NY Pavillion September 1969 review

The Stooges, on the other hand, are from an entirely different door. After seeing THEM, I was ready to hand in my credentials. They are being advertised as representing the sexually repressed American male, etc. They're dogs, more like it.

They are a quartet made up of lead guitar, bass, drums and lead singing by none other than Iggy Stooge. Iggy doesn't really sing, he sort of talks out his songs; sounding like a tripped-out gas station attendant. ("We're gonna have. . . a real cool time.")

I was prepared to hate them as i wrote this, to be inflammatory and merciless towards them. Then I talked with my good friend David, who wisely said, "if they're a blues band, and they play bad blues, then you can criticize them. But if they sing about boredom and that, how can you criticize them?"

The band live in a commune in Ann Arbor. Iggy lives in his squalor in the attic. And he watches television, and spends a lotta lotta time alone. He played drums for a few years behind differing black bands, and the Stooges is his very own vehicle. He told the guitarist to get ready to play in a rock band, and even though the cat hadn't played before, he was ready in three days.

The music is incessant and pounding, with usually one certain theme laid down again and again, all loud and insane. Iggy wriggles and oozes about on stage in various sexual posturing. He makes use of the microphone stand; he does fandangos around, he sits on it, lies on it, caresses it.

At on point, someone in the crowd (who were all sitting on the flat concrete) made an obscene gesture. Iggy leapt, head-first, out onto him. Suddenly, the whole place was up on its feet, crowding around to see their fantasies being acted out. The crowd managed to get him back on stage. He ambled around, while the band was keeping with the same feedback and hi-screech cachexia. He drifted to the back of the stage, and then, with new vigor, ran across the stage, into the air with a set expressionn on his face, and onto the person again.

By the time he got onto the stage again, he was drained and livid at the same time, stalking uncertainly. He started to claw at his glistening, sweaty chest, and welts that had been there began to get bloody again. Raising fresh weals, uttering one word over and over; the band working their amplifiers into a frenzied fuzz-fog. All fall down. Guitars thrown at the amplifiers; finis.

I asked Iggy about times he jumped from the stage later on, and he explained, "The guy insulted me, so I either wanted to make it with him, or embarrass him in front of everybody. Which I think I did. . ."

The Stooges no doubt appeal to base, broken tastes. My friends and I all just shook our heads and mumbled about the loss of civilization. (Is this what Rome and Athens went through before they fell?) But there was another guy there who really dug Iggy. (As a reporter, it is my duty to be objective.) He said it was really different. . . that it was really some fine performance.

Now this is all part of that same family of reasons that made the MC5 get their bad publicity. Nobody talked about what a great band they were, they talked about revolution, badness, meanness. These are things they could relate to. Things that are hopelessly hopeless. They could relate to the Stooges sonorous bedlam about boring times, more than they could relate to the total energy of the MC5.

It's the people that can line their kind of spirit up with the crash and kill pictures in the centerfold of the Daily News. People who go around thinking about bad news and No Cool Times. ("It's such a hassle to cross the street, man.") Iggy represents boredom and, possibly, "sexual repression." And then, this appeals to some people. And there's a few of these unhappy cats sitting around right now. (Not running around, but sitting around. They rarely get beyond their own muddled psychosis.)

Rock music is something we align with our personalities. Almost all of us dig Jimi Hendrix cause that's sex, and who can knock sex? The MC5 are stimulation and electricity. The Beatles are happy stoned thoughts, fresh breezes too. The Rolling Stones are hard knocks and more sex. The Doors used to have something of each, and mostly dark poetry of the soul. Bubblegum is what it says it is. Whatever your favorite band is, it's kind of a parallel of what you are or want to be.

The Stooges are dungeon scuttling remains of "no cool time."

x x x

Iggy was mightily impressed in his youth by Chuck Berry, Wagnerian operas, and "Carmine Burana." (Some spread, those.) Imagine them, now all mixed together, and then curdled. Imagine, more like it, Kraft-Ebing's "Psychopathic Sexualis" as performed by Marquis de Sade, and the wicked Witch of the East. Add, come to think of it (for fairness sake) a dash of Frank Sinatra.

It is not right for someone to sit back in their cubicle and sneer at musicians. A musician is doing something valid, and the Stooges are a direct extension of Iggy's pretentions and emotions.; (McLuhan said, "Art is anything you can get away with.") The Stooges also seem to capitalize on wrecked heads and cheap thrills inside people, waiting to be sprung with $3 tickets. (The doors were opened to everybody free for the last 15 minutes of the MC5 concert, it should be said. And it was the bands that demanded this.) The Stooges are an effective and authentic directive for SOMETHING. I don't like them at all, and ultimately they are real bad kicks. But books have been banned for the same reasons. Do you want them? They have an album out on Elektra, and it is, by their own admission, rottenly engineered. John Cale, formerly of the Velevet Underground, produced it, but he didn't know what he was doing. The album has one good cut, a 10-minute dirge, but the rest is gaggling idiocy.

"'I Wanna Be Your Dog' is my favorite song," says Iggy, "but some kid hears that and he can't relate to it. The nearest thing he can associate it with is Question Mark & the Mysterians."

RIGHT!

©1969 by Chris Hodenfield

It's always good to read articles and reviews from way back when. With hindsight it is very easy to forget just how unloved and unwanted the Stooges were back in 1969. They generally got negative reviews if they got any at all. I love the comment about the first album only having one good cut - the 10 minute "We Will Fall" - nowadays that's the one that most people would skip over!
These days the Stooges are venerated as hugely influential - but back in 1960s I doubt that hardly anyone would ever have predicted that. I remember one reviewer referring to Ron's playing as the sound of the future, which kind of turned out to be true, but most other reviews tended to focus, usually with shock, upon the stage antics of Iggy.
Cheers,
Richard

thanks - never came across this review before, and I'm always desperate for anything about the earliest years of the band!

and Richard, I also remember reading something about someone saying that Ron's playing was the sound of the future, just can't remember where!

I've just checked and it was a review in Creem that declared: 'This is probably the guitar style of the future…'

Many other reviews were quite negative - my favourite is Rolling Stone's comment about 'stoned sloths making boring repressed music, which I suspect appeals to boring repressed people.'

I guess I should feel insulted, but I suspect I'm too repressed...!

Cheers,

Richard

The Stooges making 'repressed' music?? WTF??

what was WRONG with those people???

actually, just what did they mean, 'repressed' music? I would've thought The Stooges were anything BUT repressed in their music!

i think its great, its weird how reading a bad review of a band u like is awful, but with stooges its hugely funny cause its usually 'wrong' and its legitimate to call it wrong lol

i spose maybe its hindsight ot something, porving they were one of the most influential bands ever

tho didnt rolling stone write that 'stoned sloths..' etc thing then add "i kind of like it!"

to call them 'repressed' is just plain fucking weird!!!! can't get my head round this one

I have a feeling this guy himself was repressed and actually liked them but didn't want to admit to it. It's kind of a voyeuristic interview in some respects.

mc wrote:

I have a feeling this guy himself was repressed and actually liked them but didn't want to admit to it. It's kind of a voyeuristic interview in some respects.

haha, think thats a good theory!

probly accounts for a lot of stooges nahsayers!

Another account of this show:

hmm, Iggy and 'the guitarist'...interesting info

Fantastic ....... Iggy and his Stooges are the BEST

From Changes Magazine 1969 Vol.1 No. 8 if anyone here bought it (it sold on Ebay last week) can you post a large scan of the article:

Warms the cockles of me heart ....... seriously