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...rock'n'roll, both underground and mainstream have been plagued with accusations of artists not being real, that they are fake and don't mean what their art supposedly says, they are only in it for the money, their heart and soul belong to the bank manager (or crack dealer)...some 'rockers' are accused of being puppets working for a record company, their sole purpose is to separate the mugs from their cash. nothing more, nothing less...pop, again mainstream and 'alternate' is rife with complaints from naysayers and snobs that certain singers and groups are not the authentic article, just manipulated entities owing allegiance to hopeful svengalis and not the fans...we're not talking about obvious 'cash in' discs that cheap labels throw out to capitalise on a trend or the old 'can you tell the difference' from this record and the original artist version (of course we can), we're talking about artists who become the trend for one reason or another...the sex pistols were immediately accused by the older hippy burnout generation of being fake, they could not play and were just being obnoxious for the publicity that could generate...after the pistols proved they could play well enough to make a kind of tuneful attacking noise it was the turn of others to suffer from pomposity's thrown their way, the damned suddenly were now the 'fakes' ripping off the pistols and so it goes on and on...further back was the monkees who actually were put together to capitalise on the fact the fab4 were no longer touring and moving away from teeny audiences, the monkees were created to tour the country via the TV set, coming to town once a week in a cathode ray tube...the monkees were hyper real in their 'fakeness' and soon gave teenage amerikkka a reason to live, to dig the monkees and all they stand for, living rent free and grooving through the day in the monkee-mobile getting wigged with 'wild adventures', more far out than the velvets sitting in hick town NYC being mopey and miserable, the monkees were tearing up the TV with the certainties that they were right and the squares were wrong (dig the monkees head movie or 33 1/3 TV special plus any number of shows where the amerikkkan way in soundly squashed into the ground, not bad for a long haired weirdo as mickey once remarked to the watching millions)...back in 1994 shampoo soon got accused of being pop bimbos just ripping off the latest trend which was the 'riot grrrl' version energy pop punk (pop punk?real or fake?) but just one listen to the lyrics and we soon find urban poetry detailing the lives of teenagers from estates both prole and the more 'refined' middle class enclaves from the provinces...set to machined aged computer rock rhythms shampoo discuss being drunk in unfamiliar parts of town, shoplifting as a way of life, parental (non)control and other such real life anxieties as make up problems and no spending money...all done with great humour and satire shampoo ridicule the hypocrisy rife in society (at least the society they know about) and this leads to the question - is this real or is it fake, what's the difference in art if fake is of a higher standard than real and real is just a distortion that exists to justify a certain perspective held by certain parties at specific times in the societal continuum, shampoo rustle up a picture of existence that quite a few can identify with...
...dream scape's of angular propulsion populate the grooves on this 1979 japanese wax of some considerable weight when weighed against some other new/NO wave joints that were making themselves known to the trendy hip world of post punk endeavours...to get a handle on the sound here one must think in terms of northern english angst mixed in and stirred with bursts of smiling sun shiney jiggery pokery coming from the likes of L.A.F.M.S roundabout the same time...the tunes drift along while forever striving forward pulled by imaginary but real strings woven from the need to express a new way of imparting their thoughts and postulations, then collapsing to return for fresh engagements with the unfurling curiosities that spring to the surface moments later...after a few spins the ancient folk melodies that had been hiding behind a sheen of bohemian gauziness appear and beg forgiveness for any intrusion and proceed to guide the listener into that always close but somehow fragmentary illusive parallel universe, the place where IT all goes in a does not have to come out, the end zone where all is known to the ones that need to know, the chosen anointed beatnik free from the hassles of mankind...
...listening to joy division in the here and now most if not all of their contemporaries and the myriad of copyists and journeymen seem to pale into a vast expanse of nothingness, it's like they actually didn't exist, they were just distorted echoes of earlier division noise, a psychic babble that broke down peoples will to think for themselves, hipsters and trendoids went along with the sisters/nephs/cult/(your selection here) in the goth pantheon and who knows what was happening with the post punk funk shenanigans from every 'with it' nightclub denizen out after dark...joy division sound and textures spread throughout the world via blitz club dandies, one note synth ditherers, goth purveyors from the provinces and just to mention the effect this beautiful doom noise had on the black metal brigade is to acknowledge the tentacles of mancunian angst is forever mutating and diluting and it's this dilution that brings it all back home, all back to the weird years in northern england when the whole area was closing down financially and spiritually, back home to four young lads with time on their hands, time to get some grooves going to alleviate the thought that tomorrow may in all probability be the same as yesterday with not too much happening in rock now that punk had been usurped by the record companies and the bands working to codified programs of weak rama-lama thrashing...the bleak surrounding visions of the countryside and the cities crumbling from within are all fed into the division sound with nary a thought of it happening, they just seemed to do it because it was right, their music was them and all that they encountered on a daily basis, with ians lyrics coming from deep within the darkside of his persistent daylight nightmare world...outside of the studio ambiance and production niceties joy division show how much of a full on attack squad they were, vibrating with sheer unspoken curiosity, a great summing up of the clatter from such forward thinkers such as the velvets/bowie/kraftwerk/glitter/ultravox/saints and the hotrodpistolclash explosion of '76 all channeled through a folkloric attitude of natural reinvention and rejuvenation of cultural (un)desire...true that joy division inhabit a league very much of their own command they were accompanied by earlier players on the rocking fields of noise with such underworld luminaries as doctors of madness/cabaret voltaire and for a split second subway sect but these cats all fell away from frontline duty for varying reasons...these division cats are progressive in a regressive environment and curtis is the lounge crooner from the nightclub at the end of town, the place where everyone is cool because everyone knows its futile to exert negative energy in an imaginary place, this nightclub is the nightclub of the mind, a collective individualisation of teenage brain rage digging the last sounds from the end times...thirty years down the line these boots ably show joy division as emissaries from another country, a desolate land of failed capitalism now forgotten by all (apart from the proles who still live there on crack filled time warped estates) except for populist 'cultural' historians who populate the lovie media with case loads of 'worthy' time wasting clutter...so one and all step inside the heart and soul of the interzone...
...page one records, home of the troggs found the time to get all prog and jazzy with this long player from 1969, a nice exploitational sounding disc, the sound has a definite one-take-professional vibe, these cats knew what they were doing straight off and that may be the key to this album, it's a cool take on the new sounds that are coming along, the various strains of prog, jazz prog, orchestral prog, and some plain old pop, lounge pop with urgency all done in a few moments of time during a break in the night club schedule...of course it does not sound like any sort of prog as we now know it but back at the dawn of the seventies the whole shebang was just getting started, many hats were thrown into the ring and this was just one of the myriad of hopefuls and has beens giving it one last go, one last chance to make some cash from the music (business)...some bizarre cover versions crop that the listener can amuse themselves with, surmising on the philosophy of their choice of tune to ride to glory and the hit parade with...in its own way an excellent record doing its required job in the market place, that of suckering suburban proles into getting the NOW sound and getting with it, indeed getting down with the nite people, denizens of the midnight hour cooling out on the hi-fi (dansette) with cheap vodka and tonic...giving these cats some quick thought conjures up a vision of them supporting amen corner on maybe their last tour when the teeny boppers had departed and real life threatened on the horizon so anyway come in and bliss out in the night club of the inner mind...
...four very tasty treats from the limbo land between reality and drug induced muddlement, the saga studio and lounge denizens get busy producing their take on the swinging london sounds, their version of the NOW SOUNDS, be they psychedelic pop/rock or uptempo nightclub jazzing it's all done in a vastly off kilter way, not weird or freaky but just singularly intense psych fusion with no regard to finesse...so without too much added blabber and smoke lets take a quick meander down into the saga basement and see whats brewing in exploito-ville...first up there's some old mods going by the non de plume five day week straw people, firing off some inspired amphetamine shrieks drenched in echo and effects, including some early jamaican dub moves no doubt learnt from kensal sound systems/producers its a tour de force of post acid hard rock, a heavy swill of mad rushed vibes, neuro circuitry shakes instantaneous rewards from the 'cash-in gods', wondrous marvels from the junk shop of lost treasures...recorded in a brief moment it was designed to grab the attention of young married squares looking to get some swinging london vibes in their life, but these vibes had to come cheap, and cheap they were, ready to be whisked away from the budget racks that stood outside record shops back in the days of yore...next is the magic mixture, a hard rock outfit giving out with some doom riffing madness, a blurred generosity of club-land noise, the sound of the prole on the attack, getting hefty with profundity from the absent guru these cats lay down some primitive sludge that must be heard...as fate would have it the only people that did hear it originally didn't know what to make of the sounds they were listening to and just dismissed it into the record cabinet that stood beside the dansette player in the corner of the room...studio players with a certain rocking jazz sensibility got rowdy one night and laid down some tunes from the hit smash musical of the moment, hair , blowing some hard fuzz licks and solid organ growling across the grooves...the world of 'hit musical ' exploitation this stands proudly near the top of the list as a hot contender, a biscuit of renowned tastiness, once only delighted in by some suburban square comes winging its way into the age of ironic conformity where this wax can see off all pretenders...the dave moses group supply some righteous night club testifying with a golden trumpet and plenty of pilled up playing, solid blasts of NOW sound detonating into the living rooms of provincially, flipping their collective long hair sagaciousness into a mean and funky stew of triumphant pleasure, a solid bond with the stage at the mighty sixties london hangout 'the flamingo' and the 'twisted wheel' in manchester with R&B pop coming up nice and close with some purple heart frenzy...a chipper mind cleaning from all four platters, none better than the other in any objective sense, they all do their work of the slick con man from the other side of the tracks, the cosmic spiv with a suitcase of 'genuine merchandise', subjective moments can be discussed in the privacy of the front rooms of yesterdays modern dream...
...any layabouts getting to thinking this decades re-revaluation/discovery by the trendoids and citizens in general ain't generating the correct heat with the latest wax being a 'going through the motions' with some friendly production and the touring amounting to nothing in the trashed tapestry that is basic rocking'n'rolling...this version of the first major foray into changing the state of six-oh gutter screach is the euro '88 edition and looking back this is one swell heap of treblelated racket that when the volume knob is registering on stun (the required setting when listening to primo garbage and swill) will bring forth the agony of being stuck in a collapsing authority obsessed culture...this out of control junkyard dog will make an expressway straight to the centre of the mind and bore an endless groove to inner consciousness without any untoward tampering of the truth...freakout for another day...
...the first stooges LP is a brilliant forward looking entity which at the time was derided as amateur playing with delinquent theatrics, a going nowhere disc that would soon be forgotten about was how the record business saw the stooges, a lost cause that had no right in existing as a musical 'pop group'...this first outing is raw and untutored, two things that make it a singular waxing any way its viewed, as complete garbage or as a saviour to the very future of teenage rocking mayhem and unearthly noise...they kick things off with a gigantic rush, their first anthem to boredom, 1969, a year that on the surface seemed turbulent enough with manson family antics / fake moon landing / vietnam / nixon / black panther slayings all getting the 'news'hounds attention and therefore the great unwashed will see it on the TEEVEE and act appropriately, ie; scared beyond belief / moral outrage being but two responses that will issue forth from patriots everywhere across the land, but the stooges had a different perspective on the state of democracy, they saw utter frustration at the lack of 'life' in the surrounding towns, cities, country, everyone accepting their fate as drones for the empire and living in a state of corporate obedience...when blue cheer played at the grande ballroom with their shatter bomb amped up sound the stooges weren't slow in making some mental notes that loud for its own sake is GOOD and should be practised at every opportunity...when the doors played detroit the stooges checked out the theatrical aspects of morrisons 'act of revolution' lizard king routine and decide that it was alright as far as it went but was too slow and arty for any use in real rocking noise...the LP is in all respects the marriage of blue cheer punk attack with street poetry of a bare minimalism, the riff, the phrase is ripe for repetition without any hesitancy to think otherwise, the stooge mentality dictates that 'less is more' when the right ingredients are mixed at the correct temperature a mayhemic disturbance of the individual thought patterns will realign and see things as they really are, a shuck and jive to keep the citizens amused while the atrocities in inner cities and vietnam continue unabated...other magnificent creations of straight ahead rock blasting come forth with titles such as 'now i wanna be your dog' / 'real cool time' / 'little doll' 'no fun', every one of them a grinder, a pulverisation of sweet excess for real 'dogs and dolls', not really hippy floatation type of sounds (except the filler track at the end of side one 'we will fall' which is a nice street level trance groove where the stooges gather round the bong and get REAL GONE), this is some heavy duty punked up riff mongery with disjointed haiku inflections...this is the remaster album and bonus john cale mix on the second disk all showing the LP off to be what its always been, the first of three great LPs by one of the great gutter rocking combos, an LP of considerable fire power, more straight ahead rock racket than the second, funhouse which showed their art / jazz entanglement which had always been there live but didn't come to fruition in the studio until after the first release...listening through both disks in this reissue one is struck by the thought that this is no less than the yanquee equivalent of the rolling stones during the satanic majesties exercise, but this is satanic as a rock'n'roll album, an album built on the foundation that was birthed by the stones earlier single 'satisfaction' (of note here may be the fact that blue cheer groove on a version of 'satisfaction' on their second LP, the psychedelic acid bubbler 'outsideinside'), 'satisfaction' is year zero for the stooge cats, nothing before and nothing since, its the be all and end all for iggys stooges, at least until the funhouse sessions got underway, then they become the mirror of post industrial blight, the war machine in sharp focus as seen by the very cannon fodder the machine needs for survival...the political nature of their early work, both studio and live cannot be underestimated, the art of seeing the truth and being able to express it for the good of all for decades is worthy of high acclaim, the sonic mastery that allows the records to stand apart from the slag heap of hippie rock is something equating to a genius appraisal of prescience, how could this disk fail to be anything other than the most forward moving rocking platter in 1969 (or later as we now can confirm)...
...this is some hotcha package of goodness if ever such an article existed through the whole history of the HEP world from the ancient hash eaters to the NOWness of NOW...funhouse spread to a gigantic six discs (full up to the brim discs, no rip off here, it's the real deal)...this is detroit and by logical extension amerikkka at the end of the sixties...the trials and tribulations of that decade, from civil rights / vietnam / and squares in suburbia to capitalism in general are channelled through the stooge mind, it's no accident this crew called themselves by that self deprecating name as all members of society are stooges of one description or another, from the cat who goes downtown to buy a little something and gets overcharged for shoddy goods to the pig on the street who thinks he's a valuable asset to the town (nowadays the pig knows he's just a donut eating fool with a gun who's only purpose is to keep the citizens in line, how many pig doing nothing is incalculable), everyone is a stooge for some part of the empire, propping up unquestioningly the new world order...the armoury of pig intolerance is at the door battering heads and minds of the 'unconventional', the cacophonous sound of riot torn cities is raining down on the listener from the very beginning of disc one and it does not counter the proposition to cease until the end of the last disc, vietnam gunships prowl the skies as the stooge racket proceeds, heavy vibes are closing in as iggy yelps and gasps his way into getting loose in the funhouse in 1970, TV eyes are shaken from the dirt of LA blues, the stooges are lost in the future some where down on the street with guitars firing electric barbs of righteous mayhem into the waiting ether, drums are pounding the tribal teenage rhythyms, repeating endless thuds that carry the disturbed missives into the world, a world going crazier by the minute all reflected in the stooge noise...saxophone blasts remind the recipient that jazz is never far from the surface of early stoogeness, like the MC5 these cats knew more about making an avant racket than the usual layabout on the corner, rock'n'roll was more than saturday night entertainment, it was salvation...this set is where the stooge dilettante has to move over for this is surely for the maniacs of stooge land, the cats who live the back alley life in search of the elusive freedom that is supposedly available for all humanity, not just the ruling elite...on each coaster there's a run through of the tunes, multiple takes piling up endlessly allowing the onlooker to gather in the vibe that was enveloping the studio during the funhouse days, the cats ploughing ever onward as if somehow knowing the importance of the resulting wax that would hopefully emerge, a wax that would stand tall in the annals off rocking and rolling (it would take a few decades but timelines are unimportant when a true zeitgeist expression is formulating)...low slung motor city fires are burning with exhaltant rage as progression is made through the set, amphetamine soundscapes litter the studio as the cats go in for the kill, to nail the perfect riff into the tapestry of rocking and have it last forevermore...thrust these discs into the playback machine and go wayback for eight hours and as beatlejohn once observed and remarked, 'take it brother and may it serve you well'...dig it...
...alongside funkadelics 'maggot brain' and slys 'riot' no other long player reflected the state of uncle sams autocracy more than fun house, the stooges second go round for elektra records (who got burnt by the MC5 so their patience with street level rocking was wearing real thin, preferring the whinge and whine of singer/songers and limp pop) which would also be their last as a democratic combo...this is the sound of urban degeneration, cities (detroit in this case) getting left to rot after their usefulness was used up, no longer of importance to the machinary of the new empire, the sound of pig violence killing all those who oppose the corporate state...the sound of gunships roaming the skys of southeast asia killing for the dollar sign, napalm burning those who might be different, whos way of life didn't consume for the wall street stockholders, the sound of grunts fragging the gung-ho patriot in charge who will mindlessly follow orders to oblivion...this is the sound of bad drugs and cheap booze wrapped in large jazz reefer loitering in hazy psychedelic basements with no tomorrow and no yesterday, the future has been stolen and the past didn't exist, only the TV image plays non stop with reruns from the blurred twilight zone of the netherworld bean counters who are busy wiping the consciousness from the roobes...this is the sound of back alley stick ups, of cats dropping spare change on smack cut with rat poison bought from a narc...this is the sound of reality colliding with the amerikkkan dream, the chrome plated freedom conspiracy crushing the true spirit, the truth as seen from a burnt out building...the world on fire sounds like THIS...comes with a second bonus disk melted down to bite size proportion from the super necessary fun house sessions...
...this seems to be the rough power joint that came out some years back, though it does sound somewhat better, the pressing may have affected the quality in a favourable way which is a nice turn around...(since when does sound quality crop up with early stooge boots, must be some moral statement issued by the guardians of the rocking universe, those well known iggy aficianados of long standing)...two of the last three tracks are not included but it does end with another take of search and destroy so all is well in the waning days from stoogeland...this is not as bad as it has been suggested by certain nay sayers over the years, of course not the sort of noise that could have been released by a major record co. back in the day but compares nicely with mad and bad joints by the like of 'les rallizes denude' / 'die electric eels' proving the IG was 'on the money' if off his head and out of his tree when he got his hands on the mixing desk...there is imbalance in the stereo placement but what's the deal with this or we should say what's the deal back then with cats who heard it first off, don't they dig the crazed rocking moment? (no answer needed, retorical question only )...it's a messy stew with layers buried underneath each other all grasping for the moment to come alive, which mostly they don't but they are there and at the time iggy could hear them even if no one else could...what is / was wrong with cats not getting down with the gutter groove, after all this ain't no james taylor wax where a sleeping bag is needed for falling asleep after about fifteen seconds, this is primal swamp gas festering its ugly way into life, this is a number one candidate for putting on stun volume and killing the roaches stone dead...the second half of this mess is from a detroit radio broadcast from when the stooges were still sorting out the tapes and the tunes are trebly and squeely with a wooshing sound evident, this sounds even more like 'les rallizes' than ever...it's a tape of the studio tapes and sounds like its running faster than may be it should, but it's cool stooge racket scores high on the ig-o-meter, a needle spiked through the ear drum, an amphetamine rush to the centre of the nervous system, a heart full of napalm (indeed) just about sums it up, an explosive high energy blow up all the way...dig the radio dj cats apologising for the bad shape of this tape, urging the listeners not to think this the end product...there is a desperation in the sound from this tape, as if the stooges must get these missives out of their system, not to be rid but to impart and engage with true rocking cats before all is lost, before the sonablist end times envelope a generation...total groove making the raw power joint a cool triptych...
...raw power mixes, which one is better, who did the real deal job, bowie or pop?, does it matter this late in the day when both are readily available, the choice is there for both to be had and enjoyed, end to end or individually on their own in their own space and time...iggy did the very first one but was off in the dark zone due to chemical imbalance making the mix a little avant creative, instruments crushed into one channel, iggys croaking and roaring in the other...the record co. suits had collective apoplexy and demanded david bowie, then riding high as a bona fide pop star, get to remixing to get some sort of order (and hopefully sales) restored...bowie remixed the record in a few hours and the resultant sound was somewhat hollow and tinny but at the time a lot of cats dug the sound that kind of skimmed across the airwaves as it flew from the speakers, but on the other hand rock critics and snobs decided it was not representative of the artist (as if they had been digging the stooge noise forever!!)...whatever the case the bowie mix was the first one that any one heard and it was the one all others must be judged by, iggys first (now available as rough power) ot iggys 96 endeavour or indeed the last 180g. vinyl repress...a cats got to go with one or all, its all grist to the mill of stooge...
...the third and last stooge album, the other wax with the word stooge on them can't be counted for one reason or another (not talking about live boots, that’s another matter entirely, they are moments in time which luckily can be savoured by the discerning due to using technology)...raw power, a magnificent slip slide of gutter madness, a sleazy ride down back alleys where junkies shake waiting for the next fix, the next karmic rush into the end zone, raw power is the high octane propulsion machine that will take the listener into the heart of hollywood darkness, detroit has been left behind in the waste bin of amerikkkan obsolescence, past its sell by date it would take years for awareness of real rocking to come alive in that city...the stooges shoot up with street level rock'n'roll and take aim for the centre of the brain with the sharpest needle points to be had from the narcotic croaker on the bad side of town...the cheap drug avant jittery of the earlier joints has been forgotten, a straight ahead attack has been formulated, a sleeker version blasting the decibels, shaking the molecules and rocking the atoms...this is the natural seventies progression from the two preceding wax, not intenrional, just circumstances conspiring to bring to fruition maybe the last gasps of amphetamine rocking, the sludge of other rockers (no names no shame) has been all pervasive by 1973, this is a holding position until maybe the sex pistols came to save the righteous (debatable, but at least until the pistols unleashed others worldwide into making a racket of disruptive proportions)...iggy and his stooges had tried for years to get to this position; feature articles in the NME in england / various french journals who loved the stooge noise, all manifesting in a euroland admiration for these yankee rocking dirtbags, but unfortunately the year would see the group implode once and for all, the best was now behind them artistically speaking at least...this edition is the iggy mixed tapes from the mid nineties, still sleazy and stands up to comparisons to bowies vision of stooge rock, both are needed, necessary ear wear for the present day cat it is certainly one of the only vehicles left to free the mind from the gunk and gook that is thrown by government / business into the various market places...
...here we see iggy getting his mojo on as a modern day bluesman, heavy metal crunch backing up some skag infested juvenile delinquent poetry all given over to some heavy moaning in a bluesology idiom, iggy going back to his roots when he was hanging with blues cats in chicago, getting to know the life, getting hip to the amerikkkan ruse, using his own eyes to see what was going on, not relying on the all pervasive idiot box for TEEVEE truth...the sound quality is somewhat lacking when first heard but after a while it gets to the point, this is tape recordings, nothing more, it's field recordings of a disappearing world, iggy is changing, unknowingly getting ready for the rest of his career, the stooges in all but name no longer exist, iggy for better or worse will become MR ROCK in thirty years time, worshiped by trendies and squares alike...no wonder iggy has the blues, any cat would and thats a truth that straight from the source...jim morrison is envoked more than once the 'morrison hotel' LP is referenced, iggy always digging the lizard king but thinking morrison maybe a posuer, maybe a middle class faker getting through by some soul selling and chance luck, iggy blasts into the morrison groove with frenzied attack, riding the riff to 'get out of nowhere' before its too late...also remembered by the IG is seeing 'cream' at the grande ballroom as he lays down some tripped out swill (i'm so glad') in homage to that head destroying evening (any cats getting to hear that cream bootleg from the grande 67 gig will know it's a fine testament to trancy heavy heavy jamming, powerful stuff)...some country blues (hollis brown) is laid out bare over guitar noodle and beat box, taking it all back to the railroad shacks and shanty towns of the depession years, the lonely times when business thumbed its nose at the downtrodden mass is invoked through this weary take on an early dylan tune...with these detroit rehearsals iggy tried to move away from the 'glamour' of london / tinseltown LA and found solace in the proven worth of yesteryear, when the stomp of john lee hooker ruled the back alleys and highways of HEPSville, when the switchblade was dangerous medecine, iggy rides the rails with tenement voodoo for companionship, trailer trash working IT-ON-OUT with black cat bones, smoke and ashes...
...iggy and his stooges get all skanky and strung out in the heart of darkness, roaming the neon nightmare known as the sunset strip in the glitter year of 1973, being skag chasing junkie is now a big part of iggys life, his world revolving around getting messed up in holiday inns instead of trailer parks like many his age in the closing days of the vietnam youth culling expedition they had lived through...the stooges pummel their way through some shake and shimy detroit style, the post riot torn forocity has transposed to hollywood and has an almost blue cheer panic attack, this is metal tarnished rocking, the noise has a resurrection of the blues growing from it, not a rolling stones / allman brothers vision of the blues, this is a much more below street level grimey affair, a dirty damp basement feel, ugly and frightening, not a welcoming place at all...iggy is cursing the cats who mess with his head, the skag peddlers who steal his bread in return for a back alley fix of junk to the record company suits who have bought his contract to hopefully quiet him, to keep him from becoming the new spokesman for a seventies generation, much like what happened to the other great detroit rocking combo the MC5, what the IG had to say on the first two stooges albums was a heavy political statement of intent, the complete disatisfaction with the so called amerikkkan dream which iggy rightly surmised did not exist...iggy is angry and it shows, the band create a barely controlled mayhemic mess for the singer to yelp and moan over, iggy somehow getting near to a jim morrison vibe, but not as middle class poetic stance, this is real out there anger, not theatrical, the doors could not make this racket, their sensibilities would never allow this depravity to issue forth from the instruments...this has been released before as an eight track album, this one has another version of 'heavy liquid' at the end, and of course the sound is the usual standard for stooges slabs...
...who'd have thought, back in the day that iggy would come to exemplify the mass media image of rock'n'roll, the cat the squares hated with vengeance, surely the stooges were too avant/out of control for mass consumption, their very image producing shudders from all lilly livered hippys/FM radio/hit parade magazines, all the natural enemies of heavy swill rocking...now there's got to be some cats lurking out there, living in the twilight shadows, crawling through the back alleys (real or imagined, it don't matter) the terminal rocking cats getting all hot and bothered and draggedout that the mighty roar of the IG and stooges getting turned into radio friendly hard rock with all the revisionist remastering jiggery-pokery that's been happening in the last years need only set the ears no further than this screach powered boot...drums thumping in and out, bass booming, guitar squealing, feedback shattered, vocals disappearing and general hectic audience participation make these recordings a must for early admirers of the detroit racket...needs to be played the usual way with this swill; through cans with the volume on stun... trx1/6-keil auditorium, st louis may 71 trx7/8-crosley field, cincinnati 70 trx9/10-wamplers lake 68...
...more slop and sludge from one of detroits heppest outfits, a raving mix up of time warp scuzz that all layabouts who dig the illicit listening position will want to hear a few times at least...the sound is about what's to be expected from the label throwing this junk on the pile, that's right revenge records have once again excelled in finding some beat up cassette and putting it on the market (a point of interest, anyone remembering those MC5 joints emanating from france during the early '90s will know what to expect, did not one of those only have one channel operating making those mighty detroit hamboners, the 5, sound like some limp wrist sunday morning congregational singalong, rock'n'roll surely is a tough occupation for the dedicated lifers)...this is a box set consisting of six mini discs (extended play style), these jump all over the prime stooge years, including iggy with that misunderstood son of the gutter, james williamson, so cats looking for a chronological ride will have to hit the program button before settling in with the scrape and skrunk on offer...flipping all over like a scatter gun on random relief, the stooge racket sprays its messy goo all over the various audiences and its a fine disorder that one should by now know and love...these 'johnny come latelys' who've somehow made iggy the king of the slag heap for the last few years will not dig this at all, they will need the radio friendly mix, this is only going to annoy then badly, which is what the stooge noise was all about, reshaping the aural / visual landscape of rocking and rolling...this sanctifying of iggy in itself must be some sociological perplexity if looked at logically, like why do thirty five year old squares want some pensioner living out their life, are they so conditioned to be sedate that iggy is wild, wild, wild in their eyes, is there no one their own age kicking up the 'dreadful parent hating noise', in fact it was their parents who first loved/hated/ ignored the stooge cats (this last being the only rational condition for the unwashed pod people of suburbia) ...guitars blurt and stutter in and out of the mix, the bass bubbles and rumbles in eruptions of strangled choogle with iggy moaning and droning, then yelping and shouting in out of control discharges from the 'jimbo morrison' zone...at the back of the stage the drums pummel and clatter with the cymbals ringing out from the quaalude haze that is steadily enveloping every facet of the stooge world...there's a couple of long tracks roundabout 10/12 minutes each where they go off into some manic stooge avant trance blurt with the cats disorientating behind iggy as he sermonizes (at one point he tells the attentive audience that a mans soul cannot be bought, not even in hollywood)...added bonus (time filler?) comes in the shape of a nice interview with ron ashton which is real cool as he reminisces about 60s detroit rocking...for anyone who ain't got much in the library by the early iggy its a good place to find out whether this mess is right on or right awful but all in all though the tracks have been around in various shapes and form over the years it all plays along ok for the seasoned stooges traveller...
...rock'n'roll, both underground and mainstream have been plagued with accusations of artists not being real, that they are fake and don't mean what their art supposedly says, they are only in it for the money, their heart and soul belong to the bank manager (or crack dealer)...some 'rockers' are accused of being puppets working for a record company, their sole purpose is to separate the mugs from their cash. nothing more, nothing less...pop, again mainstream and 'alternate' is rife with complaints from naysayers and snobs that certain singers and groups are not the authentic article, just manipulated entities owing allegiance to hopeful svengalis and not the fans...we're not talking about obvious 'cash in' discs that cheap labels throw out to capitalise on a trend or the old 'can you tell the difference' from this record and the original artist version (of course we can), we're talking about artists who become the trend for one reason or another...the sex pistols were immediately accused by the older hippy burnout generation of being fake, they could not play and were just being obnoxious for the publicity that could generate...after the pistols proved they could play well enough to make a kind of tuneful attacking noise it was the turn of others to suffer from pomposity's thrown their way, the damned suddenly were now the 'fakes' ripping off the pistols and so it goes on and on...further back was the monkees who actually were put together to capitalise on the fact the fab4 were no longer touring and moving away from teeny audiences, the monkees were created to tour the country via the TV set, coming to town once a week in a cathode ray tube...the monkees were hyper real in their 'fakeness' and soon gave teenage amerikkka a reason to live, to dig the monkees and all they stand for, living rent free and grooving through the day in the monkee-mobile getting wigged with 'wild adventures', more far out than the velvets sitting in hick town NYC being mopey and miserable, the monkees were tearing up the TV with the certainties that they were right and the squares were wrong (dig the monkees head movie or 33 1/3 TV special plus any number of shows where the amerikkkan way in soundly squashed into the ground, not bad for a long haired weirdo as mickey once remarked to the watching millions)...back in 1994 shampoo soon got accused of being pop bimbos just ripping off the latest trend which was the 'riot grrrl' version energy pop punk (pop punk?real or fake?) but just one listen to the lyrics and we soon find urban poetry detailing the lives of teenagers from estates both prole and the more 'refined' middle class enclaves from the provinces...set to machined aged computer rock rhythms shampoo discuss being drunk in unfamiliar parts of town, shoplifting as a way of life, parental (non)control and other such real life anxieties as make up problems and no spending money...all done with great humour and satire shampoo ridicule the hypocrisy rife in society (at least the society they know about) and this leads to the question - is this real or is it fake, what's the difference in art if fake is of a higher standard than real and real is just a distortion that exists to justify a certain perspective held by certain parties at specific times in the societal continuum, shampoo rustle up a picture of existence that quite a few can identify with...
