Asthma Attack

This song has been mentioned numerous times as virtually legendary from the Stooges' earliest days, but my question is, has anyone actually heard it and if so is it an actual song or more of a freestyle jam like much of their early live material.

Here's my hypothesis on the matter.
In their first six to eight months of existence the Stooges didn't play so much songs, but rather just found a jam to build around and let it go where it may. There's numerous accounts of them playing odd instruments right out of the chute whether it was oil cans, a vacuum or some instrument they created. Iggy being an asthmatic likely tagged one of their early workings as Asthma Attack and he'd actually wheeze during the song. From my understanding they played this song on Oct. 8, 1968 in Ann Arbor when they and the MC5 signed with Electra. Thus it's very likely they would find a jam they liked and tag it as say The Dance of Romance or Secret Storm. My guess is they started out in an odd direction and never really bothered naming their songs until they got signed at which point they had to change gears for any number of reasons.

I'm lucky enough to have heard the song. It is a freeform jam, with fairly random words as I remember.

The whole point about the Stooges early on is that they DIDN'T have any songs! Most of the Stooges' early songs started as jams; 1969 was orignally just that two-note riff, a Bo Diddley beat, then loads of soloing and noise. It developed into a more regular song over time. Likewise, Dance Of Romance was a simple guitar riff, which you can hear at the end of Ann. Then, as time went on, more conventional songs were added to the set, like No Fun and Now I Wanna Be Your Dog, which only start getting mentioned in reviews and set lists around the time the album came out. In fact, most people who saw the Stooges live in 69 STILL couldn't really recognise any conventional songs!

Hence, of the half-dozen early 'titles', most were attached to a simple riff or beat. Asthma Attack seems to have been the one freeform jam that made it as far as the Hit Factory, but it didn't make it out..

It was more fun when they didn't have any songs. I think they still really were at that stage for the first album, generally, when they just found themselves bundled into a recording studio for the first time, 'loads of noise' still describes the first album perfectly, in my opinion. I always feel that 'No Fun' is the most structured and recognisable as a 'song' on that album, I don't even like calling the other tracks 'songs'!

I would LOVE to hear Asthma Attack. Somebody said in another topic recently that one of their friends got a hold of a copy when looking through Elektra stuff for the reissue of "The Stooges" and is looking for a distributor.

I was actually just thinking about it last night hoping it would be some fantastic riff with some good lyrics but it looks like it's not. Though I would still love to hear it.

LA Blues is listenable and sort of "structured" so I'd love to hear Asthma Attack.

G, F#, E wrote:

I would LOVE to hear Asthma Attack. Somebody said in another topic recently that one of their friends got a hold of a copy when looking through Elektra stuff for the reissue of "The Stooges" and is looking for a distributor.

I was actually just thinking about it last night hoping it would be some fantastic riff with some good lyrics but it looks like it's not. Though I would still love to hear it.

LA Blues is listenable and sort of "structured" so I'd love to hear Asthma Attack.

hopefully tthis will be released!