#The stooges raw power cracked#
#The stooges raw power full#

#The stooges raw power full#

It was a record divinely steeped in nihilism, of regret and bargain basement confidence, a record that was whip smart, the whip covered in barbed wire and napalm, its full milieu and scope in a true teenage wasteland.Īfter the flower power naivetÃ© of the 1960s came to a coffin lid slamming shut with various events of true angst-filled revolution, deaths at concert events like The Rolling Stones ill-fated Altamont performance, and coupled with harder drugs like heroin and cocaine which were replacing marijuana and LSD bite-size cartons that fit in hippie blue jeans and overalls, bands like The Stooges and The MC5 (both hailing from Detroit, Michigan, in itself a no man’s land of empty isolation and unspoken regret) were foraging their own new territory in the heavily footprinted land of hope and idealism.Įach song that both those bands sang on their debut albums (and especially on The Stooges’ second album, Funhouse) were like hammers smashing big blocks of ice, the shrapnel of the destruction far reaching wide to ears that were willing to accept it and absorb it. Even the fact that Raw Power was produced by glam-chameleon David Bowie didn’t bring a sense of commercialism to it. Never before in the history of rock and roll (except for possibly the pioneering Seattle band from the 1960s, The Sonics) has a band profited so much in every which way from a more erratic, disjointed, slap-it-together as quick as you can manner and attitude than the approach and execution of what manifested Raw Power.

#The stooges raw power cracked#

The record, led by the snarling white hot cracked iron pot vocals of Iggy Pop, the filthy and VU Meter popping guitar sounds of James Williamson, and the lurid yet lucid rhythm section of the Asheton brothers, Ron on bass (who originally played lead guitar for the group) and Scott on drums, or maybe they were garbage cans with drum skins on them, now stands as an important record, a playbook of pre-punk and the punk/grunge gumbo that was to follow. Raw Power, the third album by The Stooges, which is considered one of the forerunners of the entire punk movement which followed and dissected it like The Koran or other religious artifacts, celebrates its 40 Anniversary today.