Dance to the beat of the living dead... (Raw Power - The Stooges)

Member Name: rabbitina hole

Product:	Raw Power - The Stooges
Date:	08/08/01 (101 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Rocks, Insanity, All of it! ALL OF IT!

Disadvantages: Could possibly make you slightly deranged, Could be too much for some (if you're a girly wuss like Bowie...)

‘Raw Power’ pretty much says it all about this album. Raw Power; Iggy howling over James Willamson’s distorted and jagged guitar playing, creating an apocalyptic rock landscape to be reckoned with.

But let me go back a little, The Stooges had already knocked out some genre busting albums on the Elektra label (The Stooges, in 1969, and Fun House in 1970) and provided stark contrast to the musical set of the moment. On the one hand you had peace and love, and all the bands that went with it – and on the other you had the likes of The Stooges, with Iggy – almost certainly a certifiable madman, and 100% crazed junkie straight out the trailer park. (Of course they weren’t the only band going against the mainstream of the time – bands like The Doors were also up there – with Jim Morrison being a main source for Iggy’s inspiration).

By the time Raw Power was on the horizon, Iggy was washed up in London, and been through rehab a couple times, whence he came upon a thin white duke. David Bowie (whose mixing of the album constantly comes under fire, mainly because it’s crap, esspecially compared to the harder re-released Iggy mix) went in the studio with Iggy, and the eight tracks that comprise ‘Raw Power’ were quickly laid down.

The pace of the album is set, straight from the get-go, with the heroin fuelled ‘Search and Destroy’ – with self proclaimed ‘forgotten boy’ Iggy screeching and howling over a rocking, distorted, punk track. Punk would probably have never happened without the Stooges, and I’m not talking Blink 182. Iggy’s out of control nature is evident in the lyrics, such as ‘I’m a streetwalking cheetah with a hide full of napalm, I’m the runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb’.
He wasn’t kidding either. You only have to look at the album cover and sleeve to believe it.

The album doesn
217;t stop there either, it grabs you and doesn’t let go, seemingly getting louder and louder – the sound becomes harsher and harsher. The guitars are like buzzsaws, and all the while Iggy presides over it, like some crazed, demented misfit. Tracks like ‘Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell’ (originally ‘Hard to Beat) and ‘Death Trip’ show Iggy at his dazzling, insane, out of control best. The kind of mindset where he would happily get the crap kicked out of him and then laugh, and beat himself around the head a bit. The music’s almost dangerous. It's the kind of music that wouldn't just knock the rest in to a cocked hat, but beat it up, steal it's house keys, rob it blind and then burn it down.

Iggy doesn’t always take the center stage however, the guitars of James Willamson – and the throbbing murky underbelly bass and drums of brothers Ron and Scott Asheton really come to the fore, especially on tracks like ‘Penetration’ – one of the albums sleaziest tracks. And that’s saying something.
I’m gonna wind it down right now, as it’s almost impossible to fully describe this album – it really has to be listened to. At only eight tracks you may think you're not getting your money's worth - but trust me – that’s probably all you can handle. It's almost too much to handle! An album that never lets up, and rocks harder than anything before, and nothing has ever matched it. It’s a dirty jagged, sleazy, whining, crazy, positively dirty album, that you can’t get any louder and gave birth to punk. (On a side note, don’t play it too loud, I got the neighbours from 4 doors away coming round and complaining once…..you won’t be able to resist though.)

I’ll finish with a quote from the man himself; ‘what you had there at the time was a rip-snortin', super-heavy, nitro-burnin', f
uel-injected rock band that nobody in this world could touch ..’

He wasn’t kidding. Raw Power indeed.

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