Stooges In Detroit

There was no peanut butter flung across the Persian pillars, no blood on the ornate stage of the Fox Theatre, but lots of stage diving and ear-shattering music as a buoyant Iggy and the Stooges returned to Detroit for a sold-out Friday the 13th gig at the grand old Roaring '20s edifice.

The Stooges played their last live gig before the breakup in 1974 just three or four blocks away from the Fox, at the old Michigan Theater (then known as the Michigan Palace), but the 33 years off seem to have refreshed them.

Ron Asheton was clearly enjoying himself as he provided that all-important mordant whine on guitar, and brother Scott "Rock Action" Asheton pounded out the sledgehammer beats that allow Iggy to gambol around like a hyperactive but extremely coordinated five-year-old.

Iggy turns 60 in a few weeks, but looks amazing, not even bothering to wear a shirt for one minute. Most importantly, he moved as if it was 1969; writhing and cracking his amazing long torso like a whip as he undulated across the stage.

The sound didn't do the Stooges any favors; the Rock Action drums were always easy to hear but Asheton's guitar was too far back and muddy in the mix. On "I Wanna Be Your Dog" especially, the familiar foreboding drone couldn't be heard unless you strained to hear him.

But as always, the concert was at least half a spectacle. Not even halfway through "Dog," Iggy hurled himself into the front rows. After he was hauled back up by his long-suffering roadie, he resumed a call and response with the crowd, Iggy yelling "Now I wanna," as the crowd roared back "be your dog!"

Next he delighted the crowd by pouring a beer over his head, drinking a few gulps, then throwing the bottle out into the crowd.

After "TV Eye" the group launched into "My Idea of Fun," the best song on their new album "The Weirdness," with the classic Iggy couplet: "My idea of fun/is killing everyone" (No worries: It's an anti-war song.)

The band jumps between 35-year-old songs and their brand new material, as if the ensuing decades of disco, punk, the Seattle sound, boybands and everything else was just a weird, collective nightmare we all somehow awoke from.

Although Iggy doesn't cut himself or reveal any body parts, and it's almost orchestrated when audience members clamber onstage with him during "Real Cool Time" and "No Fun," he somehow still manages to exude a primal sense of danger even now, pushing 60.

When Ypsilanti's favorite son slipped off the stage again during "Fun," there were gasps as people wondered if he'd have a soft landing, if the crowd would let him go and if his gray-haired, solicitous roadie would get him back onstage in one piece.

He did.

The biggest difference between today's Stooges show and those back in the mists of time is, instead of taunting Iggy and throwing glass and coins at him, the audience is with him. Back then something about Iggy set off the men, especially, but on Friday the air was thick with joyful testosterone, the middle-aged ones jumping frantically to the drone of anthems like "1969" and the young punks joyously joining in, as if they'd been teleported back in time.

As the crowd exited, one fan said, laughingly, "Well the pants stayed up!"

OK, so there was one nod to maturity.

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070414/ENT01/704140418/1033

I don't know where that rock journalist was sitting, but Ron's guitar sounded just fine to me. Never trust a so called "rock critic', look at that fool in Austin, Texas who tried to say The Stooges used back up tapes.

One highlight, for me. was when Iggy climbed up on top of one of the big Marshall amps. The man is gonna be 60, and he climbed up there like he was 18. And posed exactly like he did the first time I ever saw The Stooges back in 1969.

What else can I say? I am a hard core Stooges fan and an Internet DJ, not a rock journalist.

The drinks were expensive, but the women with the short mini skirts were nice to look at.

Oh, one more thing. It never fails to amaze me that people that do not like Iggy will pay good money to come to a show and yell " Fuck you " at him. I have seen it many times. Once, on Iggy's comeback tour in the late Seventies touring with Bowie we were in the 3rd row at Detroit's Masonic Temple. A fight broke out with my two buddies and these assholes who came up the center aisle close to the stage to yell at Iggy. We kicked their ass until the ushers dragged them away. Iggy and Bowie even had to stop the song for a few seconds.

And last night, some moron sitting right next to me yelled Fuck You for ten minutes straight. What the fuck is wrong with people like this?

I am too old to be kicking ass unless it's absolutely necessary.
So I went and got another Crown Royal and Coke and found a better seat.

In closing, and as I said earlier, it was the best Stooges show I have ever seen in recent years.

Zen Dog Radio ...The Home Of The Stooges http://search.mercora.com/page/ZenDog

Scott Asheton has fond memories of that night four summers ago when Iggy Pop and the Stooges tore it up onstage in metro Detroit for the first time since the early '70s.

It was Aug. 25, 2003, and the reunited Stooges performed only their third concert in 30 years. As 11,000 rapturous fans looked on at DTE Energy Music Theatre in Clarkston, a classic display of raw power was captured in all its sweaty, stage-diving, stage-dancing intensity on the DVD "Iggy & the Stooges Live in Detroit."

That the show had been delayed nearly two weeks by the Great Power Outage of 2003 only added to the anticipation.

"That made it build up even more, so by the time we actually got to the stage to do the gig, everybody was super-pumped and ready to play," Asheton, the legendary band's muscular drummer, said from his home in Sarasota, Fla.

The Stooges have been an ongoing concern since regrouping for four songs on Iggy Pop's 2003 solo album, "Skull Ring."

There have been spot dates since, though this year's concert itinerary is quickly filling up. Upcoming theater dates include a stop at the Fox in Detroit for a sold-out show on Friday the 13th, eight days shy of its frontman's 60th birthday.

Fans' hopes that the Ann Arbor band that practically invented punk music nearly 40 years ago is here to stay have been fueled by the release last month of "The Weirdness," the group's first album since 1973's landmark "Raw Power."

Ann Arbor native Asheton, 57, says the band will tour into the fall, probably at DTE Energy Music Theatre in Clarkston.

"I think we're going to do Pine Knob (DTE's original name) in the fall. The Fox is so small. We're sure there's more people that would like to see us come back in the fall," he said.

Getting to this point has been a long and sometimes dangerous journey for the group's surviving members, including Scott's older brother Ron, a guitarist who started the band with Ypsilanti native Jim Osterberg (Iggy Pop) in 1967. (Bassist Dave Alexander died in 1975.)

Their first attempts at making music were more avant-garde than the formative punk and metal that would emerge on their 1969 debut, "The Stooges," and 1970 follow-up, "Fun House," named for the Ann Arbor farmhouse they shared at the time. (The band played Sherwood Forest in Davison Township in its formative years.)

"It wasn't until it came down to do the first album (and the label, Elektra, said), 'We love Iggy, we love you guys. You're really cool. But you've got to write some songs. There's no way we'll record you guys the way you are now,'" Scott Asheton remembered.

Bedrock punk touchstones such as "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and "Real Good Time" emerged from those first sessions, but "The Stooges" and "Fun House" failed to meet Elektra's commercial expectations, and the band was dropped. By then, its chaotic shows had become notorious for their wall-of-noise sonics and Iggy's over-the-top antics, which included diving into the crowd, self-mutilation and slathering himself with peanut butter.

The group never officially broke up, but after David Bowie tried to resusciatate it - with Ron Asheton demoted to bass and James Williamson on guitar - for 1973's seminal "Raw Power," the members had descended into drug and alcohol problems.

Scott Asheton, who was living with the band in Hollywood, said he was adrift.

"I felt like if I just tried to live on the streets and stay in California, I'd probably die," he said, "so I got out of there and went back to the Detroit area and basically started curing myself, getting rid of bad habits."

He went on to play in Sonic's Rendezvouz Band, fronted by former MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith, backed Pop on a 1978 tour and worked with other bands, including Scot's Pirates, led by another Motown rock legend, Scott Morgan (whose band Powertrane will open Friday's show).

He's sure that his last gig, playing a Stooges tribute show with brother Ron, Dinosaur Jr. guitarist J. Mascis and former Minutemen (and current Stooges) bassist Mike Watt, directly led to the band's 2003 reunion.

"We were out playing with Mascis doing a Stooges set and Jim (Iggy) got word of that. I think that had a lot to do with it," Asheton said. "I used to bother his manager a lot. He'd say, 'Oh, Jim's busy touring. He's not opposed to the idea.' I did that for 10 years."

The Stooges' influence on punk and metal music is inescapable. Bowie, the Ramones, Sonic Youth, Nirvana and Slayer are just a few of the artists who cite their metallic k.o. as an influence.

Asheton admits that he's still a little floored by the music's long reach.

"When we were doing the album, we were just thinking, 'We're in a band,' you know," he said. "That's all we cared about. 'This is way cool. We're in a rock 'n' roll band.' We just played to play. We never thought about planning that this album's gonna be played for 40 years. We were just doing what we do and just having fun with it."

http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/flintjournal/index.ssf?/base/features-2/1176385987190530.xml&coll=5&thispage=2

The interview with Scott was cool. Now I need to do my interviews for the myspace page. Coming soon.

Ok...thanks to our moderator, Jesus Loves The Stooges, I have obtained a copy of the set list from the Detroit Fox Theatre Show. This is a very cool and special thanks to JLTS for sharing it with us.



http://search.mercora.com/page/ZenDog

Loose street dog.

Thanks for posting the setlist. I'll read your first four posts later.