo shot at Elektra Sound Recorders, Los Angeles, CA
Rolling Stone October 29, 1970
Fun House LP review by Charlie Burton
Creem
November & December 1970
OF POP AND PIES AND
FUN (HOUSE)
by Lester Bangs
Melody Maker
December 26, 1970
New Pop Albums
THE STOOGES
Fun House (Elektra)
Next to Grand Funk Railroad, this is the worst album I've heard this year. In truth its a muddy load of sluggish, unimaginative rubbish, heavily disguised by electricity and called American rock. I've heard a few tales about the Stooges. Singer Iggy Pop (that's daft enough) apparently spends evenings throwing himself into the midst of audiences and getting beaten up by the aforesaid tribes of poor people. Well, maybe that's about the best thing you could do to the guy. Ron Asheton on lead guitar sounds as though he badly injured both hands. There's really no excuse for turning out such bloody rotten stuff. I'm trying desperately to think of one good thing about it - maybe the bass of Dave Alexander offers a little fluent power. But again, in truth, this album only goes to show up the gullible efforts of record companies, and the people who raise such groups to an absurd status. I'm willing to believe that the stage act is a gas to watch, but on record. EEeecchh!
- Roy Hollingworth
Melody Maker
December 26, 1970
Blind Date
With Maggie Bell
THE STOOGES:
Down On The Street
From the album Fun House (Elektra)
Oh, no. I've certainly heard this voice before, it's those bloody awful Stooges. You know, we worked with them in the States, and they were terrible. The singer is absurd, he swears at the audience, and then throws himself into them. You know this sort of thing really annoys me. I work my guts out, and we all do to put over the best we've got, and then we share a bill with somebody like this. I hate it, horrible stuff.
Creem
April 1974
Honey Come & Be My Enemy,
I Can Love You Too
by Esther and Lester
Jazz And Pop December 1970
Fun House LP review by Dave Marsh
Jazz And Pop January 1970
Iggy Interview by David Walley
THE STOOGES
1970:
THE COMPLETE FUN HOUSE SESSIONS
142 tracks
including
133 previously unreleased
7-cd boxed set
with six 8-page folders
New Times Los Angeles
January 20, 2000, Thursday
HEADLINE: L.A. Blues
BYLINE: S.L. Duff
It's got to be one of the strangest box sets ever released, even though it
stars the Stooges, one of rock's most celebrated (at least these days) bands.
1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions is a seven-CD collection, clocking in
at just under eight hours and thoroughly documenting what has come to be known
as the band's "Los Angeles album." Numbered and limited to 3,000 copies and
priced at $119, it's only available online via Rhino Handmade, a division of
the dependable reissue label that caters to absolutely rabid collectors. The
seven discs roll through -- in exact chronological order -- all the session
tapes that led to the final version of the Stooges' masterful second record that
most rock fans now know, love, and have worn out several times over. Every take,
false start, engineer slate, and comment by Iggy to the producer and then back
again, virtually every recorded moment from the album's production, is here.
This will garner one of two reactions. You're either doing back flips toward
your computer to order your own box or you're scratching your head, wondering
who in the hell could sit through take after take of the same seven songs
(eight, if you count the newly discovered "Lost in the Future," which ain't
exactly a gem and was rightfully discarded before the original record was
completed). The truth is, this fly-on-the-wall-style documentary keeps on
working for eight hours primarily due to the way the record was made in the
first place.
"The interesting thing about this project is it was obviously an attempt for
the band to record their stage show at the time," says Bill Inglot, Rhino's
project producer and the guy who researches and finds the original tapes before
restoring, mixing, and mastering them as needed. "The first record they did for
Elektra The Stooges was certainly a more formal recording per se. It was
produced by former Velvet Underground member John Cale and seemed a bit more
tracked. Which means they cut a track with all the instruments, and then they
added Iggy's vocals, added tambourine, added whatever was needed. The first
record's a little bit more produced."
The decision to record Fun House live in the studio came from producer Don
Gallucci. As a result of this method, you don't hear the tedious
one-overdub-at-a-time layering that constitutes the making of most modern
recordings. (Ever sit through Godard's torturous documentary of the Stones
laboring over "Sympathy for the Devil"?) Instead, each take on Fun House was
already complete, with lead vocals, guitars, drums, and sax solos all recorded
at the same time.
Which means the listener gets to hear a real rock band with an actual vision
passionately cranking it out raw over and over again. In an age where a series
of "alternative" rock groups mope on and off the charts with one hit, and "pop
singers" apparently come from a generic stamp press to exist in a media
netherworld that lies somewhere between Britney Spears' fake breasts and
Jennifer Lopez's heavily insured ass, this kind of honest-to-goodness gettin'
down just doesn't happen anymore.
"So few rock records exist in this kind of time and space continuum," agrees
Inglot. "Fun House was done more like a 1958 jazz album. Musicians go in, they
play, they find something they like, and then they go home. Certainly once you
get past 1970, I don't know that anybody ever really attempted that sort of
thing again."
"We were totally prepared because producer Gallucci wanted to capture the
live show," remembers Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton. "That was the cool thing.
We just set up in the studio and did our live show. There were really no
overdubs. I maybe went back after I did my leads with the three-piece and added
a little bit of rhythm guitar stuff here and there. But mostly everything was
live."
By the summer of 1970, Elektra Records staff producer Don Gallucci had scored
a hit with his first production for the label, Crabby Appleton's "Go Back"
single. His decision to record the Stooges live came after his boss Jac Holzman
flew him to New York to see the band perform. "They were playing in some little
club. Someone announces over the P.A.: 'And here they are, Iggy and the
Stooges!' " recalls Gallucci, who left the music business shortly after his work
on Fun House for pursuits in real estate. "This terminally skinny guy comes
out dancing and writhing in front of this loud three-piece band, and he's
wearing nothing but Levi's, boots, and evening-length silver lame gloves. That's
it. I think maybe he had a dog collar around his neck. He immediately starts
jumping up on tables and grabs the fishnet candle lamps, pouring hot wax all
down his chest. Jac asks me the next day, 'What do you think?' I said 'Well,
it's a real interesting act, but I don't think you can get this feeling on tape.
It's definitely a performance kind of situation.' Jac responded, 'Well, I really
believe in them. I'm flying them out to the West Coast, and you'll record them.'
"
Gallucci decided the only way to put that kind of power and ferocity to tape
was to simply turn the Stooges loose in the studio. He was certainly no stranger
to recording this way. In fact, his career began almost by accident when as a
precocious 15-year-old in 1963, he played electric piano on the Kingsmen's hit
version of "Louie Louie." At that time, recording live to mono was still a
common practice. To tackle the issue of recording the Stooges this way, however,
his first order of business was to transform Holzman's newest pride and joy -- a
Hollywood-based recording studio on La Cienega Avenue -- into a place where the
band could be accurately captured. Not exactly the easiest thing, since before
Elektra hit the pop charts with Love and the Doors, they were primarily a folk
music label, and Holzman built his studio with simple acoustic guitar and vocals
in mind.
"Jac had one of the first transistor board studios on the West Coast, and he
worked diligently to get rid of any room sound," continues Gallucci. "The studio
itself had infinite soundproof baffling -- all kinds of movable panels, wavy
walls -- all the latest technology in that day to get perfectly clean, crisp
recordings. He was also one of the first people to push Dolby, so he could get
this great voice and guitar stuff. So now we're in this superclean studio that
is the total antithesis of how you'd want to record the Stooges. There's no edge
to it. There's no grunge. There's no warmth of the old tube amps. So we
basically just ended up tearing the studio down. We took out all the baffles,
all the carpets. We did everything we could to make it a live environment. And
then we broke all the rules. We didn't even baffle or separate them from each
other. We just put mics in front of their amps, and Iggy sang live with a
handheld mic. All of this muddied the sound and made it sound more live, even
though you could still listen to it and think, 'Gee, it still sounds sorta
clean.' "
The fact that Iggy sang through a P.A. system in the studio created some of
the first purposely distorted vocals on record, King Crimson notwithstanding.
Says Asheton: "I think Jim (a.k.a. Iggy) was smart. He set up a little P.A. that
was just like the rest of the amplifiers, 'cause he wanted to be right there
with the band. He liked that P.A. sound. We never even questioned it. 'Well,
cool, he's gonna do it live. We're not gonna do the old, sterile trip after
all.' "
On Fun House, the Stooges took their song structures to even more basic
levels than on their debut and then stretched them as though they were elastic.
Simple, machinelike (but never mechanical) riffs changed slightly from verse to
chorus, then into open solo sections, all cued by Iggy's vocals. On the title
track, the more tenor saxophonist Steve Mackey takes off, the more Iggy
encourages him, yelling "Blooowww!" all the while. Then, just as suddenly, he
reels the guys back in: "Hey, bring it down! Let me in!" This is not at all
unlike how James Brown was leading his own band at the same time. Asheton
reckons it's a fair comparison.
"We'd always start practices with a jam," says the guitarist. " Bassist Dave
Alexander would say, 'Hey, I've got this bass line.' He'd play it, and then we
just built around it. We all liked James Brown, so we just jammed on that in
that same way. We just kind of whipped it together, a meeting of the minds. And
Iggy was always a good arranger."
The heavy funk of the title track was complemented by the hard rock jamathon
of "1970," which found Mackey heading into free-form jazz territory. Originally
a sax player for a school marching band and, later, a rock combo, Mackey recalls
being introduced to more adventurous playing by the MC5's notorious manager,
John Sinclair. "He turned me onto a lot of stuff like that -- Archie Shepp,
Coltrane, everything." Soon, Mackey was adding the same free elements to his own
Detroit-based group, Carnal Kitchen. "We had adopted that pretty much early on.
Iggy heard us play our first gig in '69 sometime. He came up to me one day and
just says, 'We're gonna jam on Thursday night. You wanna come by and jam with
us?' I'd been out to the Stooges' house before, so I drove out there on Thursday
night, and he pretty much already had 'Fun House' figured out and how he wanted
it to sound."
"We really wanted to do something completely different," confirms Asheton.
"All our early stuff was totally free-form. We loved Coltrane. And being limited
as musicians on our instruments, we'd often just go to the show basically
unprepared. 'Okay, here's the riff. We'll just work off that riff and see what
happens and where it goes.' That's how we built stuff up. Even when we were
signed to Elektra, we didn't really have tunes per se."
The Stooges' set at the time would always end with "Fun House," which would
traditionally dissolve into free-form madness to close the show. On the record,
however, the free-form part was turned into its own separate piece called "L.A.
Blues." (On the box set, the unedited 17-minute version is entitled "Freak.")
The decision to break the bit into two distinct numbers again came from
Gallucci.
"He thought it would be a good idea, and he was the producer, so nobody
argued with him about it," says Mackey, who later went on to play with Andre
Williams, the Violent Femmes, Snakefinger, and even L.A.'s own current
Stooges-inspired Streetwalkin' Cheetahs. "We just said, 'Okay, that's cool.' But
it was really interesting trying to get that energy coming cold out of nowhere.
That particular session for 'L.A. Blues' was pretty far-out. I guess I decided I
was going to be 'psychedelic' for that session. And so I was, chemically, if you
know what I mean. I don't know if anyone else in the studio was, but I certainly
was."
In the year 2000, Asheton -- who's still a working musician as well as a
screenwriter and film actor (you have seen Mosquito, right?) back home in
Detroit -- is able to put his little ol' Michigan garage band into proper
perspective. "We never wanted to be any kind of pop band. We really wanted to be
something different. And because we started out as musical virgins, we got to
develop and create something that was fresh. I think it was really to our
benefit that we didn't know how to play our instruments real well. It turned out
to be the genesis of a whole new sound."
It will forever be argued among the faithful as to whether the pinnacle of
that sound was Fun House or the more standard hard rock (by Stooge standards,
that is) of their third album, Raw Power, which was produced by David Bowie
and released three years later on Columbia. To Rhino's credit, they're aware
that there are just enough Fun House addicts out there to make an undertaking
such as this worthwhile. Says David Baker of Rhino Handmade: "I think it's now
generally acknowledged that Fun House was a primordial record. It invented an
entire genre of music years before that genre became popular. It's now an
American classic."
"It's funny. I eventually grew to love it because I loved their rawness,"
says Gallucci. "There were no apologies in the music. But it wasn't just simple
music; it was almost Zen-like. They had pared everything down, not because they
were necessarily bad musicians or because they were dumb. They actually got rid
of all the fey stuff that started to pop up in rock right about then. They
eliminated all the artsy stuff and went back to just pure to the bone, to the
studs, rock. At the same time, I knew that nobody would get it in 1970. But
pioneers always get the arrows and slings. Eventually, they were recognized, and
I think that's great. But back in 1970, they were on a mission."
Asheton can actually laugh about it now. "The Stooges were always kind of
looked down upon. 'Bunch of freaks! They can't play!' So ha, ha, ha! We were
freaks back then. Now we're the godfathers of this type of music."
The Washington Post
January 26, 2000, Wednesday,
Final Edition
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C05
HEADLINE: Stooges' 'Fun House' Never Stops
BYLINE: Mark Jenkins,
Special to The Washington Post
Between 1975 and 1980, punk rock evolved rapidly from the reductionist
two-minute stomps of the Ramones to the free-form dub jazz of such bands as the
Pop Group. But Michigan proto-punkers the Stooges had already made the same
journey on the only two albums they recorded with their original lineup, 1969's
"The Stooges" and 1970's "Fun House." Whereas the first disc--produced by Velvet
Underground alumnus John Cale--gave such self-explanatory titles as "No Fun" a
conceptual-cretinous purity, the second album roared into unexpectedly jazzy
territory.
Although it's long been prized by cultists, "Fun House" sold even less well
than the quartet's commercially underwhelming debut, and led to the band's quick
departure from Elektra Records. So it's clearly nuts for Rhino to release a
seven-CD, eight-hour box set of every note the Stooges recorded during the May
1970 "Fun House" sessions. But for those prepared to make the commitment, "1970:
The Complete Fun House Sessions" is a fine madness.
The Stooges had plenty of avant-garde connections, and when they arrived in
Los Angeles to make "Fun House" they stayed at the motel where Andy Warhol was
shooting "Heat." For a producer, however, Elektra had selected Don Gallucci, a
mainstream-pop professional whose punkiest credential was that he had played
organ on the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie."
Still, it was Gallucci who suggested that the band try to replicate its
raucous live sound in the studio. With that goal in mind, singer Iggy Pop
recruited tenor saxophonist Steve MacKay, who sometimes played with the band
onstage. MacKay's task was to propel the Stooges in the direction of two of
Pop's greatest influences, James Brown and John Coltrane. That he did, although
his sax squawks crest on primal vamps that sound more like the Velvet
Underground's "Sister Ray" than Brown's "Cold Sweat."
Issued in a limited edition by Rhino Handmade, a subsidiary that sells its
releases only on the Web (rhinohandmade.com), "1970" contains just one
unreleased song, "Lost in the Future," and a few interesting lyrics that didn't
make the album. The box set's revelation comes not so much from individual
moments as from its cumulative impact.
Remarkably, listening to take after take of the album's seven original songs-- 15 of "TV Eye," 32 of "Loose" -- comes to make a certain obsessive sense. The album offers the chance to immerse yourself in "Fun House," a demading but often cathartic experience.
FEED
March 10, 2000
ONE MARK OF a great rock band is the ability to spin worlds out of isolated moments. The Velvet Underground's brief, brilliant gestures contain entire movements; "Candy Says" sets one school in motion, "Sister Ray" another. But the Stooges contain an apocalypse. The Michigan band recorded only three albums; a brilliant portent, an unfinished masterpiece, and in between, Funhouse -- a record that rock would do well to be remembered by. Music for all time, to be sure, but for ours? Not really. Today, things are fine. Today, Ann Arbor has cineplexes, and megastores. Who there has the time, or the energy, for this sort of commitment? Funhouse is a brutal, draining experience. Why the folks at Rhino thought it could support one of those seven-disk outtake sets so expensive no self-respecting Stooges fan would buy it is anyone's guess. (Though, thoughtfully, they've made the box small enough to slip into a teenager's trenchcoat.)
The fact that at least three variant mixes of Raw Power are currently in print gives some indication of a ready market, but it can't be big enough to make the effort that went into this set worthwhile; even with a limited run of three thousand copies, the box is unlikely to sell out. So it's nice to think that the Rhino might have issued it out of love, or even idealism. Funhouse is a record so powerful it cracks you apart and puts you together again; like Rilke's torso of Apollo, it poses no questions, and admits of none; it only commands us to change our lives, without caring one way or the other whether we do or not.
And it does one thing more: It wants, desperately, to get it on. Rock is a series of one night stands, and conventional wisdom dictates that if there's one thing rock stars crave, it's as much love, from as many people, as they can get. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom, as Jim Morrison was fond of quoting. But Iggy craves other things. Unlike Jim Morrison, or Mick Jagger (both of whom he sounds like, without particularly resembling), Iggy never struts around like a rooster, trying to seduce the mass, romance an audience. He lays his listeners, one by one. Which is what makes the Stooges set listenable (an achievement in itself for this sort of collection), and ultimately, great. Listening to twelve takes of "Good Vibrations" is like sitting through a lecture; hearing twelve takes of "Dirt" is getting fucked by the best man you've ever had, and coming back for more. There are few false starts on this set, not a lot of banter. Just raw takes, each as good as the next, and every one containing a flash of brilliance none of the others, including the final version, captures again.
Does that make it worthwhile? A box set has to do a lot of work to justify its very existence. All the more so with "session" sets (collections culled from the effluvia surrounding a single record's genesis), which are a rock critic's dream, an obsessive's fantasy, and almost without fail, a diminished version of the original disk. Take Pet Sounds. The record is pop's finest moment; the Sessions are a seventy-dollar collection of embarrassed outtakes, studio chatter, radio ads, and remixes. A musical cocktail party that obscures the music it sets out to exhalt, and ruins, for those unlucky enough to have wasted the money, a beautiful thing. But "what [the Stooges] put into ten minutes was so total, and so very savage," Iggy Pop wrote in his autobiography, "the earth shook, then cracked, then swallowed all misery whole." And the earth, for all its mini-malls and houseware emporiums, has yet to collect itself. If the Beach Boys were brilliant shapers of surface -- the best landscape architects pop music's given us -- the Stooges were on rock's greatest mining expedition. Funhouse tapped a deep vein, and let it gush like a motherfucker. The set swims around in blood. Against all expectations, it makes perfect sense.
Alex Abramovich is FEED's Culture Editor.
Detroit Free Press
February 23, 2000, Wednesday
SECTION: ENTERTAINMENT NEWS
HEADLINE:
What's new in record racks
THE STOOGES, "1970: The Complete 'Fun House' Sessions"
(Rhino Handmade) 4stars
MC5, "The Big Bang! Best of the MC5"
(Rhino) 4 stars
Call it the University of Michigan, Rock 'n' Roll Campus.
Three decades ago, Ann Arbor was home to the Stooges and MC5,ground breaking
creators of rock 'n' roll textbooks that continue to inform such homegrown
talent as the Go, Rocket 455 and Bootsy X. The latest lessons are studies in the
classics.
At seven discs and 140 tracks, "1970" is a sprawling,
obsessive homage to an
album merely seven songs long. "Fun House," the Stooges' second and final record
for Elektra Records, was panned by reviewers and ignored by consumers upon its
release. But the raucous record has since benefited from a critical upgrade that
places it among rock's all-time best--revisionism largely produced by punk's
eventual rise, a cultural development for which the Stooges supplied vital fuel.
"1970" reveals everything caught on tape during the Los Angeles sessions of
the title year. Compiled by the meticulous archivists at Rhino Handmade and
enhanced by Royal Oak writer Ben Edmonds, whose dexterous liner notes help
navigate the labyrinth of tracks, the set reveals the howling infancy and
gnarled adolescence of a familiar album. It's exactly the kind of stuff diehard
Beatles fans wanted more of from the "Anthology" series back in '96: studio
chatter, miscues, multiple takes, rewrites, playful jamming. In other words, the
guts of a vintage work.
Listen as "1970" beefs up from rickety early takes to its final version. We
listen as studio engineers fiddle with the miking of guitarist Ron Asheton and
bassist Scott Asheton, learning how to capture the primal roar of their sound.
Elsewhere, it's 28 takes of "Loose," every one magnificent, and 15 of "Down on
the Street," with Iggy Pop perfecting his opening "Uuunnggh!"
So while you do hear the songs grow--Iggy tweaks his lyrics,drummer Dave
Alexander nails his fills - it's not an evolution of polish. Rather, the Stooges
toil to make their stuff more raw, clamoring to find sludge rather than purity.
MC5 connoisseurs got a taste of that brand of behind-the- scenes action with
last fall's " '66 Breakout" album. "Big Bang," on the other hand, is a standard-- if overdue-- best-of compilation for another Detroit band whose reputation has
profited from time. All the essentials are here: "Ramblin'Rose," "Teenage
Lust," "Kick Out the Jams" (uncensored) --triumphs of gritty rebellion and
snapshots of a crucial era in popular music. Like the Doors on amphetamines or
the Who with an agenda, the MC5 were a streaking flash of rowdy rock 'n'roll--
tough, decadent and utterly Michigan.
~ Brian McCollum
Two weeks inside the Fun House
Rolling Stone
02-17-00
The Stooges
1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions
RHINO HANDMADE
The ultimate document of Iggy Pop's most extreme album THIS IS THE PERFECT BOX FOR HARDboiled Iggy Pop freaks who think
the Ig hasn't made a truly great album since the Stooges broke UP. 1970 is seven CDs, eight hours and 142 tracks of the Stooges - Iggy,
guitarist Ron Asheton, bassist Dave Alexander and Ron's brother, drummer Scott Asheton - playing nothing but Fun House, their flaming
1970 platter of animal sex and power-chord warfare, over and over and over again. There are fifteen takes of the new-dawn anthem
"1970," fifteen blasts of "T.V. Eye," thirty stabs at the cock & roll heroics of "Loose" . . . in short, every surviving shred of mayhem the
Stooges cut for the album at Elektra Records' L.A. studio between May 11th and 24th, 1970.
1970 is a landmark indulgence in reissue scholarship; this is the sort of completist madness you find only in Bootlegville. But 1970 is worth its
weight in outtakes and annotation (Ben Edmonds' liner notes are a juicy read), even for the general bystander, because the sum of the parts
is stunning rock & roll catharsis, a microcosmic examination of one gloriously unhinged band's attempt to achieve nirvana and get it on
record. The Stooges actually hit the mark thrice, first in 1969 with The Stooges, the ape-thump blueprint for Seventies punk, and in '73
with new guitarist James Williamson and the lethal glam of Raw Power. Yet Fun House is the Stooges' supreme lunatic-rock monument, a
work of articulate madness and desperate measure rendered loud and naked in Iggy's delirious bark and the rabid wahwah of Ron
Asheton's guitar.The coffee table heft of 1970 suggests Ken Burns does-Behind the Music, but the box is really an endless shower of blood,
sweat and come, the nonstop sound of the Stooges stuffing lightning in a bottle.
It was no accident that the band hired a guest saxman, Steven Mackay, for Fun House. The Stooges attack these songs - bony schematics
of amp howl and predatory mood - with a jazz combo's attention to both rigor and spontaneous invention. The set's opening string Of
"1970" performances is astonishing in its consistency of muscle (Scott Asheton plays proto-punk rhythms with roto-funk concentration) and
the heated variety of the sax and guitar breaks. In take two, Iggy is so awed by the wounded-boar squeal of Ron Asheton's guitar that he
starts hissing into the mike, "Listen to Ron ... listen... can you hear it ... can you feet it?"
What you can hear in the circular strut of "Loose" and "Dirt's" slow burn is how the Stooges retooled the avant drone of the Velvet
Underground to their own carnal agenda. "Loose" is minimalism with spikes; the ten full takes of "Dirt" jell into a seventy-- minute opera of
need and degradation. And if the Stooges' Michigan brethren, the MCS, pioneered the fusion of white rock and free jazz in their live
centerpiece, "Black to Comm," the Stooges nailed that mix - "Light My Fire" and "Get Off of My Cloud" dunked in John Coltrane's
Ascension - on tape with the seventeen-minute splurge "Freak." (The piece was edited and retitled "L.A. Blues" for Fun House.) No
Wave, Sonic Youth and the get-down antics of Jon Spencer's Blues Explosion; They were all born here.
Finally, you gotta love the irony of a box like this being part of the new cybermarketing culture; this limited edition monster is available only
on the Internet. Yet the rack & toll inside it is as old, crude and vital as rubbing two sticks together and making napalm. Buy it, play it and
burn - over and over and over again.
-DAVID FRICKE
Los Angeles Times
March 25, 2000,
Saturday, Home Edition
SECTION: Calendar; Part F;
Page 12; Entertainment Desk
HEADLINE: FROM THE VAULTS;
A LOOK BACK AT BAD-BOY PIONEERS MC5, STOOGES;
RECORDINGS OF THESE TWO MIDWEST REBEL BANDS REVEAL THE HUGE INFLUENCE THEIR
LANGUAGE AND SOUND HAVE HAD ON CURRENT ACTS.
BYLINE: RICHARD CROMELIN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
When modern-day Detroit bad boys Eminem and Kid Rock head out to shock the
nation with their limit-testing antics and language, they are really honoring a
tradition of outrage that was rooted in their hometown more than three decades
ago.
The original Rust Belt rebels--the MC5 and the Stooges--were untamed forces
whose impact on rock is hard to comprehend in a time when the music has lost
most of its power to shake the culture's foundations.
But in the turbulent, polarized America of the late '60s, the politically
charged MC5 seemed absolutely dangerous--or heroic--depending on which side of
the barricades you stood. A little later the Stooges detonated a liberating,
feral expression of Mid-American ennui and release, writing the book that rock
would follow in the coming decades.
The first-ever MC5 anthology shows that the short-lived band was erratic, but
its most influential recordings retain their power. An amazing addition to the
ever-expanding Stooges universe, meantime, demystifies some of the legend while
reinforcing the band's standing.
*
*** "The Big Bang! Best of the MC5," Rhino. When this flashy quintet
harnessed its energy to the radical polemics of political activist John
Sinclair--head of the dissident White Panther party and the MC5's manager--they
created a brief but incandescent chapter in American rock.
Pairing smash-the-system rhetoric with a supercharged version of the R&B-rock
style later popularized by the likes of Bob Seger and the J. Geils Band, the MC5
(for Motor City 5) cranked the PA to unprecedented volume and delivered their
signature message--"kick out the jams"--with evangelical force.
They could be as commanding onstage as they were inexperienced in the studio
(three energetic but amateurish early singles open this collection), so it was a
no-brainer to make their debut album for Elektra Records a live concert set. The
four tracks collected from that 1969 record, "Kick Out the Jams," support their
reputation as a torrid act.
But it wasn't easy going for the MC5. The album reached the Top 30 and the
group built a following in the Midwest and New York, but as guitarist Wayne
Kramer (who's now in L.A. making records for the Epitaph label) recalls in the
album booklet, "power to the people" didn't mix with flower power.
"Here comes the MC5, from Detroit, with our sequined stage outfits and
100-watt Marshall stacks blasting," Kramer writes of an ill-fated visit to
California. "We just couldn't connect with our leaping, spinning, knee-dropping
stage show, ranting and raving about gun-toting politics. . . . We opened a free
concert in Golden Gate Park with a . . . version of 'Tutti-Frutti.' The crowd
stood there transfixed, dumbstruck."
The band left Elektra after the one album and moved to Atlantic Records. With
rock critic Jon Landau as novice producer (warming up for his role as Bruce
Springsteen's producer and manager), they turned out the more accessible studio
tracks of 1970's "Back in the U.S.A.," which form almost half of this 78-minute
anthology. There isn't much fervor in the sound of this sometimes catchy but
conventional soul-pop.
The five songs here from their third and final album, 1971's "High Times,"
are actually the most intriguing. Pretty much left to its own devices for this
one, the band finally got to capture a bit of the experimental side that it had
always espoused but rarely recorded.
The MC5 didn't last long, but its impact resonated through the early '70s and
was transmitted by the New York Dolls, Patti Smith and other bands into the
punk-rock ethos. In fact, MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith married Patti Smith
in the early '80s. (He died of heart failure in 1994.) The band's example lives
loudest today in the one high-profile band that carries a radical political
agenda, Rage Against the Machine.
*
**** The Stooges, "The Complete Fun House Sessions," Rhino Handmade.
Who in
the world would want to pay more than $ 100 to own the entire, seven-hour-plus
recording session that produced one of rock's underground landmarks?
How about 3,000 people? That's the calculation made by Rhino's Handmade
division, a new specialty wing of the company that issues numbered,
limited-edition packages, producing just enough copies to meet the projected
demand and selling them via the Internet only. (The Web site is
http://www.rhinohandmade.com).
The Stooges, fronted by the confrontational Iggy Stooge (born James Osterberg
and later to be known as Iggy Pop), were regarded as the MC5's "baby brother
band," and they signed with Elektra at the same time. After debuting with an
album produced by former Velvet Underground member John Cale, they flew to Los
Angeles in 1969 to record 'Fun House," an album that, in the words of the
authoritative "Trouser Press Record Guide," "comes as close as any one record
ever will to encapsulating what rock is, was and always will be about."
Though originally dismissed as crude and sensationalistic, the Stooges have
since received their due as the architects of punk-rock, which drew heavily on
their raw, primitive attack and their contempt for convention. Their first two
albums (as well as the 1973 "Raw Power") are ageless wonders, still sounding
urgent and remarkably undated.
But what's the point of sitting through take after take of "TV Eye" and
"1970" as they sprawl from disc to disc in this six-CD set (plus a bonus
single)?
To some of the chosen 3,000 out there, it might be the same kind of
attraction that leads to so-called extreme sports. This is extreme listening.
Musicians and studio professionals can study it for nuances in performance and
production technique, and hard-core fans can get a feeling of immersion in the
experience, as if hanging out with Iggy, Ron, Scott and Dave through
between-song dialogue, false starts and nasty coughs.
And consider the possibilities. With a multi-disc CD player you can program
the set to play the official album (the takes that ended up on the original
release are identified in the package), or you can play executive producer and
create your own alternate versions. With 28 takes of "Loose," 15 of "Down on the
Street," etc., that should keep you out of trouble for a while.
*
Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars
(good) and four stars (excellent).
The New York Times
March 19, 2000,
Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 2; Page 31;
Column 3; Arts and Leisure Desk
HEADLINE: MUSIC;
The Making of 'Fun House,' Every Bit of It
BYLINE: By BEN SISARIO; Ben Sisario, a news assistant at The New York Times,
writes about pop music.
I WAS excited, but also a little bit skeptical, when I heard that Rhino
Records had released a boxed set of the complete sessions from the Stooges' 1970
album "Fun House." The original is one of my favorites and a pop music landmark
in its own right (though I may be in the minority in that view), but the reissue
project seemed somewhat dubious. Six CD's of outtakes (plus another disc with
two songs) from one of the most single-mindedly aggressive rock albums ever
made? As curious as I was to hear the set, I wondered if I could get through the
whole thing.
Indeed, Rhino's release seems like the answer to a dare. Called "1970: The
Complete Fun House Sessions," it documents the recording of the second of three
albums by the Stooges, the band that brought Iggy Pop to fame. In the pop world,
only the Beach Boys ("The Complete Pet Sounds Sessions") and the Beatles (the
"Anthology" series) have been able to put out sets comparable to this one. The
original "Fun House" album has sold only about 89,000 copies since its release,
which suggests that the appeal of such an exhaustive set would be severely
limited. Knowing this, Rhino is offering "1970" in an edition of 3,000 through
the company's Internet-only branch, Rhino Handmade, available at
www.rhinohandmade.com.
The set's spare packaging gives all the essential data: "Fun House" was
recorded live on 12 reels of 3M Scotch brand audio tape over the course of about
eight days in a Los Angeles studio in May 1970. The sessions were recorded by
Don Gallucci, then an Elektra staff producer, whose resume carried one factoid
that must have been irresistible to the band: as a teenager, he had played
keyboards on the Kingsmen's classic version of "Louie Louie."
Yet "1970" is sometimes baffling. It offers no real revelations about the
band's creative process. If you've heard the original album, you probably know
all you need to know about the sessions already. Nothing's been added or
changed: there's no lost harpsichord arrangement of "Dirt," no a cappella
break-down in "Down on the Street." The set is simply a record of a rock band --
albeit an extremely proficient rock band -- pounding out take after take of the
same few songs. There are 28 takes of "Loose" alone, none of them offering any
insight into the writing or shaping of the music beyond a few slight changes in
tempo. Even the tracks labeled "studio dialogue" are not illuminating; most of
the words spoken fall into the "Let's try that one again" or "What's that
noise?" category.
One of the few surprises is the vocal prowess of Iggy Pop, who is usually
portrayed throughout this period as drug-addled, too wild to be contained by
anyone, including himself. But during the sessions his voice is the strongest
instrument, a constant vehicle of rage and lust. He sounds like a
hyperstimulated Jim Morrison who has given up on poetry, expressing himself
instead through grunts, howls and stock sexual come-ons. He is pure sonic
testosterone, and while his band might miss a note now and then, Iggy's vocal
parts are uniformly excellent.
And despite the repetition and the exasperation I felt listening to "1970,"
it contains its share of miraculous moments. This is hardly surprising, since
"Fun House" is something of a miraculous oddity in rock history. The album's
poor sales prompted Elektra to drop the Stooges shortly after its release; the
band is better known for its subsequent album, "Raw Power," issued on Columbia
in 1973, which became a canonical album in 70's punk. "Raw Power" features a
vastly different-sounding band, sloppy and unfocused. But "Fun House" had an
influence that crept into underground rock in the 80's and 90's, in the
heavy-but-not-exactly-metal sound of Fugazi, the Jesus Lizard and other bands.
What is most peculiar about "Fun House" is its strange hybridization of punk
rock and jazz, a kind of fusion that never quite caught on. At the time, Iggy
Pop and Ron Asheton, the Stooges' guitarist, were listening to John Coltrane,
Archie Shepp and others and wanted to incorporate the kind of passion they found
in jazz into their own music. The result -- made abundantly clear in "1970" --
is endless searching for an abrasive zest that went beyond mere garage rock.
Rough rock 'n' roll is the foundation of the music, but in the Stooges' hands
the form is stretched beyond its limits, and every element of the music goes
through a painful, but liberating, transformation. Quick romps become extended
jams, Iggy's sexual grunts become existential cries, and the function of the
guitar solo is reconfigured by Mr. Asheton as he duels in wailing counterpoint
with Steven Mackay's saxophone.
The scale and scope of "1970" make it unusual in rock, but such extensive
archival treatments are fairly common in jazz, where the fans are insatiable and
the vaults are immense. Columbia/Legacy is in the midst of a nine-part Miles
Davis project that will collect unreleased material from every phase of the 30
years that Davis recorded for the label; four sets, including the complete
"Bitches Brew" sessions, have already been issued, with two to come later this
year and three still in the planning stages.
This kind of exhaustive treatment of an artist's work makes more sense in
jazz, in which musicians improvise over a skeletal framework, painting
emotional colors over a basic outline. Each run through a tune can be fresh and
revealing. In pop, on the other hand, studio sessions are often just a means to
getting a song right -- to find its essence and eliminate flaws. Outtakes are
mistakes, throwaways, imperfections.
The Stooges' stabs at a jazz-influenced rock are what make the music on
"1970" consistently interesting. The momentum is powerful, and there are almost
no bad takes here, false starts aside. Even on the 28 takes of "Loose" -- a song
that has just five chords -- the musicians push forward, reaching for something.
They finally found it on take 28, the cut used on the album.
The original album's defining moment came at the very end, with "L.A. Blues,"
a squealing, rhythmless meltdown that sounds like free jazz; it was as if the
band finally found what it had been looking for: pure noise. "1970" ends the
same way, with musical squalor expressing the intense, undiluted frustration the
band had been chasing after for two weeks. "L.A. Blues," the final track
recorded during the session -- it was called "Freak" then -- lasted 17 minutes
24 seconds on its first take; a second was made and cut off at five minutes for
the album. No more takes were needed.
GRAPHIC: Photo: The Stooges at the Elektra Records studio in 1970. Clockwise
from upper left: Dave Alexander, Scott Asheton, Ron Asheton and Iggy Pop.
(Courtesy Ben Edmonds Archive)
Rhino Handmade
Stooges Box
also reviewed in
DisCoveries, June 2001,
The Wire #192,
Goldmine #511,
MOJO #76,
the Chicago Reader:
Monica Kendrick's "This Wreckage Was No Accident: The Complete Funhouse Sessions" (2000) reprinted in Da Capo Press' 'Best Music Writing 2001',
I-94 Bar,
Buddy Head.com,
Canoe,
Epinions,
Weekly Wire.com,
Woodstock.com
Venus.dti.ne.jp & Village Voice
Pazz & Jop
Village Voice
February 23 - 29, 2000
NET-SURFING CHEETAHS WITH HEARTS FULL OF OUTTAKES
BY GEORGE SMITH
My first reaction when I heard about Rhino Handmade's seven-CD box set of the Stooges' Complete Funhouse Sessions was that it had to be a product dreamed up by lunatics for lunatics. Take after take after mind-rotting take (19 in all!) of "Loose," among other eternal Iggy relics, available only to a subset of obsessed Netizens with their browsers set to secure encrypted transmission and $120 in the electronic billfold.
But after more examination, it appeared such a well-developed travesty, I had to laugh in appreciation! After all, this is the same Iggy Pop who says in the liner notes to the remastered Raw Power—in the part entitled "Stooges in the Funhouse"—that his band's real 1970 audience was "high-school drop-outs, troubled drug kids." A "constituency" —such an elegant weasel word for "penniless losers"—Elektra Records couldn't and didn't want to market to.
Yep, there's an annoying poetry in the high-grade-steel fact that the Stooges could travel in the space of three decades from music for bottom-out-of-sighters—motorcycle gangsters, their floozies, and lovers of skank weed and roller derby, an audience of such presumed shallow pocket that advertisers ignored them— to an item at the pinnacle of weird-computer-snob-driven e-commerce: a domain reserved for those who dump hundreds of dollars a week on the Internet, and a creature never imagined on the broken-glass-littered stages of Michigan or in the dark of Don Galluci's California studio.
Part of the credit, I reckon, must go to Rock Critic Received Wisdoms 101. It's gotten so it is almost impossible to turn around without reading how some band of people not alive in 1970 have made a record that sounds like the Stooges. If it sounds like bad altie hard rock that you should buy anyway because bad altie hard rock is better than whoever is the current favorite critics' scapegoat, it will be claimed to sound like the Stooges. And if it doesn't sound like anything, if it is so glum and nondescript that all that can be determined from it is that people are playing guitars, beating a drum, and shouting loudly, it will be said—by some fanzine editor or David Fricke, somewhere, indeed, many times—to sound like the Stooges.
Pure gold: This is the kind of indirect, relentless hagiography that no amount of cash money can buy. And since it appears, to me, anyway, to have been going on more or less for at least a decade, it has generated a kind of kook Stooges fetish, one visible symptom of which is the Funhouse Sessions.
Stooges kooks, presumably those at which this box set is aimed, seem to have some parallel characteristics with the woozy fans of Star Trek, who can often be found at conventions paying stupid sums of money for trash: crumpled scripts or prosaic items supposedly clutched at one time or another by their heroes.
The Stooges lasted three albums, the third of which was almost accidental. The original Trek lasted three seasons, the third of which occurred only after fans conducted a campaign to admonish the network for canceling it after two. Most of the Stooges went nowhere after the end, until VH-1 dug a couple of them up as elder statesmen last year. Most of the original Trek actors went nowhere until conventioneering and movies rescued them a couple decades later. Bill Shatner wore a Nazi uniform in "Patters of Force"; Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton wore a Nazi uniform. Shatner made TJ Hooker; Iggy, at times, seems to have made as many unlistenable albums as there are unwatchable episodes of TJ Hooker. Trek was kept alive by a media mania that gathered steam in fringe sci-fi magazines, where Gene Roddenberry was given God-like status. From the standpoint of rock journalism, Stooge devotion is functionally indistinguishable...
Letter to the Village Voice
March 2000
WIGGY POP
George Smith's review of the Stooges' Complete Funhouse Sessions
["I Need Less," February 29] is an insult to music fans everywhere. Like the
pop marketing machine,
Smith treats the Stooges as merely a cultural phenomenon, while failing to comment
on the formal aspects of their music. Worse, his cultural criticism is
shallow and misplaced. Smith buys (or even embellishes) the Stooge mythology
hook, line,and sinker when he accepts that their audience was made of
"motorcycle gangsters, their
floozies, and lovers of skank weed and roller derby."
Thus,since this boxset is
marketed to "obsessed Netizens," some mystifying transformation is presumed
to have taken place. If the former were true, would the latter have occurred?
Though mainstream critics derided the Stooges in their day, such luminaries
as John Cale, Lester Bangs, and David Bowie championed them. Though many of their
fans may have been biker-stoner-burner types, they also had a following
among the Ann Arbor-Detroit intelligentsia.
Though they practiced a very basic
heavy rock, it was the most sophisticated of its day, and sprang from the era's
milieu of post-bop and free jazz, the Rolling Stones, and garage punk.
Though the
Asheton brothers were
perhaps go-nowhere suburbanites, frontman Jim Osterberg was a high school
valedictorian. I suggest that the Stooges' place in our culture is analogous to
that of bluesmen discovered by bohemian white audiences in the early '60s rather
than the Star Trek juggernaut referenced by Smith. In reality, the Stooges are a
band of Midwesterners
of some intelligence who created powerful music that expressed equally powerful
sexual and aggressive urges. Smith not only fails to assess the music, but his
hipper-than-thou tone seems
singularly designed to discredit anyone who might care about it.
~ Eric Barry
Manhattan
Ottawa Citizen
September 10, 2005 Saturday
HEADLINE: The Stooges at their best
BYLINE: Peter Simpson
THE STOOGES **** 1/2
The Stooges (Elektra/Rhino)
Funhouse *****
The Stooges (Elektra/Rhino)
There are varying opinions on where the slippery (slimy) creature known as punk rock was born, but any credible argument must eventually lead into the three-album frenzy that was the Stooges.
As the '60s twirled to a close, the Stooges -- Iggy (vocals), Ron Asheton (guitar), his brother Scott (drums) and Dave Alexander (bass) -- stripped the artifice from rock and exposed its raw power. It was a remorselessly bleak and blunt sound, fronted by the most outrageous individual rock had yet seen. As Lenny Kaye wrote of Iggy in 1973, "nobody does it better, nobody does it worse, nobody does it, period."
The band's first two discs -- 1969's The Stooges, produced by Velvet Underground alumnus John Cale, and 1970's Funhouse, produced by Don Gallucci -- have never sounded better than they do on these reissues. Each comes with a second disc of unreleased material from the recording sessions that sheds a fascinating light on the creative process in the studio.
The Stooges hit the street in 1969 with a primitive guitar sound and lyrics that were the definition of post-adolescent capriciousness: "Maybe go out/ maybe stay home/ maybe call mom on the telephone," sang Iggy on No Fun, followed by a dozen or so repetitions of "well, come on," each slightly more anxious than the last. Ann throbs with a sparse, dissolute romance. Real Cool Time revels in the aimless validity of a night well spent, and I Wanna Be Your Dog, with its wanton self-degradation, is quite possibly the Big Bang of punk rock. Apart from We Will Fall, a long, acid-induced haze, The Stooges was a startling debut. This was the gritty distillation of a hot night in the city post-Summer of Love, a brief exposure of the primordial roots of everything punk and garage.
But it was on the second album that Iggy and the Stooges really found their voices.
Iggy's vocals on the first disc were restrained compared to the howl unleashed on Funhouse. This was a more confident, swaggering Iggy. This sounded like the Iggy described in reviews of the early shows, the bloody, brutal bacchannal-on-two-legs, the streetwalkin' cheetah with a heart full of napalm.
Ron Asheton also found his voice on Funhouse. The sludge of guitar on the first album was replaced by the laconic punctuation of Down on the Street, the skittering pick of Dirt and the frenetic riff that drives TV Eye like a cog drives the chain on an engine about to blow. The first four songs on the disc -- in olden days they'd be known as "side 1" -- are hailed by many fans as one of the greatest sides in rock 'n' roll. Regardless, its force of will is undeniable.
On Down on the Street Iggy -- by now "Iggy Pop" -- is a sweaty flux of jungle sensuality, swinging on the vines of Asheton's drawn, hanging guitar notes. Loose is a grinding tale of tumescent desire. TV Eye offers Iggy in his rawest state, yelping a paranoid rant, and Dirt could be Iggy at his smouldering, groaning best.
The bonus discs are brimming with things worth hearing.
The Funhouse bonus disc has three more versions of Down on the Street, one with a heavier guitar, one with more cymbal, a little more echo on the vocal and a little more punch in the bass, and one with a bizarrely placed keyboard line that makes one wonder if the album was rubbing against a Doors' LP in the old milk carton. Two new tracks don't add much, but the extra versions of TV Eye, Loose and 1970 give one a sense of what it must have been like in the studio trying to decide which version to put on the album.
The Stooges' bonus disc is highlighted by the "original John Cale mix" of No Fun, 1969 and I Wanna Be Your Dog. The key differences are enhanced texture, which is not surprising given the lush decadence of Cale's own material, before and after.
Knoxville News-Sentinel
August 28, 2005
Remastered Stooges discs remain raging classics
By WAYNE BLEDSOE
"The Stooges (Remastered)," "Fun House (Remastered)," The Stooges (Elektra/Rhino)
At the time that the Stooges' self-titled debut disc and its follow-up, "Fun House," were released (1969 and '70, respectively) the Stooges were maligned as hopeless amateurs. "Fun House" sold so poorly that the Stooges were dumped from their label.
It is a wonderful cosmic joke on critics of the psychedelic-era that "The Stooges" and "Fun House" are now considered classics. And, more than 35 years later the music on these two albums still bursts with energy while albums by many other artists of the era seem like dated curios.
In the late 1970s, the Stooges' work became touchstones for the punk era.
In the beginning, the Stooges were light on musical chops, but made up for it with anger and attitude. Born in the "All You Need Is Love" era, Stooges lead singer James Osterberg (shortly thereafter known as Iggy Pop) eschewed psychedelic optimism and complained it was just "another year with nuthin' to do!"
The group's debut contains the oft-covered classic "I Wanna Be Your Dog," "No Fun" and "1969" along with six lesser-known greats. A bonus disc presents alternate versions of the songs, including superior mixes of several songs that were deemed "too arty" by the record company. In truth, producer (and ex-Velvet Underground member) John Cale simply left the songs uncompressed and ragged sounding.
While "The Stooges" is powerful, it seems almost timid next to "Fun House." "Fun House" may be the biggest explosion of rock music rage ever recorded. Hardcore punk and metal bands still haven't come close to matching the feeling of just-nearly out of control chaos that this album delivers. With producer Don Galluci at the helm, the Stooges delivered all the energy of a live performance in the studio. Opening with a throbbing "Down On the Street," guitarist Ron Asheton, bassist Dave Alexander and drummer Scott Asheton pummel the speakers with sound. When Pop joins in with his first furious yelp, there's no holding the band back. Pop screams, spews and snarls into the microphone and at one point sounds like he's sucking electricity out of it. Saxophonist Steve Mackay joins for the final half of the disc adding to the mayhem for "1970," "Fun House" and the disc's final cacophonous blast "L.A. Blues."
The bonus disc includes early takes of all the songs (including an 11 minute-plus version jam of the title cut and a seven-minute take of "1970"), a couple of cool radio-single mixes ("Down On the Street" with a Doors-like organ added) and two numbers that didn't make the final cut.
Often, both of these albums sound nearly contemporary and the remastering makes them sparkle. Don't miss them.
The New York Times
August 22, 2005 Monday
HEADLINE: Fun House/The Stooges; The Stooges
BYLINE: By BEN RATLIFF
The first you hear of Iggy Pop on ''Fun House,'' the second album by his old band the Stooges, is ''uuuhh!'' This, perhaps, is a unit of thought; here it is a unit of music. On ''Fun House'' he makes his voice into an imaginary instrument -- something that scrapes, batters and burns. There are lyrics, mostly intelligible, sometimes poetic, but nearly sublingual. The words are sounds.
''Fun House'' has been fully explicated before, for the band's deepest fans, on an expensive, limited-edition 1999 reissue that included every scrapped take of the 1970 album's seven songs. But Rhino's new two-disc version condenses the context and makes it possible to live with. (If you want more perspective, there's also EMI-Virgin's new two-disc retrospective of Iggy Pop's whole hill-and-dale career, ''A Million in Prizes,'' including a handful of Stooges songs.)
The Detroit band had already worked out all its new songs onstage, and in the studio every riff and grunt took its appointed place, over a nasty, natural swing. The producer, Don Gallucci, recorded Iggy Pop's vocals live with the rest of the band; they overmodulated in the mix, and won through like daggers. Getting these simple songs perfect was mostly a matter of tempo, and they worked on one song per day, sometimes playing more than 20 takes.
''Fun House'' walks with a sense of easy entitlement, but ''The Stooges,'' the band's first album from a year earlier, proceeds more carefully, with connect-the-dots songcraft. Rhino has reissued it, too, with an extra disc of unedited versions and discarded mixes, including those originally made by John Cale, the album's producer. Mr. Cale wanted something more awkward, with the guitar sound small and abrasive. He cut quickly to the band's perversity; what he missed was the band's sensuality.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
August 18, 2005 Thursday
THE STOOGES
"The Stooges" (Elektra/Rhino)
"Fun House" (Elektra/Rhino)
Critic's call: *****
The most important band in '60s punk is back in all its knuckle-dragging glory on these two-CD deluxe editions of two classic albums you could pretty safely point to as the birth of not just punk but alternative music. And they still sound just as menacing even after all these years of shameless knock-offs, a head-on collision of post-Doors nihilistic swagger, could-we-get-a-chimp-in-here-to-play-this-please guitar riffs and boredom sweet boredom.
"The Stooges" rolled out of the gutter in 1969 with a sound more primitive than anything this side of, well, the Velvet Underground. At times, the industrial Detroit grind is almost hypnotizing. But mostly, it rocks like the future was coming to beat the past to death. You'd swear the guitarist was paid by the number of times he used the wah-wah pedal. And when producer John Cale went all Spectoresque and threw piano on "I Wanna Be Your Dog," he had them play the same note through the whole song. Lyrically, this album took the darkness of the Doors and cranked it up a notch. But there was humor, too. On "1969," a song about the promise of "another year with nothin' to do," the singer deadpans, "Now, I'm gonna be 22 / I say, 'Oh my' and, uh, 'boo hoo.'"
Produced by former Kingsmen keyboard player Don Gallucci, 1970's "Fun House," is heavier, meaner, faster, more immediate and darker. But it's also got a saxophone, one aspect of the Stooges formula most punk bands didn't bother stealing. Somehow, Iggy sounds more feral than he'd ever sounded on the first one -- more savage, less snotty -- on "Down on The Street," a lead-off track that effortlessly sets the stage for such unbridled classics as the leering "Loose" and "T.V. Eye." The first one has more hooks but "Fun House" sounds more dangerous, and for a lot of people, that's what really matters here.
The bonus tracks are less essential but good for a listen or two. You get John Cale's original mixes of four songs from the first release, a "Not Right" with snotty garage-punk ad libs adding to the swagger, some screwing around in the studio before a take of "T.V. Eye" and two unused tracks from the "Fun House," sessions, one of which, the lethargic bad-acid-rock blues of "Lost in the Future," would have been a great addition to the album at the time.
But buy them for the packaging if you already own the older versions of these albums and you'll still be glad you did. Each booklet is chock full of photos. And the liner notes are great, especially the essays by Jack White and Alice Cooper, who writes "The only band Alice Cooper never wanted to follow was The Stooges.... If we were on a bill with the MC5, The Stooges and The Who, I'd say, 'Can we go on before The Stooges?"
-- Ed Masley, Post-Gazette Pop Music Critic
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
August 16, 2005 Tuesday
"The Stooges" and "Fun House."
Rhino/Elektra. 18 and 21 tracks, respectively.
Grade: A
Detroit's most influential group gets the royal treatment with remastered versions of the Iggy Pop-fronted band's first two albums. The self-titled 1969 debut, one of the pillars of punk, brought such enduring songs as "1969," "No Fun" and "I Wanna Be Your Dog," while 1970's "Fun House" moved into more adventurous sonic territory. Both new editions sound cleaner and crisper than the original CD versions, but the addition of previously unreleased mediocrities (including single mixes and alternate vocal versions) don't add to the story. However you get them, though, the first two Stooges albums are essential.
--- Ryan Ritchie, Los Angeles Daily News
Independent on Sunday (London)
August 14, 2005, Sunday
HEADLINE: DISCS: ROCK
THE STOOGES FUN HOUSE
ELEKTRA/RHINO
BYLINE: NICK COLEMAN
A lot of claims are made on behalf of many old records, but Fun House (here remastered, with outtakes) stands almost alone in warranting everything ever said about it. If the first Stooges album modelled the punk aesthetic like a pair of plastic trousers, this, the group's second, tore them off and went native. In place of yappy, tinny, post-Velvets teen-sneer, you get utter savagery: weight, heat, engorgement, the sense that chaos would overwhelm the room, if only the group weren't working so hard at playing like bastards. 'Dirt' is the filthiest song ever recorded. Complete and perfect music.
Austin, Texas
American-Statesman
August 18, 2005 Thursday
HEADLINE: 2005: THE YEAR OF THE STOOGES, ALL OVER AGAIN
BYLINE: JOE GROSS, AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
'The Stooges (Deluxe Edition)' (Rhino) ****
'Fun House (Deluxe Edition)' (Rhino) *****
Listening to these juggernauts now, the greatness of the Stooges seems so obvious, so fundamental, so elemental to the rock-human's condition, that it's genuinely difficult to understand why these grimy Detroit kids weren't made American cultural ambassadors the moment "Fun House" (1970) -- the band's masterpiece and one of the best rock albums of all time -- hit Richard Nixon's turntable.
Just picture it: Tricky Dick in his dressing gown, cottage cheese and ketchup in hand, thinking about China and bombing Cambodia back to the Stone Age, as "T.V. Eye" blares in the background. "Pat," he says, "We can have peace with honor if I just send Iggy over there. Red China will fall to our unbridled rock fury without extending the Vietnam War north. Call Henry and Bebe, tell Spiro to put that fat envelope down and fire up Air Force One. We're going to Detroit!"
Of course, this isn't how it happened. By 1969, the Stooges were becoming semilegends in their hometown, moving from an abstract, arty howl influenced by garage rock and the free jazz their "older brother" band the MC5 was worshipping, to a tighter but no less energetic rock machine. Compared with the Beatles' ornate psychedelia, Jimi Hendrix's detailed, ambitious acid-rock or Laurel Canyon's increasingly popular singer-songwriter solipsism, the Stooges must have sounded like there was something wrong with them, "wrong" as in sick or addled. This stuff is 30 years old and it still sounds that way.
The legacy, for those to whom they are new: They were the first home of noted solo artist Iggy Pop. Punk rock is unthinkable without them. The Sex Pistols covered them. All of Seattle worshipped them. As critic Byron Coley once said: "They are the foundation upon which all subsequent underground culture was dumped." The Stooges reformed on a somewhat ad hoc basis to astonishingly good notices in 2003. With bassist Mike Watt standing in for the late Dave Alexander, they play shows now and again to this day. (The day Austin City Limits Music Fest gets them as a headliner is the day Charles Attal can retire in glory.)
Which is why it's such a joy to hear these cornerstones sound really aces on CD for the first time. Augmented with copious bonus material, "The Stooges" and "Fun House" are now the bulldozers believers have always known them to be.
Much of the "The Stooges" has aged brilliantly; this is rock of the purest dunderheaded splendor, the root integer of a bazillion garage band dreams. Iggy's charisma is already both superhuman and deeply Everyman, which is as good a definition of great punk rock as there is. The thudding, thuggish swing of "No Fun," the stomach-churning wah on "Real Cool Time" and the proto-grunge rumble "I Wanna Be Your Dog" -- it's all still fantastic. Only the overlong, rambling "We Will Fall" belies the Stooges fondness for the Doors' faux-Beatisms.
But "Fun House" is perfect. Produced with genuine brilliance by former Kingsman Don Galucci, it's the jump from crawling to walking, from black and white to color, from an eddy to a tornado. Over seven songs in 36 minutes, the Stooges produce an album that embodies rock music at its most reflexive -- its goals, its thrust, its from-the-belly howl as any ever produced. It's flow from structure to abstraction is spotless. From the opening "ooooh . . . rawooo!" and chugging riffs on "Down On the Street," from the unholy scream that opens "T.V. Eye" to the menacing "Dirt" to "1970," the sax-damaged, moron-jazz title track and the form-destroying mess of "L.A. Blues," "Fun House" could be the finest rock-qua-rock album ever made. There are smarter albums, more sophisticated album, more nuanced albums. But few are more powerful.
Bands built whole careers out of these songs. The Ramones added bubble gum to "Loose" and invented punk. All of Mudhoney can be found in "T.V. Eye." Fugazi added reggae to "Dirt" and became '90s rock icons. Sonic Youth have ended countless shows with something awfully close to "L.A. Blues." "Fun House" is everywhere, but it has never been bested.
Accordingly, the bonus material is even better here, nearly all taken from Rhino's absurd-but-magnificent 2001 box set "1970: The Complete 'Fun House' Sessions." But any take of these tunes is a revelatory take; these songs evolved and sharpened take after take, the sound of a hand grenade turning into a smart bomb. Iggy seemingly becoming more and more wound up, the music becomes more and more molten. Take 2 of "Loose" is hot; take 22 is volcanic. I could have used a few more versions of "Dirt" where Alexander's iconic bass lines become simpler yet retain its melodic shape, but most people aren't Stooges lunatics. The only cut not on the original album is the slow, bloozy "Lost in the Future," which would define a lesser collection. But this is "Fun House," where every diamond-tipped note counts. Besides, the Stooges were never lost in future: they created it. Essential isn't even the word.
The Ottawa Sun
August 17, 2005 Wednesday
HEADLINE: POP GO THE HIPPIES;
THE STOOGES CLASSIC MARKED THE END OF FLOWER POWER
THE STOOGES
The Stooges Fun House
Sun Rating: 5 out of 5
A few years ago, Rhino Records released a limited-edition box set of The Stooges' Fun House sessions.
Every note was committed to tape, on six CDs--meaning it took less than six hours in the studio to craft one of punk rock's essential blueprints.
The box illustrated a point, which is that however manic Iggy and his Stooges got, the Detroit-based ruffians knew precisely what they were doing. Some 35 years later, songs like Loose and TV Eye still leap from the speakers like the clarion call of Satan himself.
This two-CD reissue is bolstered by the inclusion of a dozen tracks from that box and from revealing liner notes and booklet.
From Iggy's opening observation that, "It's 1969, okay?" it's clear that as far as The Stooges are concerned it's not okay at all. At least, not until the arrival of this platter, which rewrote the rules for primal rock 'n' roll.
Released the week of the Woodstock festival, The Stooges couldn't help but become a commercial failure. Yet, while the contemporary records of Melanie and Country Joe now sound, well, quaint, The Stooges is as fresh as tomorrow. And twice as dangerous.
-- Allan Wigney
April 13, 2010
April 27, 2010
IGGY AND THE STOOGES
w/ james robert williamson
b. october 29, 1949
RAW POWER
2 CD Legacy Edition
4 Disc Deluxe Edition
Billboard Review May 08, 2010
Since its 1973 release on an unsuspecting music world, "Raw Power" has been put through the ringer. Many at the time - just before punk really kicked in - weren't sure what to make of its, well, raw brutality. And the album's David Bowie mix became something of a controversy, considered too fluffy for the Stooges' onslaught. Iggy Pop "corrected" that with his own remix for a 1996 reissue. But Bowie is back, and thanks to better technology, these special editions of "Raw Power" sound right on the money. But the story here is the extras: In addition to such outtakes as "Doojiman" and "Head On," the reissues include an eight-song live set from an October 1973 residency at Richards in Atlanta that captures the latter-lineup Stooges in full Cro-Magnon fury, roaring through epic incarnations of "Gimme Danger" and "Search and Destroy." The Deluxe Edition adds an intriguing third disc of additional rarities and a DVD documentary about the making of the album, which are both worthwhile, if not indispensable.
- Gary Graff
Raw Power LP
Billboard Review March 31, 1973
Entered Cash Box April 14, 1973 peak #130
Entered Billboard April 28, 1973 peak #106
Probably the strongest effort yet from this powerful rock band. Nobody has ever accused lggy of possessing a good voice, but he does have one of the most maniacal voices in rock and the Stooges, with James Williamson now handling lead guitar, are much improved as a band over their last album some two years ago. Though an extremely visual act, the band manages to push their brand of deviant rock well on disk. Best cuts: "Search and Destroy," "Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell," "Raw Power." Dealers: Band has almost a cultist following as a result of two earlier LP's and lggy's reputation. Give this set prominent display.
Columbia Single
4 45869 Billboard Review June 2, 1973
4 45872 Billboard Review June 23, 1973
4 45874 Billboard Review June 9, 1973
4 45876 Billboard Reviews June 9 and 23, 1973
4 45877 IGGY AND THE STOOGES
SEARCH AND DESTROY
Not Reviewed In Billboard
Billboard November 3, 1973
Iggy And The Stooges, Whisky A-Go-Go
Wednesday October 17 - Sunday October 21, 1973
I attended the Friday October 19, 1973 Iggy And The Stooges Whisky A-Go-Go show. Guy at the door marks my hand and says, "No booze for yooze." Columbia promo men wear puffy black satin tour jackets with the white dripping candle wax IGGY RAW POWER logo on the back. Crowd-surfing Iggy: "Keep your hands off my c*ck, s'il vous plait." Responding to a heckler: "That sounds pretty funny coming from a girl with a nose like yours." I'm sitting in the front row of the bleachers. As Iggy exits stage left he pauses in front of me. I blurt out, "That was great!" He looks me in the eye and calmly replies, "Thanks."
-- HARRY YOUNG
Melody Maker March 12, 1977
What's New
Albums
The Stooges
The Stooges
Elektra K42032
The Stooges
Fun House
Elektra K42055
The Idiot
NME Review March 5, 1977
Melody Maker Review March 5, 1977
Billboard Review March 26, 1977
Entered Billboard April 9, 1977 peak #72
This is the third time around for the father of heavy metal nihilism, and while Iggy Pop sounds no less evil, the album is less frantic than his earlier efforts, moving at a more dirge-like pace. The co-author and producer of this effort is David Bowie, who makes the offerings more commercially palatable. The music sounds a little as if it came from Bowie's "Aladdin Sane" period. Iggy Pop sings with a rasping rock voice while guitars drone on behind him. Best cuts: "Sister Midnight," "China Girl," "Tiny Girls," "Mass Production." Dealers: The Bowie touch has helped the careers of Mott the Hoople and Lou Reed. Iggy Pop, meanwhile, is healthy and touring again.
RCA Single JH:
10984 Billboard Review June 4, 1977
10985 Billboard Review May 28, 1977
10986 Billboard Review June 4, 1977
10987
10988
10989 IGGY POP SISTER MIDNIGHT
Not Reviewed In Billboard
10990
10991 Billboard Review June 4, 1977
10992
10993 Billboard Review June 4, 1977