IGGY AND THE STOOGES - RAW POWER @ 50

 

Released on February 7th, 1973, Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges is celebrating half a century on the shelves today. Despite struggles to get a proper mix of the album, it continues to stand as one of the most ferocious proto-punk albums of all time. It’s fierceness and savage intensity have made it a high water mark for aggressive rock & roll and kept it as a template for bands who aspire to ascend to its brutal heights.

By 1972, The Stooges were in a shambles. With their first two LPs failing to garner any serious record sales, the group had fallen into despair and substance abuse, with Iggy slipping deeper and deeper into his heroine addiction. The group had functionally ceased to exist and Iggy had gone off to London to try to dry out under the wing of David Bowie. Bowie had long been a fan of Iggy’s and was appreciative of the Stooges’ song writing abilities, far more than most of Pop’s peers of the time. While in London, Iggy was planning on working with guitarist James Williamson, who had handled second guitar duties on the last Stooges tour, and Pop had even negotiated a solo record deal with CBS. As he and Williamson began to try to get the ball rolling in the UK, they soon found themselves struggling to put together an acceptable rhythm section from the local talent available to them. It was at this point that Williamson suggested recruiting original Stooges, the Asheton brothers, Ron and Scott, with Ron reluctantly agreeing to move over to bass so that Williamson could handle all the guitar duties. This effectively reconstituted the Stooges, albeit in a modified configuration, but the solo contract with CBS would still necessitate the band being identified as “Iggy and the Stooges”.

With Williamson on guitar, the songwriting took on a different feel than the first two albums, moving away from their funkier grooves into a more anthemic hard rock kind of sound, though the label insisted on including two “ballads” on the new album to act as counterpoints on each side of the record. Recording took place at CBS’ London studio, occurring from September 10 to October 6, 1972, with Iggy acting as producer. After this, an initial mix of the album was done by Pop, but the results of that were rather botched as he mixed most of the instruments into one stereo channel with the vocals mixed into the other, with little regard for balance or tone quality. Because of budgetary constraints, they had little to work with to remedy that situation, but they were able to hire David Bowie to come in for a day and do a mix of the album. Bowie recalled:

“(It was) the most absurd situation I encountered … the first time I worked with Iggy Pop. He wanted me to mix Raw Power, so he brought the 24-track tape in, and he put it up. He had the band on one track, lead guitar on another and him on a third. Out of 24 tracks there were just three tracks that were used. He said 'see what you can do with this'. I said, 'Jim, there's nothing to mix'. So we just pushed the vocal up and down a lot. On at least four or five songs that was the situation.”

However when Morgan Neville's documentary film on Raw Power was released in 2010, they demonstrated that each individual instrument was indeed recorded on its own track on the original multi-track tapes, suggesting that Bowie was either mistaken or working with a copy that had mixed down the instruments on to the same track, likely the rejected mix Iggy had done before Bowie’s arrival.

What Bowie achieved with those limited resources has always been debatable, with some liking it while most found it murky and lacking in low end. Thus began the long, sordid story of alternate mixes of the LP. The original rejected Iggy mix was eventually released as “Rough Power”, and then, in 1997, Iggy himself created a brand new mix from scratch using the original multi-track tapes. This version, while addressing some of the issues with the Bowie mix in terms of lack of bottom end and buried drums, ended up creating its own issues as Iggy brought back in a lot of bits Bowie had cut out and pinned the levels on everything to such an extent that it introduced a layer of digital distortion which unsettled many purists and fans of the original LP’s mix. Personally, I find the Iggy mix more listenable overall, though the saturation caused by the excessive loudness does obliterate any sense of dynamics in the recordings. Therefore, it remains a flawed album no matter how you slice it, but a landmark, nonetheless.

Upon its release, the LP received a lot of critical high praise, but commercially, it was simply too extreme for any radio play and barely grazed the bottom of the top 200 LP charts in the US. That failure was a final nail in the coffin for the Stooges and, though Iggy and Williamson did attempt what would become another aborted project together, subsequently released as Kill City (1975), Pop would end up returning to Bowie’s care for a far more successful solo career with his back to back albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life (1977). The legacy of Raw Power, however, like the previous two Stooges LPs, would grow over the decades to enshrine all three of these albums as precursors to, and fundamental foundation stones for, the punk revolution to come.

NURSE WITH WOUND - SALT MARIE CELESTE @ 20

 

Marking its 20th anniversary this month is Nurse With Wound’s Salt Marie Celeste, which was released in February of 2003. An early, minimal mix of the album was issued as “Salt” in 2002, in a split limited edition release with Current 93 called “Music From the Horse Hospital”. That version featured an hour long mix of only the swelling, wave like drone which forms the foundation of the composition. The full version adds various sounds of groaning and creaking wood, creating an audio environment meant to evoke the ambiance of a ghost ship - lost, forgotten and adrift in the void of an endless ocean.

The reference in the title is to the infamous Marie Celeste brigantine ship found adrift and deserted in the Atlantic Ocean off the Azores Islands on December 4, 1872. The reasons for her fate have never been resolved...

“At the salvage hearings in Gibraltar following her recovery, the court's officers considered various possibilities of foul play, including mutiny by Mary Celeste's crew, piracy by the Dei Gratia crew or others, and conspiracy to carry out insurance or salvage fraud. No convincing evidence supported these theories.”
- Wikipedia

In 2022, to mark the 20th anniversary of its original recording by Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter, a double CD edition was released containing both variations of the recording.

23 SKIDOO - THE CULLING IS COMING @ 40

 

Released on February 4th, 1983, the sophomore LP from 23 Skidoo, The Culling Is Coming, is marking its 40th anniversary today. It’s an album of deeply ritualistic significance and one of the strangest releases in the group’s catalogue.

Side one of the album, A Summer Rite, was recorded live at 11.23 AM on July 17, 1982, during the very first WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance) festival, organized by Peter Gabriel in Shepton Mallet, UK. The performance featured David Tibet of Current 93 on Tibetan Trumpet. The original side B material, A Winter Ritual, was recorded at Dartington Music College, on October 23, 1982. The original pressing of the LP has a lock groove between the 4th and 5th tracks on side A, with "Command as fuck" inscribed in the vinyl. The A side duration is therefore listed as “infinite” (∞). The B-side has a precise duration of 23 minutes. The later CD edition swapped the order of the LP sides and added a third section, An Autumn Journey, to fill out the additional CD capacity.

The music on the album is heavily influenced by eastern Gamelan percussion & gongs, combining that sound with more experimental Industrial ambience and sonic manipulations. With that influence, it is the group’s least rhythmic release, focusing as it does on ritual ambiences and occult themes.

FUN BOY THREE - WAITING @ 40

 

Marking it’s 40th anniversary this month is the second and final album from Fun Boy Three, Waiting, which was released in February of 1983. Produced by Talking Heads main man, David Byrne, The album upped the ante in terms of production values and song writing sophistication while sharpening the group’s ability to make pointed sociopolitical commentary within the context of accessible pop music.

The first FB3 album, which is still my personal favorite, was nonetheless something of a rushed affair and the group didn’t have the luxury of fully developing their ideas. Despite this, they still created an album loaded with innovative and challenging music, all the while keeping the proceedings “fun” and playful and tuneful enough to make a mark on the singles charts. But their second album gave them a chance to catch their breath and indulge in a more evolved and advanced state of song-craft. Whereas their debut focused on tribal African inspired percussion, the focus for this album seemed to move back to the UK and delve into an almost “music hall” retro feel reminiscent of 1930s pop music. The instrumentation on the album was also expanded to include a broader palette of sounds, from strings to horns to keyboards. The sparseness of the debut was replaced by a more layered sound, though never so dense as to lose the cleanliness of the mix. Lyrically, songs like The More I See drive home the disillusionment hiding behind the happy melodies, though on the other hand, Our Lips Are Sealed brings things back to something less confrontational, becoming a major hit for the group. In an interview with Terry Hall, he commented on how, when he first met David Byrne, the two literally just stared at each other in silence for ages, sizing each other up, but once the ice was broken, the collaboration turned out to be perfect for the album.

With the recent, untimely passing of Terry Hall, the beauty of this album has become far more poignant. I must confess that it took me a long, long time to finally appreciate this record. I LOVED the experimentation and spontaneity of the debut, so when this was released, if felt too “conventional” for me and too mainstream. As I’ve reevaluated it in recent years, I’ve come to appreciate its more subtle qualities. It conceals its teeth behind its sealed lips, but it’ll take a bite out of you when you least expect it.

BE BOP DELUXE - DRASTIC PLASTIC @ 45

 

Released in February of 1978, Be Bop Deluxe’s fifth and final studio LP, Drastic Plastic, turns 45 years old this month. It’s an album which would mark a pronounced shift in the group’s style, radically aligning them with the minimalist zeitgeist of the era, which had become the driving thrust for alternative music by the end of the ‘70s.

Recording for the album began in 1977, though not until Bill Nelson’s management had convinced him to stick with Be Bop Deluxe for one more go-round. He was ready to pack the band in at that point and head into a vastly different direction from the lush progressive rock the band had made their stock-in-trade over the course of their previous four albums. The stripped down, lean and angular sounds of the “new wave” and “punk” scenes were seducing Nelson towards a tougher, tighter approach, just as Bowie had been pursuing on his “Berlin” albums with Brian Eno. Nelson had a dystopian futurist vision in his head and was determined to realize it.

The band decamped to the south of France for recording, mostly inspired by Nelson’s love of French surrealist film maker Jean Cocteau. They booked into Chateau Saint Georges studio, which offered a picturesque, romantic backdrop for recording. It’s a setting which seems at odds with Nelson’s brittle visions of tomorrow, yet it suited the work in the end. The band were intending to record a double LP for this release, but the label ended up curtailing that ambition and insisted on keeping it down to a single album’s worth of material. That meant that a number of songs recorded for the album ended up shelved until after the band had broken up, eventually appearing on the posthumous, “Best of and the Rest Of Be Bop Deluxe” double album a couple of years later.

The material that did make the album showed off the band’s new sound with a collection of romanticized modern visions of life truly in the “air age”, with robots cleaning the home while doubling as personal attendants/jailers (Superenigmatix), collapsing civilizations (Panic In the World), fascist governments (New Precision) and science fiction telepathy (Electrical Language). Repetitive tape-looped drums and sharp, economical guitar and keyboard arrangements kept the album feeling steely and precise. The softer side of the band wasn’t completely eradicated, however. Visions of Endless Hopes is a languid instrumental built around fluttering mandolins, while the album’s closer, Islands of the Dead, is a loving memorial to Nelson’s recently deceased father, with the vocal recording performed on an exterior balcony of the chateau at sunset.

The cover graphics for the album were created by legendary ‘70s design house, Hipgnosis, who were responsible for some of the most striking LP imagery of the decade. While it’s not their most notable work on the front, showing a room of primary colored surfaces with an enigmatic plastic “apparatus” superimposed, the rear band photo is far more intriguing. The band are shown in a bare room with TV sets for heads, each showing the performer’s real head on the screen. Nelson’s screen, however, is glitching while another set on the floor shows his head in focus. It’s one of my all-time favorite band photos and perfectly captures the mood of the LP within.

At the time of its release, it received middling reviews and modest record sales. After a bit of live touring to support the LP, Nelson had his fill and was ready to move on to realizing his vision more fully with his next project, Bill Nelson’s Red Noise, and their only album, Sound on Sound. Nelson has commented that he was ready to move on to Red Noise for Drastic Plastic and he felt that the end results for that album were a compromise of what he’d really wanted to do because he was convinced to stick with BBD. You can hear the difference with Red Noise as it is singularly uncompromising in its vision and never lets up its assault on the senses. While it may not have been the record he wanted, Drastic Plastic has always been one of my favorite BBD LPs, right from the first time I heard it. There’s a lot about it that has retained its relevance to the world at large, with its themes of alienation, automation and exploitation all serving as prophetic of the times to come. The recent deluxe edition’s 2021 remix offers a fresh interpretation of the music, allowing listeners to hear details which were previously obscured, bringing fresh life to an album which has never had the recognition it truly deserves.

FANNY - MOTHER’S PRIDE @ 50

 

Celebrating it’s 50th anniversary this month is the fourth and penultimate album from rock’s premier major label all girl group, Fanny, with Mother’s Pride, which was released in February of 1973. It was also the last album to feature original members June Millington (guitar) & Alice DeBuhr (drums), With the help of producer Todd Rundgren, it was arguably their most sophisticated album, though perhaps not their hardest rocking effort.

After their stint in London to record their their third album, Fanny Hill, at the illustrious Abbey Road Studios, they were back on American soil and ensconced in Todd Rundgren’s Secret Sound Studio in New York City for their next LP. When it came time to pick a producer, Todd was the only name all the band members could agree on, at least as far as people who were available. Todd’s approach with the band was to move them away from the hard rock sound of the previous records and into a more pop friendly feel. Ultimately, this ended up being at odds with some members of the group, who were hoping for a more raw, rockin' sound. Both June and Jean Millington felt the end result was overproduced and they were also resentful that he was so guarded about the production process, shutting the band out of the mixing process entirely. While this resulted in disappointment for some in the band, critically, the response was mostly very favorable, with many finding the combination of Fanny’s music with Rundgren’s production sophistication a perfect marriage. Personally, I find it hard to argue with Todd’s results as he managed to bring out a layered and varied complexity to their performances and songwriting that weren’t as apparent on their previous records. The exception to that being the off key vocals from Alice DeBuhr on Solid Gold, which were reportedly recorded when she was off-her-face drunk. Even there, however, Rundgren’s production prowess manages to make it seem deliberate enough to work in the finished mix.

As richly loaded with quality music and performances as the album is, it didn’t help break the group in any meaningful way. The tensions of the recording process and the industry in general ultimately proved too much for June and Alice and the group fractured with them jumping ship to leave bassist/sister Jean Millington and keyboardist Nickey Barclay holding the bag to reconstitute the band. They’d pull it together to record one final album with original drummer, Brie Howard, and new guitarist, Patti Quatro. As Fanny faded into obscurity by the back half of the ’70s, the beauty of this album was lost for a long time until the past few years, when a revival of interest in the group brought a new wave of appreciation for their pioneering efforts.

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - WHITE LIGHT / WHITE HEAT @ 55

 

Marking its 55th anniversary today is the sophomore album from the Velvet Underground, White Light / White Heat, which was released on January 30th, 1968. It was the Velvet’s most aggressive outing and, while perhaps pushing their production limits beyond their capacity, it still became a critical influence on the worlds of extreme music making for decades to come.

After the disappointing sales for their debut album the year before, the relationship between the band and producer Andy Warhol began to deteriorate. Not that Andy actually did much of anything in the studio to influence the band’s sound, but the decision to dismiss Andy would impact them more in terms of name recognition as they couldn’t leverage Andy’s fame anymore. The band also decided to part ways with Nico, a move which she interpreted as being “fired” as well. For the second album, the group brought Tom Wilson back to produce and set about assembling material largely inspired by the harsh noise jams they’d been exploring during their live performances over the previous year. These excursions would form the conceptual backbone for the new album. The group had also worked out an endorsement deal with VOX, who provided a slew of brand new guitars, amps and, most notably, distortion pedals, for them to exploit.

The feel of the album was designed from the get-go to be opposed to the “summer of love” vibes of the West Coast hippy scene. It was a deliberate bracing against that tide and the group, especially Lou Reed, wanted to push the tone of the record into the realms of excessive volume and distortion. The problem with this disposition was that the group didn’t quite understand how to achieve this effect without compromising the production quality of the album. As a result, when it was eventually mastered, additional compression resulted in an over saturated sound which brought in additional, unplanned levels of distortion. Where the debut album had a balance between their more aggressive nature and softer moments with songs like Sunday Morning, what ended up on WL/WH was pretty consistently harsh and volatile with little relief from the assault.

The album kicks off with the title track, with lyrics referencing the effects of intravenous injection of amphetamines - a speed rush. But the title also references Reed’s interest in certain esoteric teachings which involved healing through the use of a kind of “white light” inspired by Alice Bailey and her occult book, A Treatise On White Magic. It’s a pulsing fusion of doo-wop and proto-heavy-metal. This is followed by The Gift, the first VU track to feature John Cale on vocals. It’s an oddly mixed extended dirge which features the band improvising away on one side of the stereo field while Cale recites a story about a lover who’s surprise for his girlfriend goes terribly wrong. After a few more shorter songs like Here She Comes Now, the album wraps up with a 17 minute jam about a drag queen orgy that goes off the rails. A rather progressive theme when you consider how far ahead of the curve Reed was with the whole trans culture.

Recording of the album was done quite quickly over the course of a couple of weeks and the band didn’t have a lot of songs to work with at the time, thus the minimal track listing. Producer Tom Wilson never worked with the band again after struggling to accommodate their insistence on pushing the volume and distortion throughout the sessions. Reed purposefully wanted to go "as high and as hard as we could" and, though there were brewing conflicts with Cale, which would ultimately result in his leaving the band after this album, during the recording sessions, the band were essentially all pulling in the same direction, though that may have resulted in them going over a cliff, but at least they went as a unit.

The cover for the LP was based on an idea which originated with Warhol, but he was not credited for it. It shows a barely visible tattoo of a skull. The tattoo was that of Joe Spencer, who played the lead role in Warhol's 1967 film Bike Boy. Spencer starred as a hustler in a motorcycle gang and is seen taking a shower in the movie. Reed selected the image from negatives of the film, and it was enlarged and distorted by Billy Name, one of the members of the Factory. Sterling Morrison, however, states that the cover was picked by him.

At the time of its release, it was a commercial failure, selling even less than the group’s debut. References to drugs and sex resulted in numerous stations banning the record and its single from airplay, which didn’t help generate interest. MGM didn’t promote the album much either, which disappointed the band, who came off the session feeling confident in what they’d done. They wanted a record that rejected the “flower power” of the day, but that also meant turning off those record buyers, leaving only a small cult to appreciate its edginess. Rolling Stone refused to even review it and Melody Maker, on the other hand, wrote off the album as "utterly pretentious, unbelievably monotonous”. Not all critics were so negative and dismissive, but those voices were sparse and had no impact on record buyers.

Yet its legacy would eventually make it an inspiration for punk, No Wave and noise music in decades to come. Its brutal aggression, searing distortion and blistering raw energy would inspire future generations, who saw the bankruptcy of the hippy culture and its failure to engender any real change, to use it as a clarion call to arms for a disaffected generation of rejects and rebels. There are few examples in popular music of a band pushing itself into such a starkly confrontational stance and it stands as a rare breed of outsider art.