The Missouri 1971 concert

nick wrote:

Shakes wrote:

nick wrote:

trailerborn wrote:

Finally downloaded a torrent of the cleaned-up St. Louis show.

would you mind sharing the link?
or if anyone has it; i always really liked this set and a cleaned up version would be fantastic.

it's easy to find through google. if you can't find it then you will have to get 10 posts first (quality, not spam!) then contact heavy liquid for access to the bootleg section.

why not just give it to me if it's so accessible?

You can't post bootleg links in threads that aren't in the bootlegs section. I made that mistake

it's cool, someone was nice enough to pm it to me.
and now i can enjoy it.

JESUS_LOVES_THE_STOOGES wrote:

rumour says they came back for 1 more song (which is correct) but, people say the song was without Ron.... but when I just listened to it, I'm SURE I hear a second guitar while James is doing the solo's on that last song.... listen closely....

Yeah, Ron must be playing in 'That's What I Like'..and what's strange (or not) the first solo sounds typical in Ron's style! Maybe I'm wrong, but the next solo (played in the middle) is definately James..cuz the solo has sorta this 'Scorpio-attacking' vibe to it..

23rd Express wrote:

Interested to hear others ideas on this recording. It freaked me out in 1987 when I first heard it and it still does now - sublime music and some of the Stooges best playing in my opinion. To me it represents an honest reflection of the innate ugliness and depravity of America's industrial wastelands and the culture that created it.

WOW. I have just heard the cleaned up version of this gig (titled 'St Louis Adolescent Nightmare'), and I have been knocked sideways. It's a completely smoking performance, and Asheton and Williamson work so well together... that's the biggest surprise for me, as I always thought their styles would have been incompatible. But Asheton's razor-sharp riffage is perfect against Williamson's insane leads. And Recca's bass really locks in to the whole thing (Rock Action is at his primitive best, as always). 'You Don't Want My Name' and 'See Me Dancing' are the ultimate examples of this interplay -- such a dangerous, dark and violent sound.

Sublime is definitely the word for this entire performance, and if it's true, 23rd Express, that someone has deliberately fucked with the original tape, then that is a tragedy. At times, as you intimate, you can hear the instruments become so clear it's almost a shocking revelation, but then it drops down to the previous muddy levels (which are still a 100% improvement over the Starfighter CD). There is definitely something funny going on with this recording.

Even so, I encourage everyone to put aside their James/Ron differences of opinions and rivalries and get a hold of this, the playing is just too good to be true from all involved!

saichan wrote:

[

Even so, I encourage everyone to put aside their James/Ron differences of opinions and rivalries

The assumption that there's always 'rivalry' between 'James' and 'Ron' fans gets tiresome. I reckon most Stooges fans are perfectly capable of appreciating both even if they might prefer one over the other.

Great show.

Nadja wrote:

saichan wrote:

Even so, I encourage everyone to put aside their James/Ron differences of opinions and rivalries

The assumption that there's always 'rivalry' between 'James' and 'Ron' fans gets tiresome. I reckon most Stooges fans are perfectly capable of appreciating both even if they might prefer one over the other.

Great show.

Hi Nadja. Well, you've picked out a tiny part of my post... My comment was really a flippant, and general, call to arms rather than directed at anyone in particular. However, I would say -- based on the fairly extensive reading and research I've done outside of this board, most Stooges fans, or at least a lot of them (and that's on the internet at least, which is what I'm going by), do have a bias against either Asheton or Williamson. Outside of the net, Please Kill Me is a good example (and fairly shocking in its forcefulness) of taking sides. There are even a couple of threads on this board in the same vein (I recall one where someone said they wouldn't meet Williamson if you paid them), although admittedly pretty much everyone here is openminded and really knowledgeable, which is why it's the best Stooges site around.

One of the many great achievements of Paul Trynka's book is to finally settle the ledger and get a more balanced picture of Williamson's contribution, and also of Asheton's feelings about Williamson, instead of relying on second- or even third-hand information, as so many people seem to do when talking about the relative merits of these two.

In light of Paul T's achievement, to hear this magical interplay between Asheton and Williamson on this St Louis bootleg is a delirious thrill. One can't help wondering how the band would have turned out if they'd kept this formation.

To return to the music, it's super-heavy, isn't it? Who else was that heavy in '71? Led Zeppelin? I don't think so. Perhaps Black Sabbath, but maybe that's it...

Thanks again to the original uploader!

The Pink Fairies were that heavy in 71.

mc wrote:

The Pink Fairies were that heavy in 71.

I actually can't believe I forgot about the Fairies. I do love them, but haven't listened to them for ages. There is a BBC session they did in 71, I think, with two guitars in the lineup, that seriously shreds the speakers. Paul Rudolph is a very underrated guitarist, and a bit similar to Williamson in that he turned his back on the industry to go back to work (in his case to open a bicycle shop!).

And if we're on the Fairies, we may as well include Hawkwind also... They were getting progressively more heavy around that time. Hmmm, maybe some of the German 'krautrock' bands, too, like Ash Ra Tempel. Their first album was described by Julian Cope as parallel to the Detroit sound of the early Stooges... a fine album, indeed.

weird... check this out: over on the stooges yahoo group, there was this message on feb 18: http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/iggypopandthestoogesgroup/message/1412

"stooges 1971 set due for release

Its a 4 disc high quality package featuring the 5 piece Stooges, due
fairly soon, endorsed by the remaining Stooges. I'll post the
tracklisting later."

two days later, from the same poster:

"this has been cancelled..."

that's all! no further info, no nothing!

really strange.

saichan wrote:

mc wrote:

The Pink Fairies were that heavy in 71.

I actually can't believe I forgot about the Fairies. I do love them, but haven't listened to them for ages. There is a BBC session they did in 71, I think, with two guitars in the lineup, that seriously shreds the speakers. Paul Rudolph is a very underrated guitarist, and a bit similar to Williamson in that he turned his back on the industry to go back to work (in his case to open a bicycle shop!).

And if we're on the Fairies, we may as well include Hawkwind also... They were getting progressively more heavy around that time. Hmmm, maybe some of the German 'krautrock' bands, too, like Ash Ra Tempel. Their first album was described by Julian Cope as parallel to the Detroit sound of the early Stooges... a fine album, indeed.

Try the Finland Freakout 1971 album that is way heavier than the BBC Sessions.

[quote="saichan"][quote="Nadja"]

saichan wrote:

I would say -- based on the fairly extensive reading and research I've done outside of this board, most Stooges fans, or at least a lot of them (and that's on the internet at least, which is what I'm going by), do have a bias against either Asheton or Williamson.


!

in purely musical terms it's pretty hard not to have a bias, their styles were so different

23rd Express wrote:

After listening intently to the better quality May 1971 concert that has been in circulation for about a year I have wondered if it actually represents either a really strange mono recording on a little tape recorder of some kind

or

actually a really pretty unique and amazing multitrack recording which has been purposefully messed with by someone either holding a master recording or low gen to the original.

Nice theory, and I love the idea that there might be a pristene multitrack recording of this gig buried somewhere. However, I personally think that option (1) above is probably closer to the truth. The quirks in the sound have a lot in common with other ancient audience tapes that were recorded on basic equipment and have gone through any number of tape generations on the way to our ears.

It just doesn't sound like a desk recording to me. The vocals are too distant, there's too much room ambience, and then there's stuff like the girl shouting into the microphone about 40secs into That's What I Like.

True, the levels do jump all over the place. But to me, the way they jump about suggests someone sitting in the audience with a handheld mic. Periodically you get the kind of phasing (or apparent changes in EQ) that you'd expect from a cheapo mic being moved around, covered or dropped. The same goes for the changes in guitar level that you mention - the taper might even have been pointing the mic towards Ron or James's amp during the solos.

All the other artefacts can be explained in the same way, especially when you take into account the many tape generations that this recording must have gone through between '71 and now. Taps and knocks on the mic during recording, wobbly tape reels, power spikes caused by stuff like lights being switched on and off during tape-to-tape dubbing... release a recording into the wild for 38 years and you end up with no end of shit like this.

Having said all that, I agree with you that this is a great show and I'd love to hear a clean version from the master - maybe on this upcoming '71 box set? Too bad we don't have a 1971 studio album.