Number 185: The Stooges

Album: The Stooges

Artist: The Stooges

Year: 1969

Information: A talent scout came down to an MC5 show to check out the band and had hopes of signing them to Elektra. During this show, The Stooges also played and caught the attention of the same talent scout. Subsequently, both acts were signed.When it came time to record for them, The Stooges had a total of five songs, all of which were staples for their live sets. They handed in their five songs and were promptly rejected, to which Iggy said "That's okay, we've got lot more songs." They didn't. They went to their hotel room and wrote three songs overnight. The new album was accepted.

High Points: "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is the highlight, of course, and what a highlight it is. The song is very high energy and has a repeating guitar and piano riff throughout the song. The lyrics also tell of angst and self-loathing, someone reducing themselves down to someone else's pet. That's all the person longs to be, something that sleeps at the foot of your bed.

Low Points: Pretty much the rest of this record.

Is it Great? Kinda.

I will say that this album has two other good songs, which are "No Fun" and "1969." The other songs are monotonous. They absolutely sound like the same song over and over again, other than the awful "We Will Fall." I will give them some slack, due to the fact that three of their songs were all written in the same night, most likely in a rushed manner.

As I have said before, I like weird. I love avant-garde because originality is built into the genre. Usually weird experiments in sound are exciting and captivating. Nothing could be further from this description than "We Will Fall." It's practically the same bar over and over again, nothing actually happening. The whole song would seem to be building towards something, with the ominous backing track aided by John Cale's viola, but it never does anything. It maintains its boring format for ten minutes and leads you to wonder why John Cale thought this was okay. 

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This record is more important than it is good. It's important for the aesthetic it made, which went on to help create punk music. The elements of distorted guitars, screaming the lyrics, and the very simplistic arrangements are the ground floor of a genre.

However, it's just not a great record, which is a bit disappointing.