Happy 94th Birthday Jac Holzman, Elektra Records co-founder

Cheers to Elektra mainman Jac Holzman who "couldn't make head nor tail of The Stooges" but put out their records anyway. 

Remembering Nico on her birthday with her post-Velvets work

Here's Nico's "Evening Of Light" video feat. Iggy & The Stooges along with some intriguing 70s & 80s performance footage.  

Remembering Scott "Rock Action" Asheton on his birthday

Remembering the hard-pounding Scott Asheton with a couple of Stooges classics played with J Mascis, Mike Watt and brother Ron.

Happy Birthday Iggy Pop!

Celebrating Iggy Pop's 77th birthday with some interview clips and performance clips you may have missed.

Yep, Martin Phillipps of The Chills knows what's up. 

Happy Birthday Iggy Pop!

Celebrating the birthday of Iggy Pop with the 1986 Dutch TV documentary Lust For Life: The Turbulent Life of Jim Osterberg. 

Listen to Iggy Pop chat with Rick Rubin for the Broken Record podcast

Iggy Pop talks about The Stooges, Jim Morrison, David Bowie, James Brown and more in a two-part chat with Rick Rubin. 

Rare Stooges live recording from 1970 unearthed

Said to be found in a Michigan farmhouse, a tape of The Stooges entire show at Goose Lake in 1970 has been restored for release by Third Man on August 7th. 

Here's the scoop...
Third Man Records is excited to announce The Stooges' Live At Goose Lake: August 8th, 1970. This previously-unheard, high-quality soundboard recording of the original Stooges lineup's final performance -- recorded just before the release of their earthshaking 1970 album Fun House -- will be available on vinyl, CD and digital on August 7th, nearly 50 years to the day after the performance.

The audio was lovingly restored by Vance Powell (The White Stripes, Chris Stapleton) and mastered by Bill Skibbe at Third Man Mastering, and liner notes were written by Jaan Uhelzski (Creem Magazine). There will be two limited-edition colored vinyl variants available as well -- the Rough Trade version will be on purple-colored vinyl with a standard LP jacket, and the indie exclusive version will be on cream-colored vinyl with a screen-printed LP jacket. Pre-order the standard black vinyl version directly from Third Man right here.

The apocryphal tale of the Stooges performance at the Goose Lake festival has been told countless times over the past five decades. Bassist Dave Alexander, due to nerves or overindulgence or whatever you choose to fill in the blank, absolutely spaces in front of 200,000 attendees. He does not play a single note on stage. He is summarily fired by Iggy Pop immediately following the gig. Here starts the beginning of the end of the Stooges. But what if that simply...wasn’t the case? What if you could prove otherwise? Well, it’d be the proto-punk equivalent of having an immediate, on-the-scene, man on the street report of all those folkies booing Dylan’s electric set at Newport in ‘65. Irrefutable evidence  of what ACTUALLY went down.

Found buried in the basement of a Michigan farmhouse amongst other tasty analog artifacts of the  same era, the 1/4” stereo two-track tape of the Stooges complete performance at Goose Lake on August 8th, 1970 is the Rosetta Stone for fans of this seminal band. Not only is this the last ever performance of the original godhead Stooges line-up, but it is the ONLY known soundboard recording of said line-up. Playing the entirety of their canonical 1970 masterpiece Fun House, the sound, the performance, everything about this record is revelatory.

Would you believe that...Alexander actually DID play bass on this occasion? Or that, despite a handful of flubs, he manages to hold his own? Especially on the bass-led songs “Dirt” and “Fun House”? Does Iggy provoke the crowd to tear down festival barriers? Did the powers that be pull the plug on the Stooges? So many questions are answered only to have more arise. Released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the performance, Live at Goose Lake: August 8th, 1970, is the rare release that literally rewrites the history of these Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. Listen to "T.V. Eye" below.



The Stooges – Live at Goose Lake: August 8th, 1970 
SIDE A
1. Intro
2. Loose
3. Down On The Street
4. T.V. Eye
5. Dirt

SIDE B
1. 1970 (I Feel Alright)
2. Fun House
3. L.A. Blues

The John Cale mix of The Stooges debut finally pressed on vinyl

Vinyl Me, Please is pressing up the rawer sounding original John Cale mix of The Stooges debut album, mastered at the correct speed. 

R.I.P. Gord Downie, 1964-2017

Here's Gord performing The Stooges' Search & Destroy with The Sadies at The Horseshoe back in 2007.

Radio Birdman's Deniz Tek joins James Williamson for unplugged Acoustic K.O. EP

Radio Birdman ace Deniz Tek has teamed up with Iggy Pop's axe-wielding sidekick James Williamson for the Acoustic K.O. EP (out March 31) – a new spin on four classic Williamson compositions from the early/mid '70s. The proto-punk guitar stars have unplugged their amps for drastic reworkings of two numbers from Iggy & The Stooges’ seminal Raw Power album (“I Need Somebody” and “Penetration”) as well as two tracks from Pop & Williamson’s underrated Kill City (“Night Theme” and “No Sense of Crime”). These songs were orginally composed by Pop & Williamson, with the exception of "Night Theme" which was penned by Williamson and Scott Thurston.

Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Williamson explains hooking up with Tek and working with him on this new project: “I first met Deniz in 2011 when doing the Ron Asheton Tribute show at the Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor. Deniz had been a good friend of the Ashetons (having come from Ann Arbor like them) and had been asked to play on some of the old Stooges tunes that night.”

“Later we stayed in touch during the times I would visit Australia on tour with the Stooges, and it also turned out that he visited the Big Island of Hawaii frequently, as do my wife and I. In fact, during one of our get togethers on the Big Island Deniz mentioned that we should record some acoustic songs together.  Maybe do some of my old stuff. It was later that day, hiking in a remote area, that we came across some abandoned trucks. His wife, Anne, got her camera out and said 'there’s your record cover!’”

Oddly, in a parallel development, a long time fan and incredible collector of Stooges memorabilia, Hakan Beckman, had suggested to James a couple of years earlier that “Night Theme” should be orchestrated. Further, he had developed a fantasy album cover called Acoustic K.O. James loved these ideas and now, with Tek, had the vehicle to realize them.

“That’s how it all started,” Williamson admits. “However, once we began recording, the project took on a life of its own. If this was to be called Acoustic K.O. it needed to be entirely acoustic. Michael Urbano broke out his old 1920s drum kit and Gregg Foreman used my old 1930s pump organ and a piano. Guitars, of course, were acoustic, and the only exception was the bass that Bob Glaub played - an old hollow body Kay since an upright  just didn’t sound right for these songs. The horn section rounded everything out.”

“For ‘Night Theme’ I enlisted the help of Mark Culbertson, musician extraordinaire who had played contra-bass for me on the albums Ready to Die and Re-Licked, to do the arrangement. He did an extraordinary job! I was able to find an incredible group of players called The Awesome Orchestra from Berkeley, CA under the direction of David Moschler to realize Mark’s arrangement and I couldn’t be happier with the results.”

“It all came together once we layed down Deniz’s vocals while in Hawaii, and with the help of Petra Haden doing some backing vocals and violin, along with Annie Hardy (Giant Drag) doing the duet with Deniz on ‘No Sense Of Crime’ we had performances to be proud of.”

Check out Deniz Tek & James Williamson's reworking of Penetration followed by the original version by Iggy & The Stooges...

Jim Jarmusch's Gimme Danger @ TIFF Bell Lightbox, Friday

Watch Jim Jarmusch & Iggy Pop chat about The Stooges doc Gimme Danger which runs through Nov 10. 

Jim Jarmusch's Stooges doc Gimme Danger screens at TIFF

Gimme Danger is at Isabel Bader Theatre Sept 17. Hear the TIFF press conference & watch the Cannes clips.

Check out the TIFF press conference for Gimme Danger hosted by Richard Crouse: part one and part two. 

RIP saxophonist Steve Mackay, 1949-2015

Steve Mackay was best known for playing on The Stooges' Fun House – here's his first single from 1966.