{"id":466,"date":"2011-03-14T05:40:10","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T10:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=466"},"modified":"2011-03-14T05:40:10","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T10:40:10","slug":"album-review-iggy-and-the-stooges-raw-power-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/03\/14\/album-review-iggy-and-the-stooges-raw-power-live\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Iggy and the Stooges – Raw Power Live"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s tough to catch lightning in a bottle. Props to all concerned for giving it a shot, but Raw Power Live: In the Hands of the Fans<\/em> ultimately misses the mark. Like the studio album it sets out to re-create, the show suggests<\/em> the power and fury of a live Stooges<\/strong> show, but the listener is left with the feeling that, well, you simply had to be there.<\/p>\n

Everyone involved is quite a bit older than they were in \u201973, and in light of what they all did, their survival at all is a testament to\u2026something. (Hint: not clean living.) Yet somehow the 63-year-old Iggy Pop<\/strong> conjures the menace of his 25 year old self. And blistering, suitably raw and atonal bursts of guitar from James Williamson<\/strong> gives the proceedings the right amount of grime.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s perhaps not fair to expect great things from an audio document of a band revisiting old material. On one hand, they do seem to be careening right on the edge, in danger of falling apart at any moment. That ambience is a necessary component of the Raw Power<\/em> material, and they deliver it. But there\u2019s a subtle feeling of the group having, well, rehearsed. It\u2019s somehow not quite loose and shambolic enough. So maybe it\u2019s the recording: whatever the reason, the whole affair comes off as oddly flat. A bootleg-quality tape might have delivered the goods in a more authentic manner. In the end, there\u2019s something a little too professional about all of this.<\/p>\n

The Stooges seem to hit their stride around mid-set with \u201cYour Pretty Face is Going to Hell.\u201d Steve Mackay<\/strong>\u2019s saxophone squawks lend the set a bit of Fun House<\/em> ambience, but he\u2019s too often buried in the mix. And when Iggy hurls expletives before kicking into the blues of \u201cI Need Somebody\u201d (and then before and after each remaining song) he veers perilously close to coming off as a parody of himself.<\/p>\n

They do provide a nifty bonus by performing \u201cI Got a Right,\u201d a legendary song from the Raw Power<\/em> era that didn\u2019t make the original album. It\u2019s a speedy mess, finally delivering the expected dose of screaming chaos and mayhem. Which may leave the listener wondering: where was this band for most of the previous set?<\/p>\n

All that said, it\u2019s available on vinyl, and if you\u2019re an Iggy\/Stooges fan, you\u2019ll want Raw Power Live: In the Hands of the Fans<\/em> in spite of its shortcomings.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s tough to catch lightning in a bottle. Props to all concerned for giving it a shot, but Raw Power Live: In the Hands of the Fans ultimately misses the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}