Boston Show Review

STOOGES IN BOSTON

Iggy Pop caterwauled over and over again, “I say we will have a real cool time tonight! I say we will have a real cool time tonight!” Guitarist Ron Asheton viciously slammed his guitar into the red with a flurry of violent buzz-toned riffs. A hundred fans stormed the Orpheum stage at Pop’s urging to dance, chant and mosh around the band.

The Stooges made their point: They’re not the Eagles.

Pop has insisted that the Stooges reunion isn’t about money or glory or a sad, impotent dinosaur trying to relive a heyday it never got. He said he just wanted to front a real band again, and at Saturday’s sold-out Orpheum show, he fronted the realest rock band around.

While inviting the crowd onstage for a song midset was wild, disarming gimmick, he didn’t need it to prove the Stooges aren’t fooling around.

Nearly 60, Pop charged the stage with a menace frontmen 40 years younger can’t muster. Shirtless and looking like a punk-rock version of a “Fight Club” Brad Pitt, Pop squirmed across the floor and scrambled atop amps and jumped in and out of the crowd through four opening volatile Stooges classics - “Loose,” “Down on the Street,” “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and “T.V. Eye.”

Behind him, the Stooges thumped mercilessly. Ron Asheton has spent the past three decades becoming the guitarist he aspired to be on “Fun House” - his rhythm playing was raw and thick, his solos were fiercely ugly. Drummer Scott “Rock Action” Asheton propelled the band with focused, tribal thuds. Sometime-Stooge and sax player Steve MacKay blasted out rhythm and blues-meets-free jazz. New bassist and punk icon Mike Watt got deep into the groove and stayed out of the way of Iggy and Ron.

Songs off the band’s 2007 reunion record, “The Weirdness,” were few and far between but fit nicely with the older stuff. Leaner tunes “My Idea of Fun,” “I’m Fried” and “She Took My Money” worked well next to long workouts such as “Fun House.”

The absence of songs from “Raw Power” - the Stooges’ 1973 album when Ron Asheton was demoted to bassist - was noticeable. While Pop never let the energy dip, dropping in “Search and Destroy” or “Gimmie Danger” off “Raw Power” would have boosted the set.

But Pop accomplished what he set out to do. No one at the Orpheum show confused the Stooges with a band resting on its laurels. It was punk at its genuine best.

http://theedge.bostonherald.com/musicNews/view.bg?articleid=193596