Despite their current popularity, they were only a cult band when they were initially active. Their albums only barely charted anywhere, and the critics were generally dismissive of their raw sound (as they largely were of the majority of heavy groups at the time, as a matter of fact). As a direct consequence, there exists very few decent quality recordings of their infamous live shows. Back in the late 60s and early 70s, professionally recording live shows was an expensive process, usually only reserved for bands that record labels knew would shift copies. Plus, amateur recording equipment was still in its infancy to an extent, so audience recordings would end up sounding terrible, if they didn't end up degenerating over time to the point of being unplayable.
As such, there don't exist many live albums of the band in their hey-day, with most that exist being either from their 1972-74 period, or their reunion shows in the 2000s. A few different live albums exist on smaller labels, particularly on the Easy Action label, but for a while the only two prominent recordings of The Stooges' live act were 1976's Metallic K.O. and 2010's Have Some Fun: Live At Unganos. Metallic K.O. documents the band's final shows during the original run, dated February 1974, and has gained infamy from both its scarcity prior to it's CD release (apparently the process or procuring a legitimate copy were rather long-winded and difficult), as well as how generally hostile both the group and the crowd is. In both performances documented on the release, the band are playing in front of a biker gang, who are audibly pissed off at the group and are hurling abuse and beer bottles, as well as other such projectiles, almost the entire time (apparently one member of the gang went on the radio to send the group a death threat if they dared to perform the later show, which they did of course.) To make matters worse, Iggy is constantly baiting the crowd into getting more and more rowdy, throwing his own insults right back at them, even incorporating them into a barely recognizable cover of "Louie Louie". This escalated into a recording which rock critic Lester Bangs referred to as "the only rock album I know where you can actually hear hurled beer bottles breaking against guitar strings."
Have Some Fun: Live At Unganos is even more historically important to the band's history, being one of the only known recordings for the longest time of the group's Elektra Records period (though not of the original lineup, as founding bassist Dave Alexander had been fired a few months prior, with roadie Zeke Zettner filling his role instead. Taped by Danny Fields, the man who had signed them to Elektra in 1969, the August 1970 show is essentially a live run through of their second album Fun House, and their energy is almost palpable. Despite the extremely rough quality of the recording, the group's nerve is able to shine through, with Iggy giving one of his best performances caught on tape (apparently he'd begun clambering around the bar at several points during the set). But sadly, as previously stated, this was not the original lineup, which aside from a few sporadic video, audio and photo documents, went entirely unrepresented with a live document.
Until 2020.
Around that time, Third Man Records, a well regarded reissue label, began teasing the existence of a Stooges live tape, acquired from a basement in Michigan. In Mid-2020, it finally emerged, revealing itself to be a soundboard recording of the group's set at the Goose Lake Rock Festival on August 7th 1970. This was a massive revelation, for a few reasons. For one, it was one of the first full, uninterrupted recordings of the band's original lineup, with Dave Alexander on bass, to be discovered and released. For another, it's the only known soundboard recording of their initial lineup, and so is of pretty high fidelity, which is especially impressive considering how little soundboard recordings exist of them in the first place. And finally, the show itself is of historical performance, as it was the very last show of the group's first lineup, as Dave Alexander was fired immediately afterwards for apparently being so high on numerous substances that he barely played a note the entire show. He never played with the band again, dying in early 1975 due to complications directly stemming from his extreme alcoholism. As such, the Goose Lake Festival came to be known as a failure, the group completely screwing up one of their biggest live appearances to date (over 200,000 people attended the festival), with one member not even playing for almost the entire time.
That is not the performance that one can hear on this release.
The biggest thing one will notice is that Dave Alexander is in fact playing the bass, if sloppily in places. There's no doubt that he was intoxicated to hell and back, which would explain his expulsion right afterwards, but he's certainly able to keep in time in many numbers, most crucially on the more bass-driven numbers like "Dirt". This smashes the legend of Dave being a total liability on this show, and finally gives him some much-needed posthumous vindication.
It also helps that the rest of the group are also in form on stage, providing a solid run-through of Fun House, similar to their Unganos show, although it takes a couple songs for them to really find their footing. Scott and Ron Asheton (brothers) play as well as they ever had, giving a respectable result all throughout the set. Iggy is slightly more spotty, not quite singing as strongly as he usually would at points, though this may be explained by video evidence of him flailing his microphone around as he sang. That energy does shine through on numbers like "TV Eye" and "Fun House", where he sounds downright demented at numerous points, to the level that the microphone nearly blows out more than once. Their performance of "1970" is especially powerful, with Ron's guitar playing reaching its peak here, but sadly the number ends before the saxophone solo section for whatever reason. This is despite the following number "Fun House" showing they did in fact have a saxophone player on stage with them. And of course, the group end it out with the Plastic Ono Band-esque "L.A. Blues" full of feedback, sax squeals and screams courtesy of Iggy, (though it's evidently more grounded and tuneful than the album rendition) to send the audience home shocked at what they had just witnessed.
Obviously, this live recording is no masterpiece. The group are clearly not at their absolute best, especially not Dave, and the tape itself sounds a bit too dry to really make the band sound as powerful as they were on record. But regardless, this is easily the new most essential live document of the group, not just because of its quality or historical importance, but it's recognizably the Stooges. Loud, rough, high on drugs, and not quite caring how professional they sound (though Dave evidently crossed the line on what was an acceptable performance). Even when they weren't at their best, they still blew every other band out of the water. The remastering job of the tape by Vance Powell helps to bring it into the light, for the first time in 50 years, and finally satiate the appetite many Stooges fans have had for a long, long time. Now all we need is a recording of the band's 1967-1969 days.
You can pick up the record at Third Man on CD and vinyl here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Live-At-Goose-Lake-August/dp/B089TRYGYP
No comments:
Post a Comment