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Iggy & the Stooges: Raw Power 12” (Columbia, 1973)
This weekend the Stooges’ classic Raw Power provided an excellent soundtrack to doing my Sunday chores around the house. Not that one needs an excuse to pull Raw Power off the shelf, but on this occasion I listened to it because of a podcast I just started listening to. It’s called The Cobain 50, and the podcast plans to explore the list of his top 50 albums that appeared in Kurt Cobain’s journal, with one episode devoted to each album. I’ve always found that list interesting. It’s clearly not the type of meticulously thought through list a music critic might publish in a magazine... it’s more like something you’d dash off on a long, stoned Wednesday afternoon when you can’t think of anything better to do. And while Kurt had exquisite taste in music, he was also very young and living at a time when underground music was difficult to access. I can’t help but wonder what Cobain’s list might have looked like if he had been born in 2000 and composed it in 2020 after spending his teens rifling through obscurities on YouTube.
The podcast’s first episode is on Iggy and the Stooges’ Raw Power, a fitting opener since Cobain cited it as his favorite album of all time, not just on this list but in other interviews, too. The podcast is pretty short (about 25 minutes), and after a short introduction to the podcast and a capsule history of the Stooges, there isn’t much time left to talk about the album at any length, and the hosts don’t really offer any deep analysis. I think one host even notes that preparing for the episode was the first time he’d really sat down with Raw Power and given it an attentive listen. I guess it’s not fair of me to be annoyed with this because the hosts are a lot younger than me and I’m not their target audience, who I’m guessing are younger people who might like Nirvana’s music, but don’t know as much about them and aren’t steeped in 70s and 80s music. But while the episode didn’t give me any new insight about the album, it sparked the urge to revisit it, so kudos to them for that.
The second episode in the series is about the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa, and that episode aggravated me. I was telling Jeff that I should have made Surfer Rosa my staff pick since I have a lot more to say about that episode, but I didn’t actually listen to Surfer Rosa, so it doesn’t seem appropriate for my staff pick. I’m not even sure I have a copy of Surfer Rosa. I can’t remember the last time I listened to an entire Pixies record. I loved them when I was younger, but at some point I went cold on them. I still enjoy them whenever I hear them, but their music doesn’t spark any kind of reaction in me beyond a faint whiff of nostalgia. Part of my souring on the Pixies might have been seeing them play an utterly joyless set in a basketball arena on their first reunion tour. They sounded exactly like the records, but they literally didn’t say a word between songs and I got the impression they really didn’t want to be there. It was depressing.
This is nit-picky, but there was one aspect of the Pixies episode that especially irked me. The hosts spend much of the episode talking about Steve Albini, who recorded both Surfer Rosa and, of course, Nirvana’s In Utero. The hosts really try to drive home this claim that, after Nevermind’s gloss, having Albini record In Utero was some kind of giant middle finger to the system. Granted, I don’t think Albini was the person Geffen wanted to record In Utero, but Albini had worked on plenty of high-profile projects at that point, including records for major labels. And the proof is in the pudding... does In Utero really sound all that different from Nevermind? It still sounds huge, clear, and powerful... it’s not like they had their buddy record the album on his broken 4-track. Another thing that really irked me is that the hosts kept calling Albini the “producer” of In Utero, Surfer Rosa, and all the records he recorded. Rather famously, Albini hates the title producer and prefers his album credit to read, “recorded by Steve Albini.” Not only did they keep calling Albini a producer, but one host even says that Albini is his favorite producer of all time. It’s like, dude, your favorite producer of all time is not even a producer!
Anyway, back to Raw Power. I fucking love the Stooges. I remember last fall, when I was flipping through my records to see if there was anything I wanted to purge to make the used bins at the shop look nice for the Sorry State 10th Anniversary Weekend, I discovered I had several copies of all three Stooges albums. For each album, I had the first copy that I had bought, which I felt a sentimental attachment to. For the first album and Fun House, I also have copies of the very cool-looking Russian pressings. And then for all three I also have a nice original pressing. I think I ended up getting rid of my starter copies because there’s no need for me to keep a bunch of late 90s / early 2000s represses in my house when I’m never going to listen to them. But it’s a sign of how important those albums are to me and how formative they were that I felt some pangs at the idea of parting with these totems.
I wouldn’t mind having one more copy of Raw Power, though, because I have some attachment to the remix that Iggy did in 1997. This was the first version of the album I heard. I remember buying it while I was working a deathly boring summer job between my first and second years of college. I had very little to do at that job, but thankfully there was a record (well, mostly CD) store down the street that I would stop by on my lunch breaks. I made pretty good money at that job and I had very little work to do, so my purchases that summer were adventurous (for me, at least). It was only later that I learned how much people hated Iggy’s remix. People hated the original mix of Raw Power, but it seems like people hate Iggy’s mix even more. Having been weaned on Iggy’s mix, Bowie’s original mix sounds shrill to my ears, the higher frequencies on the guitars so piercing they’re almost painful when you really blast it. It would be nice to have a vinyl copy of the Iggy mix, since whenever I listen to one version of the album I invariably want to hear the other.
Maybe I’ll keep you updated as I make my way through The Cobain 50. I’m interested to hear what they do with the hardcore records on the list. If I’m so irritated with the way these guys talk about Raw Power and Surfer Rosa, my head might explode when they get to the Faith / Void split.