'The Stooges' vs. 'Raw Power'

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Which?

The Stooges
22
50%
Raw Power
22
50%
 
Total votes: 44

Bungo the Mungo

'The Stooges' vs. 'Raw Power'

Postby Bungo the Mungo » 15 Jan 2007, 21:18

Apparently it's agreed that Funhouse is the Stooges' true classic album. It's great, but it's a bit like being woken up to the sounds of a pneumatic drill next door. Personally, I've always preferred the clear, simple sound and dopey aesthetic of their debut. And how anyone dare suggest that Raw Power - a sort of grown-up Slade record - is superior to it....well, that's insanity!

The Stooges - pot
Funhouse - speed
Raw Power - five pints of bitter

Discuss. And don't forget to vote.

marios

Postby marios » 15 Jan 2007, 21:23

I usually place Raw Power above the debut, but sometimes i feel i might be wrong.

The only thing i'm sure of is that Funhouse is in another league.

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Postby Jeff K » 15 Jan 2007, 21:36

I know you want the debut to win but I had to go for Raw Power. If you break the albums down into categories, I'd say the first one was them as teenage snots, punks full of boredom, giving the middle finger to everybody around them. The comes Funhouse and you can tell things aren't quite right. Now the boys are starting to sound downright angry and uptight but they're still in control to a certain point. Raw Power is where they become unhinged. I still remember the first time I ever heard the album and I thought it was just so violent sounding. Scary even. As much as I loved Ron Asheton on guitar, James Williamson was a mean motherfucker who played amphetamine crazed riffs. Check out his solo on Shake Appeal. Blistering! I didn't even mind Bowie's controversial mix because it made them sound like a bunch of yelping dogs. I do love the debut too but Raw Power is just so out there and impossible to ignore.
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Postby Rory Bellows » 15 Jan 2007, 21:47

#1 Raw Power
#2 Funhouse
#3 Stooges

But all brilliant
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Postby nathan » 15 Jan 2007, 21:50

Thinking about this I realized that I only like a handful of tracks on the first one, the first side only of the second one and about two tracks on Raw Power. The rest of the tracks are fine but kind of annoying for me at times.

When they were good though they were really damn good but I'm starting to wonder if people really listen to all of these albums straight though. It seems like a chore to me.

And No Fun beats the pants off anything from the third record.

Bungo the Mungo

Postby Bungo the Mungo » 15 Jan 2007, 21:53

nathan wrote:Thinking about this I realized that I only like a handful of tracks on the first one, the first side only of the second one and about two tracks on Raw Power. The rest of the tracks are fine but kind of annoying.

When they were good though they were really damn good.

And No Fun beats the pants off anything from the third record.


Absolutely. The drum intro is genius. Genius.

And I Wanna Be Your Dog beats the pants off anything they did on any record. It burns.

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Postby nathan » 15 Jan 2007, 21:54

Sun Moon Sky Spark wrote:And I Wanna Be Your Dog beats the pants off anything they did on any record. It burns.

Yeah, they never really did anything better than that one. Though Loose comes pretty damn close.

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Postby McBastard » 15 Jan 2007, 21:55

1. Funhouse
2. The Stooges - and I like We Will Fall
a big gap
then
3. Raw Power

It's just never clicked with me.
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Postby Balboa » 15 Jan 2007, 21:59

nathan wrote:Thinking about this I realized that I only like a handful of tracks on the first one, the first side only of the second one and about two tracks on Raw Power. The rest of the tracks are fine but kind of annoying for me at times.

When they were good though they were really damn good but I'm starting to wonder if people really listen to all of these albums straight though. It seems like a chore to me.



These are my thoughts exactly about their output. Raw Power is extremely patchy and many of the songs are overlong - I am suprised at how much love there is for it.

I voted the debut.
Of course, I was mostly stoned at the time.

Bungo the Mungo

Postby Bungo the Mungo » 15 Jan 2007, 22:02

Balboa wrote:These are my thoughts exactly about their output. Raw Power is extremely patchy and many of the songs are overlong - I am suprised at how much love there is for it.

I voted the debut.


Agreed. I'm a huge fan but it's all a bit much to take for more than 20 minutes, say. Like a manic friend you've got who really demands a lot of you. Singular, quite mad, lots of fun, but ultimately exhausting.

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Postby Count Machuki » 15 Jan 2007, 22:07

I'm not sure if I'm entirely qualified to vote, having only heard the original Bowie mix (on CD) of Raw Power. That being said, I've always preferred the debut, both for song quality and 'historical import'.
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Postby Jeff K » 15 Jan 2007, 22:11

I will say that out of all the albums, I've probably been playing the debut the most recently.

Anyone care to name their favorite Stooges bootleg/out-takes album?

For me, it's this one...

Image

Open Up and Bleed. It would have made a terrific fourth album had it been cleaned up and legitimately released.
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Postby Maxwell's Golden Pickaxe » 15 Jan 2007, 22:24

This is easy.

Definitely Raw Power. As Jeff K said, it's the violence of the album. I never heard the Bowie mix, just the Iggy version, so perhaps I'm coming to it differently than others.

1. Raw Power
2. Funhouse
.
.
.
.
3. The Stooges

As I said on the other thread, We Will Follow is just boring, Ann is like a Doors song, and Not Right is just not good. The album shoots its load by the end of track 4.

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Postby toomanyhatz » 15 Jan 2007, 22:40

Neither mix of Raw Power cuts it. Ultimately it would be more honest to call it Dissipated Power. The shame of it is, the songs are great. It could have been better than the debut. But it's not. Cale vs. Bowie is the difference. Funhouse is the best (although the singles post-Raw Power may be best of all).
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Postby 12xu2 » 15 Jan 2007, 22:43

Here's the 1969 Rolling Stone review of the classic debut. Fascinating reading:

As we all remember, in 1957, it was conclusively proven that there exists a causal relationship between rock and roll and juvenile delinquency. This record is just another document in support of this thesis.

The Stooges, formerly the Psychedelic Stooges, hail from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where, in case you've never been told, they do things high-powered—high-powered music, high-powered doping, high-powered fucking, high-powered hyping. The Stooges used to share a house with another local band whom they greatly resemble—the MC-5. The picture on the cover of the album shows the Stooges to be four nice middleclass-kids-gone-wrong wearing brand-new synthetic leather jackets and pouting at the camera in a kind of snot-nosed defiance. They don't look at all that bright, although they may be college dropouts, and I'm sure that all the high school kids in the area dig the hell out of them. Three of them play guitar, bass, and drums, while picturesque Iggy sings in a blatantly poor imitation early Jagger style. The instrumentalists sound like they've been playing their axes for two months and playing together for one month at most, and they just love wah-wah and fuzz just like most rank amateur groups. The lyrics are sub-literate, as might be inferred by the titles: "No Fun," "Not Right," "Little Doll," and "Real Cool Time." This last is the monument of the Stooges' artistry: "Can-uh Ah come ovuh/To-gnat-uh?/We will have a real cool tam-uh/We will have a real cool tam-uh ..." Their music is loud, boring, tasteless, unimaginative and childish.

I kind of like it.

Granted that the Stooges are all I have said them to be, how can I explain this away? Well, it is certainly an understatement to say that they have a marked lack of pretension. They are a reductio ad absurdam of rock and roll that might have been thought up by a mad D.A.R. general in a wet dream. They suck, and they know it, so they throw the fact back in your face and say "So what? We're just havin' fun." They emit a raw energy reminiscent of the very earliest British recordings—ever listen to the first two Kinks records?—and while there is ample reason to put them down, the fun is infectious, and that's more than you can say about most of the stuff coming out nowadays.

The album itself is, I am told, far better than the Stooges are in person, where they rely heavily on visual effects and loud freak-out scrapings of guitar strings and bashing of amps. Producer John Cale, a former member of the Velvet Underground, has squeezed everything he could out of them, and he has done a fine job. The only place where the album falls down, it falls with a resounding thud. "We Will Fall" is a ten-minute exercise in boredom that ruins the first side of the record. The rest of it—well, when something is as simple as the Stooges' music, it would take an artist to ruin it.

So, cats and kitties, if you want to have a real cool time, just bop on down to you local platter vendor and pick up the Stooges' record, keeping in mind, of course, that it's loud, boring, tasteless, unimaginative, childish, obnoxious.... (RS 44)

EDMUND O. WARD (Oct 18, 1969)
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Postby Maxwell's Golden Pickaxe » 15 Jan 2007, 22:46

toomanyhatz wrote:...Ultimately it would be more honest to call it Dissipated Power...


How can you say that? Search And Destroy just EXPLODES out of the speakers. It is more powerful than anything on The Stooges or Fun House.

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Postby 12xu2 » 15 Jan 2007, 22:47

And here's the Funhouse review:

Ah, good evening my good friend. Good evening and welcome to the Stooges' Funhouse. We are so glad you could come. Oh, do not be alarmed, dear one, if things should seem a trifle unusual ... or, as the natives say, "oh-mind" ... at first. You'll doubtless get used to it. Perhaps, you may even begin to ... like the things you see.

Why do you look so pale, my friend? Why, that's only tenor saxophonist Steve Mackay vigorously fucking drummer Scott Asheton, dog-style. Steve is a new member of the band, you know, but like Iggy and the rest of the boys were saying, he really fits in, n'estce pas? How smart he looks in his new black leather jacket. And that swastika on Scott's lapel. How killer ... how terribly, terribly killer.

And that man over there? The one being slowly whipped with the long, curly tendrils of that young lass' hair? Why, that's none other than Don Galucci, who produced the Stooges' latest album. He was the producer of the song "Louie, Louie" by the Kingsmen, you know. Here. I have the original words to it written on this piece of paper. Perhaps you would like to read them.

Oh, thank you, Mr. Galucci. Please do put on the new Stooges record. It would be so nice for our guest to hear.

Mercy! "Down On the Street," what a super killer jam! That is why I love the Stooges so, you know, and why I have stayed here at the Funhouse with the boys for so very long. They are so exquisitely horrible and down and out that they are the ultimate psychedelic rock band in 1970. Don't you agree?

Don't laugh. You musn't laugh. The new record is much more sophisticated than their first. And you cannot deny that they are the best Detroit area rock band. Why, Iggy was just telling me that when he plays with other Detroit and Michigan area bands, that he feels, not like. King of the Mountain, but King of the Slag Heap! Can you imagine that? King of the Slag Heap! How super ohmind, no?

Do you think you might like to . . . see Iggy? Well, all right. But you must take care not to disturb him. When Pop is really "Jonesed," there's really no telling what could happen. His scars do take so long to heal, you know, and he is so slight, sometimes I can't help worry about him, but can you blame me?

He should be behind that door, in that room. Perhaps, if we're lucky, he might be spreading peanut butter upon his phallus. Why, sometimes, he'll lock himself in there for days screaming, "I feel all right!" at the top of his lungs until he passes out. And then, it is said, before he can arise again, a 14-year-old girl must perform oral intercourse upon his comatose body. Oh! He has heard us! Do be quick, my friend, before he can get it together to react! Heavens! What a close shave, eh, mon ami?

Ah, no, you mustn't be leaving so soon. There is yet so much you have not yet seen, so many things strange, killer, and oh-mind. Well, if you must, then I suppose you must. Sometime soon you will pay us a return visit, all right, dear one? Thank you for stopping by ever so much.

You, Out there. What are you doing? Do you long to have your mind blown open so wide that it will take weeks for you to pick up the little, bitty pieces? Do you yearn for the oh-mind? Do you ache to feel all right?

Then by all means, you simply must come visit us at the Stooges' Funhouse. I know the boys would look forward to seeing you. In fact ... they'd be ... simply delighted. (RS 69)

CHARLIE BURTON (Oct 29, 1970)


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Postby Maxwell's Golden Pickaxe » 15 Jan 2007, 22:49

Go on, give us the third.

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Postby 12xu2 » 15 Jan 2007, 22:52

Oh go on then:

The Ig. Nobody does it better, nobody does it worse, nobody does it, period. Others tiptoe around the edges, make little running starts and half-hearted passes; but when you're talking about the O mind, the very central eye of the universe that opens up like a huge, gaping, suckling maw, step aside for the Stooges.

They haven't appeared on record since the Funhouse of two plus years ago. For awhile, it didn't look as if they were ever going to get close again. The band shuffled personnel like a deck of cards, their record company exhibited a classic loss of faith, drugs and depression took inevitable tolls. At their last performance in New York, the nightly highlight centered around Iggy choking and throwing up onstage, only to encore quoting Renfield from Dracula: "Flies," and whose mad orbs could say it any better, "big juicy flies ... and spiders...."

Well, we all have our little lapses, don't we? With Raw Power, the Stooges return with a vengeance, exhibiting all the ferocity that characterized them at their livid best, offering a taste of the TV eye to anyone with nerve enough to put their money where their lower jaw flaps. There are no compromises, no attempts to soothe or play games in the hopes of expanding into a fabled wider audience. Raw Power is the pot of quicksand at the end of the rainbow, and if that doesn't sound attractive, then you've been living on borrowed time for far too long.

It's not an easy album, by any means. Hovering around the same kind of rough, unfinished quality reminiscent of the Velvets' White Light/White Heat, the record seems caught in jagged pinpoints, at times harsh, at others abrupt. Even the "love" songs here, Iggy crooning in a voice achingly close to Jim Morrison's, seem somehow perverse, covered with spittle and leer: "Gimme Danger, little stranger," preferably with the lights turned low, so "I can feeeel your disease."

The band is a motherhumper. Ron Asheton has switched over to bass, joining brother Scott in the rhythm section, while James Williamson has taken charge of lead; the power trio that this brings off has to be heard to be believed. For the first time, the Stooges have used the recording studio as more than a recapturing of their live show, and with David Bowie helping out in the mix, there is an ongoing swirl of sound that virtually drags you into the speakers, guitars rising and falling, drums edging forward and then toppling back into the morass. Iggy similarly benefits, double and even triple-tracked, his voice covering a range of frequencies only an (I wanna be your) dog could properly appreciate, arch-punk over tattling sniveler over chewed microphone.

Given material, it's the only way. The record opens with "Search And Destroy," Vietnamese images ricocheting off the hollow explosions of Scott's snare, Iggy secure in his role of GI pawn as "the world's most forgotten boy," looking for "love in the middle of a fire fight." Meaning you're handed a job and you do it, right? Yes, but then "Gimme Danger" slithers along, letting you know through its obsequiously mellow acoustic guitar and slippery violin-like lead that maybe he actually likes walking that tightrope between heaven and the snakepit below, where the false step can't be recalled and the only satisfaction lies in calling your opponent's bluff and watching him fold from there. Soundtrack music for a chicken run, and will it be your sleeve that gets caught on the door handle? Hmmmm ...

Cut to "Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell," first called "Hard To Beat" and the original title ditched in favor of Funhouse's "1970." If it didn't seem like such a relic of the past, the Grande Ballroom would have to be resurrected for this one, high-tailing it all the way from Iggy's opening Awright! through James' hot-wired guitar to a lavish, lovingly extended coda which'll probably be Iggy's cue to trot around the audience when they ultimately bring it onstage. "Penetration" closes off the side, the Stooges at their most sensual, lapping at the old in-out in a hypnotic manner that might even have a crack at the singles games, Clive and Columbia's promotion men willing.

"Raw Power" flips the record over, and the title track is a sure sign that things aren't about to cool down. "Raw Power is a boilin' soul/Got a son called rock 'n' roll," and when was the last time you heard anything like that? "I Need Somebody" builds from a vague "St. James Infirmary" resemblance to neatly counterpoint "Gimme Danger," Iggy on his best behavior here, while "Shake Appeal" is the throwaway, basically a half-developed riff boosted by a nice performance, great guitar break, and some on-the-beam handclaps. Leaving the remains for "Death Trip" to finish off, the only logical follow-up to "L.A. Blues" and all that came after, crawl on your belly down the long line of bespattered history as the world shudders to its final apocryphal release.

I never drink ... wine. (RS 133)



LENNY KAYE (May 10, 1973)
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Postby Magilla » 16 Jan 2007, 00:07

This topic comes up about once a year. I love The Stooges for it's raw, malicious, driving, simplicity and intensity.
But the songs on Raw Power, to me, are too complicated sounding. James Williamson plays too much, compared to the sheer harsh drones and blast by Ron Asheton.
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