[ann ashtray]

For the longest time I didn't appreciate Raw Power much. I thought it was a bit too straight forward (for what my taste was at the time...), and much preferred the weirdness (no pun intended...) of Ron Asheton's playing. I eventually came to point to weird I enjoyed the occasional "softer" elements of the record, i.e. the ballads. Dark and bluesy. When Ronnie died and there was some word on the street talk of Williamson coming back on board, I tore the album apart and realized it has something to say that I felt historically, and personally, I could identify with. It's wild and crazy as fuck. It's not the "I'm bored let's do drugs and hang out and be sexually frustrated" teenage thing often heard on the first two records. It's a drug addled pissed off Iggy. It's "I'm poor, yr rich, fuck you. Fuck everything". I could identify with that sort of progression at the time. I still can sometimes. There, for me, is no filler on that record. The whole album, sonically while some songs are better than others, is just wild/pure emotion. Not many records pull this off so well. Very few do. Too few do. I think, lyrically, it's Iggy in tip-top form.

As far as the first record, goes...I think it's a good introduction to things to come. It's young, it's honest. The music is interesting but that Fun House...lordy....what a fucking record. My favorite "rock" album of all time. I still swear by if anyone doesn't like it, then they don't truly like punk rock. Those guys might have taken some notes from the Doors/etc, but they pushed that to an extreme. They weren't speaking for the hippies...they were speaking for those few other weirdos that might have been associated with hippies, but were anything but. I think those old Stooges records still have the same effect on people today. It can be "fun", but there is something far deeper there. Something worthy of thought. Something I don't think was really intended for everyone to get...hence the brutal honesty that for me was always...and still is...the Stooges. Pure ass American middle class white boy blues rock n roll. That's what Iggy wanted to create, quite specifically. As a young person, before the Stooges, he came to Chicago to drum for some of the older blues guys. He, all of the Stooges, loved blues. He didn't always identify directly with some of the issues many of the older black blues guys were expressing, but he felt the honesty of it...and whilst sitting on the water, on some dock, in a place I can't yet but hope to some day find, he made the decision to create his own version of the music he so loved. No one's done it better. No one.

If you're looking for filler, ya can find it. You can find it on most any album by most any artist. With the Stooges I never really hear it though. But then again, I'm not looking for it. I feel no need to. I love those albums that much.

I saw them live last year. To date, one of the best rock shows I've ever seen. On par with Mudhoney.