my opinion on the easy action box

I thought I said the songs were not "ordinary" - in fact, I think they are extraordinary! Combine the best of these with the pre-Raw Power material cut in London and you have an amazing 3rd Stooges album that would be rated as a timeless classic alongside TS, FH and RP! Per

Did I mention I still don't have mine?

pernil wrote:

I thought I said the songs were not "ordinary" - in fact, I think they are extraordinary! Combine the best of these with the pre-Raw Power material cut in London and you have an amazing 3rd Stooges album that would be rated as a timeless classic alongside TS, FH and RP! Per

Per - that's what I meant by putting quotation marks around "ordinary" - I understood it was not your comment, but someone else's from this thread.

You are right about the potential 3rd album - Jesus, it would have been great!!!

I'm so happy about this box! Kudos to whoever did the mastering (sadly not mentioned). You did a very good job, the band sounds massive! I haven't listened to Disc 2 yet but i wouldn't want to miss one of the other three (or four) recordings. Weird that all songs are credited to Iggy Pop, this just doesn't seem right. Especially for Ron's Jam and What You Gonna Do, which are incredible. Such a weird side to the story, Ron, Scott and Renna trying to soldier on without Iggy and James. Iggy and James reluctantly inviting the Ashetons to England.

I am a little bit surprised that in the booklet it is stated that all songs are written bij Iggy, and that no other name is mentioned.

Im pretty impressed over all...even for audience tapes,near 40 years old this isnt that bad at all...and its better than them being lost forever.The St Louis show is remarkably better,and overall im stoked on the whole thing.But as stated before..imagine a album of this stuff..whew!

The execs at Electra Records at that time really owe the world of music an apology for being so short sighted. How much would it have really cost them to have had a sound engineer with a mobile recoding studio on hand for at least the Electric Circus gigs? Just think how much money and effort goes into recording live performances of douche bags like the Jonas Brother nowadays. Oh well, like so many things in this world you just have to shake your head and say "what if?" At least we do have this, as lo-fi as it is. Let's just thank Danny Fields, Easy Action and everyone else involved for at least giving us this. And especially the Stooges for having had the guts to go out on the edge.

Electra’s biggest sin in -71 was to drop The Stooges- Butt hen again: the history of the Stooges is an endless chain of ”what if´s”. The most important on: What if they didn’t do heroin?

Cato

Wonderful packaging, very nice done ... the quality of the recording: pretty shitty as most of the boots of our favourite band ... too bad! Isnt it fun: one of the greatest rock bands ever was never descent recorded live when they were best? By some lucky circumstances I had the chance to talk to Sterling Morrison of the Velvets on their reunion tour in the 90ies: I was asking him why most of the Velvet boots do sound that shitty. His answer was simple: they didn't have had better recording equipment at the time!

There actually was good mobile recording equipment in the late 60's and early 70's, it's just that bands like the Velvets and the Stooges were not seen by their short sighted record company's as important bands that warrented spending the money to make professional live recordings. There's probably stacks of reel to reel tapes of very well recorded live performances of bands that the recorded companies deemed worthy that nobody gives a crap about today. I would imagine that it's easier to to think that there just wasn't good equipment available than to admit to ones self that at the time the bean counters just didn't think your work was important enough to warrent desent live recordings. The idiots in charge were too busy recording the Hannah Montana's and Jonas Brothers of their time to worry about drug addicts and weirdos like the Stooges and Velvets. That's the irony of it all.

berlinberlin wrote:

Wonderful packaging, very nice done ... the quality of the recording: pretty shitty as most of the boots of our favourite band ... too bad! Isnt it fun: one of the greatest rock bands ever was never descent recorded live when they were best? By some lucky circumstances I had the chance to talk to Sterling Morrison of the Velvets on their reunion tour in the 90ies: I was asking him why most of the Velvet boots do sound that shitty. His answer was simple: they didn't have had better recording equipment at the time!

Although there are MANY VU recordings pre-1970, there are hardly any SBD-quality ones. There IS one, that every hardcore VU fan knows as the "Matrix Tapes," that may never see the light of day, and is of a quality you wouldn't believe. The Matrix Tapes have only been released in 30-second snippets.

For bands like the Stooges and VU, whose audiences were always small, a high-quality recording (via SBD or otherwise) could be a potential goldmine.

Just listen to this...The Matrix Tapes - Intro

One day, we pray, a Stooges recording will come out with this clarity.

mg196 wrote:

Just listen to this...The Matrix Tapes - Intro

I've heard these (just the truncated versions), and yes, they are outstanding in quality!

It seems to be of the same quality as the 1969: Velvet Underground Live material. It actually sounds like it may even be from the same venue. From Lou's opening dialog on the 1969 material it's apparent they had been playing there a couple of nights. I could be wrong. Anyhow, 1969 Vols. 1 & 2 are of this quality recordings.

ElRoi wrote:

It seems to be of the same quality as the 1969: Velvet Underground Live material. It actually sounds like it may even be from the same venue. From Lou's opening dialog on the 1969 material it's apparent they had been playing there a couple of nights. I could be wrong. Anyhow, 1969 Vols. 1 & 2 are of this quality recordings.

Play them side by side and there is no comparison. The Matrix Tapes are straight from the board at The Matrix in San Francisco. Live 1969 stuff (all audience recordings) cant even approach it. The "Matrix Tapes" never even saw the light of day until 2002 - 1969 Live has nothing to do with these recordings.

The Matrix tapes are made up of eight 30 minute 1/2 inch 4 track tapes.
There are 43 songs on these tapes but only 22 unique titles. There are three "Waiting", two "What Goes On", two "Sweet Janes", etc. The performances all come from several sets played on 11/26/69 and 11/27/69.

OK, let's move this over the the Velvet Forum!

is there a velvets forum? what's the link?

The Gymnasium tape from 1967 is pretty good quality off the board...one song was unique to that recording as i recall

I dunno, if this box had just showed up with those 4 8-10 minute Who Do You Love? jams, I would have still bought it and been thankful someone had been there rolling tape.

I'm so glad that I got this boxset. It's an enormous pleasure to listen to these rarities. Of all the shows, Electric Circus' are my favorites. St. Louis' gig sound is definately the opposite of Starfighters' version. Variety Theatre gig is obviously worse in quality. But having known that the original tape was badly damaged, EA's must have done pretty much effort in order to remaster it.
Although Iggy's vocal is sometimes inaudible, the band itself kicks ass. James' and Rons' guitar duel, Scott's drumming and Recca's bass work are funfuckintastic. I really like James and Ron's jams on 'Who Do You Love?' and 'Do You Want My Love?'. Honestly, I can hear more Recca's playing on the Wampler's Lake gig.

Besides that, songs that I enjoy -> Big Time Bum & Fresh Rag
My own 'You Want My Action' rating -> 6 out of 5

Here you go mc:
http://olivier.landemaine.free.fr/vu/index.html

Now that ElRoi has his copy, a little parsing:

Packaging / Liner Notes:
I can see the 'Trainspotting' concern, but I wish EA had went with orange instead of purple. The images would've 'popped' more.

Not crazy about the overly-complicated packaging in general. I'm afraid to handle the thing. Not a big deal, though.

During this period Iggy, James & Scott were 'living the life' in University Towers, while poor Ron & Jimmy Recca were subsisting on vegetables grown in the backyard of the Funhouse. I'm guessing that's why Ron looks so emaciated on the cover.

The liner notes keep discussing gold paint. Natalie claimed it was silver only. I'm guessing red stage lights on silver might appear gold.

I like the notes about the St. Louis show: Iggy's paint job didn't look 'cool', he looked like he just stepped off a construction site. Awesome!

Circus Shows:
Music aside, it's eally cool hearing all these historical tidbits that have been mentioned counless times in various books and articles such as:
- the Renfield speech ('Flies, juicy flies...')
- the guy yelling 'Mick Jagger' (from Dee Dee's bio)
- the puking

I love the 70's pick-up routine between songs. 'Hey baby. Do you like the Beach Boys?'

Wampler's Lake:
I'm just getting to this one. These jams sound much like pre-Williamson Stooges with Ron just wailing and some extremely violent drumming from Scott. I don't see how Ron fans can NOT pick this up.

Trailerborn,

Yes, I said it was always silver. Last night Iggy said it was baby oil and glitter. That is true but I also saw spray, silver spray. More than once, I brought silver glitter home with me. It was always silver.

Lisa Gottlieb was probably going for the imagery with the El Dorado and maybe the lighting in Danny's apartment made it look gold. It was silver.

I know I posted this a while back but since it is brought up here, I will re-visit.

Ron once told me that he never ate anything 24 hours before a photo shoot. The reason was that he wanted his stomach to look super flat in the photos.

Specifically, the photo you mention on the cover, looks to me like it was taken with a wide angle lens. That is why Iggy looks like he is popping off the page.(pun intended) if you look at other photos from the same session, all the guys look longer and leaner in some of the photos. It is just an illusion and just a choice of camera lens.

Natalie

Hey mg169,

Thanks loads for that wee VU clip. Its brilliant! Lou sounds slightly off his rocker and in a pretty mellow mood. It would be excellent to hear that whole show.

Yes, perhaps one day a mixing desk recording of the Stooges might appear. I always found it a bit odd that Elektra hadn't recorded them live - they did so with lots of their other artists of the time.

E23

The box set kicks ass. Period. As for the packaging being "delicate," I always transfer the CD's from any fancy packaged box set to jewel cases after thoroughly perusing the packaging anyway. It's just more practical for storing the discs along with my other 400+ CD's. I have a large box full of fancy box set packaging that I occasionally rummage through and revisit the booklets that won't fit into a jewel case. I think EA's packaging is as good or better than anything any of the corporate record companies have produced. With that said, on to the music...

The world is better for it. It is truly a miracle that the record of these performance even exists. I own recordings of Charlie Parker that you can't even hear the bass or drums hardly, but you can hear Charlie and that's all that matters. The Embry recordings of Bird are the epitome of lo-fi, but they are the only ones in existence of the greatest alto saxophone player to ever live performing live at Birdland. So, I am very well acquainted with lo-fi recordings and appreciate each and every one of them for what they are and their importance to music history.

23rd Express wrote:

Hey mg169,

Thanks loads for that wee VU clip. Its brilliant! Lou sounds slightly off his rocker and in a pretty mellow mood. It would be excellent to hear that whole show.

Yes, perhaps one day a mixing desk recording of the Stooges might appear. I always found it a bit odd that Elektra hadn't recorded them live - they did so with lots of their other artists of the time.

E23

"Other artists of the time" that nobody even remembers or gives a shit about. That is the sad irony of it all.

Natalie wrote:

Trailerborn,

Yes, I said it was always silver. Last night Iggy said it was baby oil and glitter. That is true but I also saw spray, silver spray. More than once, I brought silver glitter home with me. It was always silver.

Natalie

Natalie,
Just to prove your point, I have a pic somewhere of Iggy with one hand covered in silver paint and no glitter. I'll post it when I figure out how. (I'm guessing I need an Imageshack account or something?)

I may have a pic. of you seated front row, cross-legged at a '70 show in front of a back-bending Iggy. I'm far from certain, but the woman in the photo looks a bit like the partially obscured (by the LP) photo you posted one.