Best Stooges song off the three original albums

No Fun
Down on the Street
TV Eye

^^ one of these

Death Trip

trying to choose bw fun house, penetration, and no fun

I kinda feel like "TV Eye" should take this in a walk, but this is ILM so who the fuck knows? "We Will Fall" could come out on top.

fuck gimme danger is pretty rad too

"Loose"

"fun house"

Gimme danger

i cannot think of any record that rocks harder than Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell.

[Editor's note: The blurb for Felt's The Splendour Of Fear was removed from this story after we discovered that it was released in 1984. Sorry about that. It's still a good record, though.]

rong thread

now i'm trying to imagine what a Felt version of "no fun" would sound like

It would sound like "No fun, no fun in the seventies except for The Osmonds."

i wanna be yr dog vs down on the street vs loose vs ann

...vs dirt

I might not vote

"Down in the Street" or "1970."

Actually would like to hear Lawrence Felt sing "Search and Destroy."

This is an impossible poll to vote in. I'm not too keen on 'Ann', 'Not Right', or 'Little Doll', but everything else is unfuckwithable.

"Down in the Street" or "1970."

― clemenza, Friday, August 23, 2013 11:25 AM (25 minutes ago)

^^^ plus "Search & Destroy" and "Loose" are my 4 faves. Tough choice.

gimme danger!

Can't really pick either

I kinda feel like "TV Eye" should take this in a walk, but this is ILM so who the fuck knows? "We Will Fall" could come out on top.

― 誤訳侮辱, Friday, August 23, 2013 12:04 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There have been some horrific poll results on ILM, but if that was the case it would be by far the worst.

Voting Loose, but Death Trip is tempting.

1970 for me, partly based on the live mission of burma version on 'the horrible truth...'

WE WILL FALL

voting TV Eye over Loose

man it's been too long since I listened to Fun House gotta rectify that right now

1970 4eva!!!!!!!!!

Going to see 'em for the third time this wknd at Riot Fest! :D

You could make a case for "Gimme Danger" being the best combo of words/music. But "1970" has always been a favourite. And then there's "TV Eye", "1969", "Fun House". And "Your Pretty Face is Going To Hell" is hard to beat (literally.)

Gonna say "1969" this time (first one I heard)

LA Blues

1969

1970 is awesome, too and No Fun is a favorite

Lots of great songs of course
But I wanna be your dog is the best of the best

And it is my guess of the winner too

Dog dog dog dog dog dog dog

Dirt dirt dirt dirt dirt dirt dirt

So c'mon...wooh...

Loose 2nd best

Frankly, there are at least have a dozen songs here that could win and I'd be absolutely cool with it.

How would you react if one of the other half will win

?

With great sang-froid

1969.
I Wanna Be Your Dog
No Fun
Down on the Street

voted No Fun

Lately I've been playing Down On The Street a lot but Search & Destroy is my all time

WE WILL FALL

― i guess i'd just rather listen to canned heat? (ian), Friday, August 23, 2013 1:23 PM

<3

This is basically impossible (unlike the album poll which would surprisingly easy) but if I had to pick one it'll be the first one I heard and be "TV Eye".

'down on the street' which is still prob my favorite opening to an album ever.

I got a feeling we are going to get no big winner out of the bunch. It's such a tightly wound set of tunes, there are great ones wherever you point.

1969

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

man I don't wanna get into it, people's views are entrenched, but when I first heard Raw Power I was unaware of any legend around it. It was just the album after Fun House. And the production/mixing seemed to me then, and seems now, to serve it perfectly: it's nasty, ugly, distracted (that opening solo on the title track flying in like a tape splice), deeply confrontational. It's why the first album doesn't really work for me: it just sounds like a well-recorded rock album. The songs are cool, Iggy's cool, the vibe's great, but it doesn't really menace. To me things that're menacing are things that aren't right: because there can't really be any threat in a record (it's just a record), but the right combination of off qualities can make you feel pretty uneasy. That combo here combined with blistering performances of the band's best songs gives the album an edge the others lack. The first two try to succeed as rock albums of unusual rock songs. Raw Power succeeds entirely on its own terms.

opening solo on "search and destroy" I meant.

I agree that the mix issues are overstated, but man do I hate Iggy's vocals and James' guitars on Raw Power. Iggy is all SHABBA-DOOBY-WABBA-YABBA-YEAH. Give me the cool menace of "1969" "TV Eye" "Dog" etc.

Is it the Bowie mix or Iggy mix that you like?

xpost to aero

The first album doesn't really work for me either (the best song is the long version of "Ann" that's included on the deluxe edition) but man, Fun House is in my top five albums by anybody, ever, up there with Reign in Blood and On the Corner as an achievement that there's just no fucking with, period. If the Stooges had only released Fun House they'd still be every bit as legendary as they are today, maybe more. That album is a fucking monster. I have actually listened to the entire boxed set for pleasure, that's how much I love Fun House.

i like raw power well enough, and have honestly never had any real problems with the mix (except for the absence of bass). each of the three is distinct, and they're all great in very different ways. debut gets all groovy and psychedelic, funhouse brings skull-caving tonnage nonstop, and raw power is this nasty, spark-throwing speed freakout. i like that it's all spindly and malformed, and the tunes are strong enough to handle the abuse. not my favorite stooges lp, but by no means a disappointment. subsequent remixes and alternate takes add little.

...but man, Fun House is in my top five albums by anybody, ever, up there with Reign in Blood and On the Corner as an achievement that there's just no fucking with, period. If the Stooges had only released Fun House they'd still be every bit as legendary as they are today, maybe more. That album is a fucking monster. I have actually listened to the entire boxed set for pleasure, that's how much I love Fun House.

$$$

Is it the Bowie mix or Iggy mix that you like?

Because I actually don't mind the Bowie mix. The mix is unusual ("aggressively odd", sure) but I don't think it's necessarily doing anything wrong per se: the individual parts seem clear and well-recorded enough and I am able to hear them all. So in a way, it's really more like a painting with distorted perspective, like what shoegazers were doing 20 years later in a sense. The way all the parts are squashed into digital distortion in the Iggy mix (the only mix I ever heard for years) is awful though.

Sund4r otm throughout thread. Shakey too.

it's pretty great though that each of the stooges' 3 records has such a distinct and different sound and vibe and energy and drug vibe - but they never lose their essential Stooginess.

If someone told us we had to play Chuck Berry or die, we would have to die.

Thanks to getting a free copy of the Stooges "Fun House" session box set (long story, prev told), I felt like I'd sat in on the development of the album.

So, "Fun House" is my favourite, I eventually came to the 1st album, then "Raw Power" in it's Iggy mix. After all the approb, I tracked down the original CD of the Bowie mix, I did think it would be expensive but I won it on ebay for £2.

I do now have the latest version of "Raw Power" with the improved mix, but frankly I don't think it matters which, really.

The first album doesn't really work for me either (the best song is the long version of "Ann" that's included on the deluxe edition) but man, Fun House is in my top five albums by anybody, ever, up there with Reign in Blood and On the Corner as an achievement that there's just no fucking with, period. If the Stooges had only released Fun House they'd still be every bit as legendary as they are today, maybe more. That album is a fucking monster. I have actually listened to the entire boxed set for pleasure, that's how much I love Fun House.

― 誤訳侮辱, Wednesday, August 28, 2013 8:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Right on. I do like the first record a lot -- more than Raw Power, not nearly as much as Fun House -- for the trashy swiningness of the group dynamic. But Fun House just opened up whole other worlds for me.

yeah ^that's about right for me

I read this article in Guitar World about stoner rock way back when, and there was this sidebar which traced the progression of the genre from the first Stooges' record to Meddle, then to Master of Reality and on forward to yr Vituses and Kyusses. This does not strike me as an exceedingly horrible context in which to hear that first record: Nuggets-style garage rock trying to invent doom/drone years before its time...

what they left out Blue Cheer?

more interesting than muddy indistinct mixes like the heartbreakers l.a.m.f

ok let me stop you right here

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Oh my...

LA Blues 1

Didn't think I'd be the only vote for this.

Is it the Bowie mix or Iggy mix that you like?

original vinyl mix, have never bothered with anything after; I consider it nearly perfect, I don't need to hear anybody's "we're fixing the thing that already changed your life" version

i voted for fun house and it is probably my fave stooges song but now i wish i'd voted for penetration so it would have at least one vote, such an awesome song

tried to listen to the iggy mix again yesterday just to see if it was as bad as i remembered, couldn't finish it. i do like what he did with 'penetration,' which actually sounds cooler with all the tinkly instruments prominent in the mix.

listened to the whole original album today and i agree with aero, the slightly 'off' quality suits the album well. all the different elements of every song seem to come at you from unexpected places. take 'gimme danger,' with iggy's weird half-mumbling vocal mixed low, like he's singing inside a closet or something -- there's something so weird and menacing about it, nothing like the polished doors-y ballads on the first album. funhouse will always be the masterpiece, the perfect one that sounds good in any context, but raw power's like the creepy evil twin that lives in the attic, and all the better for it.

polished... doors-y... ballads. I might be listening to a different first Stooges album.

(I do agree with you & Aero's assessment of Raw Power though!)

Don GAlluchi is the secret weapon of fun house. The production...

oh i just mean doors-y in the sense that you can tell iggy started off really really wanting to be jim morrison -- it's all over his vocals imo. the songs themselves aren't really doors-like.

Maybe in Ann but not the other songs

We Will Fall a little, too, maybe. I'm sure there was some influence but they also have kinda similar lower vocal ranges.

"I need somebody" also

"Penetration" got screwed

I don't remember what I voted!

Here's the album poll (votes/album):
67 Fun House
31 Raw Power
29 Stooges

solid results, but yeah, "penetration" deserves better ("dirt" too). understand why the slow & moody songs got slighted tho.

ha, i fucking LOVE all the zero point songs, with the exception of "death trip". i'd happily take "little doll", "raw power" or "not right" over over most of the low score finishers ("dirt", "1969" and "no fun" excepted).

ha, i fucking LOVE all the zero point songs, with the exception of "death trip".

Woahhh, hold on there, with the exception of "Death Trip"??!?!

yeah, i know, but it never stuck with me. great lyrics & energy, nasty guitar, but not much of a song.

TV Eye is a great one to win - but contenderizer otm on the zero-pointers - some serious gold there

i voted for fun house and it is probably my fave stooges song but now i wish i'd voted for penetration death trip so it would have at least one vote, such an awesome song

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, August 29, 2013 5:35 PM

...except I voted for We Will Fall

What's the general opinion regarding "Georgia Peaches", the extra live CD with "Raw Power" ?

Missed these results...Great mix at the top. The zero that most surprises me is "Raw Power," which I always thought of as one of the two signature songs on the third LP. Guess not.

gonna weigh in with my belated defense of iggy's redline mix of raw power - it really only sounds right on CD, that blare is so delicately balanced on the border of noise that any conversion to mp3/youtube/spotify turns it into a cracklethon, which is prolly how most folks hear it nowadays

I get what ppl see in the original mix on a theoretical basis but it's never moved me... think maybe I need to hear it on orig vinyl tho

somebody upthread was saying they couldn't understand how a bad mix could affect somebody's enjoyment of track, maybe check this out? (stereo diff isn't really a "mix" but it's a good equiv of a bad mix)

bowie's "black out"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz7vhDHPlyk

bowie's "black out" stereo diff mix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jINBtlDOXh8

either way 0 votes for "penetration" hurts but I guess I was part of the problem (voted "1970")

Always thought of The Lyres song "Help You Ann" as an answer song to The Stooges "Ann," if not a prequel.

What's the general opinion regarding "Georgia Peaches", the extra live CD with "Raw Power" ?

It's pretty great. I've been meaning to listen to it again lately, actually, which would hopefully allow me to come up with a slightly longer review. Good sound quality, I think it's one of the few shows recorded with the guy on keyboards playing with them?

It is, yeah. Just finished a play-through, and it's one of those "shitty bootlegs of other gigs around this time need not exist, we have this one!" type of recordings.

Then again, they had a few different phases, so this one is the "Iggy And The Stooges Raw Power" live rep.

(I only know the Iggy mix of Raw Power from the CD fwiw.)

I mean, I'd probably be one of the last people to defend a 'redline' mix of anything.

yeah, I dig it but I also like off the wall production jobs, plus it sounded a lot more unusual back in '97 before the loudness wars heated up

just wanted to point out that as a defender even I find the digital versions unlistenable