Same Stooges. Different World. Finer Wine.
NYTimes article and video

THE STOOGES
“The Weirdness”
(Virgin)

The old Stooges stomp from the late 1960s — a pounding, wah-wah-ing, cymbal-socking, garage-psychedelic blare — is back in force on “The Weirdness.” Nearly everything else has changed.

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“The Weirdness” is the first full album that Iggy Pop has made with Ron Asheton on guitar, his brother, Scott, on drums and Steve Mackay on tenor saxophone since the Stooges’ 1970 “Fun House.”

The world now remembers the Stooges as a proto-punk band, and they reinforce that impression on “The Weirdness.” There’s only a hint of the deliberate, droning vamps that linked the group back to psychedelia, and the longest song runs just over four minutes.

Despite his reckless, self-immolating stage act with the Stooges, Iggy Pop, 59, survived the decades as a working rock star. Always a blunt songwriter, he has left behind the cocky nihilism of the original Stooges for a grown-up assortment of experience, irritation, leering, humor, calculated defiance and glimpses of burnout.

He’s not a street kid anymore; more than one song on the album revolves around money. Yet every so often he tries, a little desperately, to tweak taboos: “My idea of fun is killing everyone,” he rhymes.

After three decades of punk it’s harder to get a rise out of people with a bad attitude. But that Stooges stomp, primal and insolent, still sounds like trouble. JON PARELES

 

Iggy's formula

The New York Post
February 25, 2007

AGE has really caught up to Iggy Pop. The punk rocker, who turns 60 in April, tells Spin: "To feel good when I was 21, all I had to do was to smoke a joint. Now I have to turn off my phones, do tai chi for an hour, drink a strong cup of coffee and stay away from bad people, so I can feel good for an hour or two - knowing [that] when it ends, I'm gonna feel like the miserable 59-year-old [bleep] that I actually am."

  THE STOOGES
John Tamarri / Inside Beat Staff Writer
2/22/07

Section: ib on Band Reunions

Before London was burning, America had a small but pivotal fire in Michigan during the late sixties and early seventies. Two of the most important bands behind the flames were MC5 and The Stooges. Loud, revolting, angry, without any care for their audience except which fan would provide a bed for the members to sleep in, these bands helped set the attitude and aesthetic for the punk movement while taking from the past to reshape rock n' roll to what it should be: something that confuses parents, entices the youth to indulge, and scares the hell out of political and religious leaders.

It's futile to argue over which of the two bands was the most important, but The Stooges most certainly let loose more sex, anger, and were the more gritty and creative of the two bands. One of the reasons for this is because of what Iggy Pop brought to the group. A living legend and testament to what stage presence should be and what it means to be a front-man, Iggy Pop (then called Iggy Stooge) walked on the audience like Jesus on the water (and you thought crowd-surfing was exciting), cut himself by rolling around over broken bottles and, er? rubbed peanutbutter over himself.

It's a shame that Pop has become the focus of the group because Ron Ashton's guitar created walls of sound that perfectly evoked the sexual, aggressive, and flirtatious tone of Pop's voice while his brother drumming, along with Dave Alexander's bass work, created a great rhythm section for the guitar to work from (which would later influence some of the No-Wave bands of the 80's).

And now, anyone that didn't have a chance to see The Stooges perform with their original line up will be able to see them with replacement bassist Mike Watt (Minutemen) as they begin their tour March 8 at the Caprices Festival in Montana to support their first new album in over three decades, The Weirdness.

John Tamarri

 

Stooges' guitarist Ron Asheton talks about the band's new CD ''The Weirdness,'' and what it's like to be back with Pop and brother Scott after a 34-year hiatus
http://www.ew.com/
Feb. 22, 2007
By Simon Vozick-Levinson

LUST FOR LIFE Ron Asheton says ''It's still the Stooges'' when he gets together with Iggy and brother Scott. ''It's still sex, it's still anger. And there's always that little tinge of humor.''

On March 6, the Stooges will unleash The Weirdness, their first studio album in 34 years. Much has changed since the Michigan garage-rockers split up: Frontman Iggy Pop went on to solo stardom long ago, and the three noisy, nihilistic LPs that he recorded with the band unexpectedly have become cultural touchstones. Largely ignored or reviled in their day, the Stooges have served as patron saints for anti-establishment movements from punk to grunge. What should fans should expect from the band's second act?

''They're gonna enjoy it, and they're gonna be surprised,'' says Ron Asheton, the Stooges' guitarist. ''[We're] treating the Stooges as a living band. We could go out and be an oldies band and just play shows and the same songs, but [Iggy] wanted to get more out of it.''

The three surviving members of the original quartet — Iggy, Ron, and Ron's brother Scott Asheton on drums — spent the last three years writing new material, with the Minutemen's Mike Watt filling in for late bassist Dave Alexander. Last fall, they cut the album in producer Steve Albini's Chicago studio. ''It wasn't like having to start over, or any kind of struggle,'' Asheton says. ''When I hook up with those guys, I'm right back where I started. It was like all those years [in between] just evaporated.''

Of course, with their 60th birthdays looming, the old friends aren't quite as wild as the Stooges of legend. ''Now there's no drugs, there's no crazy times,'' Asheton says. But he assures us that their new jams are as raw as ever. ''It's still the Stooges. It's still sex, it's still anger. And there's always that little tinge of humor. It's just dissing all the proper things, and loving all the right things.''

With The Weirdness ready to hit stores, the Stooges are already contemplating their next move. Spring tour dates are in the works, and Asheton is looking forward to recording another new album with the band as soon as next year. ''We're having a good time,'' he says. ''I love being in the studio. So we're going to continue as long as the people want us.''

  THREE STOOGES

The Weirdness, the first new album by Iggy and the Asheton brothers in 34 years, doesn't reach the unhinged heights of their three classics

http://www.ew.com/
The Weirdness (2007)
Release Date: Mar 06, 2007; Lead Performance: Iggy and the Stooges; Genre: Rock B-
By Dalton Ross Dalton Ross
Posted Feb 21, 2007

Dalton Ross is an editor-at-large EW, and swears there are better pictures of him out there...somewhere.
History is littered with once-vital rock acts whose reunion efforts couldn't come close to capturing the oomph of the original outings. So let's take a look at Iggy Pop's seminal pre-punk outfit, the Stooges, who are back with a new album titled The Weirdness. When other bands of the late '60s/early '70s were busy singing about peace, love, and understanding, Iggy was out to search and destroy. He smeared peanut butter all over himself and crooned about being someone's mutt — all pretty outlandish stuff. The band's 1969 self-titled debut was a tad uneven, with some filler (the 10-minute ''We Will Fall'') and songs that sounded suspiciously familiar (''1969'' and ''Little Doll'' are pretty much the exact same tune), but its nihilistic high points (''No Fun,'' ''I Wanna Be Your Dog'') planted the seeds of a musical revolution.

Filled with Iggy's random yelping and Ron Asheton's buzz-saw guitar, the band's follow-up, 1970's Fun House, was quite simply one of the dirtiest, grimiest, and most sweat-stained albums ever. It's hard now to appreciate just how radical this record was upon its release, but suffice it to say it's not often you hear a lead singer coughing over the music, as Iggy does on ''T.V. Eye.'' The album felt primal, unpredictable, dangerous. It still does. Even with a rejiggered lineup and piss-poor David Bowie production, 1973's Raw Power contained enough dirgy anthems (''Gimme Danger,'' ''Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell'') to cement the Stooges' reputation as the forefathers of punk. They were a band that never sold a lot of records, but they mattered. The Weirdness, the group's first full-length release in 34 years, may not do either.Asheton can still manufacture some cutting, blues-drenched riffs, most notably on ''Trollin''' and ''ATM,'' but he now seems to be playing his guitar less as a weapon and more as — gasp! — an instrument. And while Iggy has never been a master lyricist — his simplicity, such as chanting ''I feel alright!'' about 312 times in a row, has always been his charm — there are several stanzas (''She wore some short shorts, man, she filled them out/ These bodies only come from way down South'') that come off more corny than minimalist.

There are certainly moments of The Weirdness that rock. A few of these new Stooges songs may even cause you to stand up and take notice. The difference is, the old ones made you duck for cover. B-

The Weirdness is right
Roxana Hadadi
http://www.diamondbackonline.com/
Issue date: 3/6/07


What the hell happened to Iggy Pop? Back in the day, the front man of The Stooges was a crucially rebellious punk icon, the kind of guy who made cutting yourself look cool - emo kids, take note - and put peers such as Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious to shame with his wild onstage antics, such as smearing peanut butter on himself and then stage-diving into crowds of leather-jacketed, spiky-haired toughs.

But more than 30 years later, when punk is a mere mainstream shadow of what it once was, Iggy Pop seems like a shadow, too. And, on The Stooges' latest, The Weirdness, his cultural non-significance shows all too obviously.

Punk drew its origins in one main sphere of thought, epitomized in The Clash's London Calling and Combat Rock and the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bullocks: Politics matter, politicians don't. No one was free from mockery or criticism, not even the Queen of England or her "fascist regime."

But what set The Stooges apart from the rest of the pack - and The Stooges came earlier than both the Sex Pistols and The Clash, effectively paving their ways - were their banal lyrics, swaggering youth, whip-fast guitar riffs and shouted vocals. Raw Power was the band's tour de force, a shining, 32-minute-long example of minimalist musical genius that relied on Iggy's charisma and songs such as "Search and Destroy" and "Gimme Danger" to inspire a cult-like, proto-punk following.

Yet everything that made The Stooges so great is significantly lacking on The Weirdness, the band's first LP in 34 years. Iggy's vocals are dull and monotone; the lyrics could be interesting, but he delivers them in a lackluster, lifeless way that begs to be ignored. On the first track, "Trollin'," Iggy delivers an awkward ballad about what a "suave thing it is to do" to write a song about searching for easy girls. "I see your hair as energy/ My dick is turning into a tree," Iggy growls - or is it rasps? Either way, the song starts the album on a subpar, somewhat sleazy route that it never shakes off.

And tracks such as "The End of Christianity" are also repetitive and drawn-out, a tedious departure from The Stooges' normal one- to two-minute song lengths. Ridiculous and meaningless lines such as "I saw a goddess in a pizza joint/ She hit my weak spot at a crucial point/ When it's a black girl you cannot resist/ It's the end of Christianity" aren't doing much to help Iggy's case either.

But don't worry, it gets worse, not only with the lyrics but also with the music. The lightning-quick, raging guitars that gave The Stooges their recognizable sound are gone, replaced by chuggingly predictable instrumentals that sound generic and common. Songs such as "Idea of Fun," about how Iggy's ideal pastime is "killing everyone," start off like old Stooges, but then immediately veer back into a sadly safe and unimaginative area of rejected hard-rock riffs.

Sure, Iggy pontificates about his hatred of mankind, suggests that friendships are all fake dalliances, and claims mankind is full of "greedy, awful people." But the thing is, these were all things Iggy was singing about more than 30 years ago, back when punk was defining the concept of angry, aimless youth. It's harder to swallow these type of songs from the mouth of a 60-year-old man who has already defined his "Lust for Life."

And that's the main problem with The Weirdness: It's simply not believable. In "Trollin'," Iggy claims "rock critics wouldn't like this at all." Too bad that's the only thing Iggy and the rest of The Stooges get right with this album.

Contact reporter Roxana Hadadi at roxanadbk@gmail.com.