The Stooges

About

About a week after The Stooges put out their first album in August 1969, they played a show in Boston, opening for a feel-good blues-rock band called Ten Years After. It was so loud, so crude, so contrary to the pervasive optimism of the moment that nobody knew quite what to make of it. After all, Ten Years After had just come from playing Woodstock, and here were a bunch of creeps from the Midwest pushing out a wall of noise, their singer writhing on the ground, cutting himself. So, the audience—roughly 3,000 people—just sat in silence. About a decade later, when asked what he thought his legacy wa, Iggy Pop said he wasn't sure, but he thinks he helped wipe out the ’60. Even after the thousands of albums it helped inspire, <i>The Stooges</i> sounds mean. They’re bored (“1969”). They’re frustrated (“No Fun”). They’re so wild with lust, they hate themselves (“I Wanna Be Your Dog”). Whereas the rebellion of early rock ’n’ roll was fun and prosocial, <i>The Stooges</i> is inward and nihilistic, a perfect reflection of the reptilian poison lurking in the teenage id. They’d been inspired by the noisiness of The Velvet Underground, but in transposing that noise from New York to sleepy Ann Arbor, Michigan, it takes on an ominous cast: These are sweet neighborhood boys down in the rec room, and they’re going out of their mind. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

Start your shelf to read the full take →