This is a point of contention among Iggy fans. Firstly, I don't think there will be a definitive version of this album. Too many hands have been fiddling about with it, and, to be honest I think they messed up the original studio tapes - sending everything to two or three tracks instead of the 16(really??) that were available. And it shows. Secondly, it's too far down the line for it to mean quite what it did back in 1973. Punk, Post-Punk and Grunge have all come and gone and the detritus of their passing litters the contemporary landscape. That Raw Power struck a chord with so many people in so many bands over the years shall be its Legacy. And speaking of legacies, I haven't heard the legacy edition save for some of the album tracks, which all still seem a bit thin and wussy rather than the icepick in your earhole guitar stabs that first leapt out of speakers way back when.
So now we've got the internet and stuff like the Raw Power Cassette shows up.
http://theworldsamess.blogspot.com/2008/05/stooges-raw-power-uk-cassette-version.html
Now this is quite a revelation, the opening cut seems somehow lacking the immediacy of the vinyl mix, but stick with it and you'll be ok. There's bass in there and Rock Action tub-thumping is actually very audible.The overall feel of the song seems looser and more rambling but I'm pretty sure its the same take. The mix tends to lose Iggy in reverb but the bass is full and grounds Williamsons wild and screaming guitar solos and licks at the other end of the scale. Other songs I'm not so sure about, Gimme Danger could be a different take, it's certainly a much different mix with guitars and vocals all wide-panned left and right and Iggys vocals on I Need Somebody seem less traumatic. I don't know, I'm going to spend some time with both recordings although I can identify the guitars on Gimme Danger as being more raucous and sounding like they need a bit of a tune up. Also there's so much reverb on some of these that it sounds less like a studio recording than it was done in an empty Gymnasium. In fact it was something called a Universal Audio Time Cube (according to the liner notes of the Iggy Remaster- its a reverb box with a series of plastic hoses inside and a preamp) that made everything sound like it was being dunked in a toilet.
Gadgets aside, the energy of the band is undeniable and there wasn't really much else around at the time to put it up against. Bowie? Marc Bolan? Even the mighty Funhouse of three years previous sounds a lifetime away. Iggy's vocal prowess and Williamsons unhinged guitar playing really shine through the decades of dreck that threatens to swallow these up. Even on the shoddy Rough Power album, his biting guitar intro slashes through the overly reverberated drums and bass - and you can tell they tried to take it down from 11 in the botched Stooges mix, but all this does is make it sound like somebody's pissing about with the volume knob on your stereo.
The differing sound of the UK cassette have a life all of their own and sound more like a work in progress (which is perhaps what they were) rather than the ludicrously loud mash of noise that is the Iggy master, or the weedy junky waiting to knife you in the unmentionables-like sound of Bowies own version. There's considerable tape drop-out in places but overall its a definite improvement over the other mixes even though I'm sure some of these (Especially Search and Destroy) are not too physically dissimilar. I'm not even going near Rough Power(well, alright I've already mentioned it, but that was a later edit). Supposedly they are mixes by the Stooges but their origins are murky and they're not even anywhere close to third generation dupes, perhaps they are the mixes on this tape but its so hard to tell because they were recorded from an off-air Radio Broadcast, and I don't think the signal was very strong that particular evening.
Really there's not much in the way of a point to this - unless it's just to show my devotion to one particular bunch of songs that found their way onto a record at some point. Last April an album was released by the current line-up of the stooges with the recently reinstated Williamson Hacking away at the strings again after the sad loss of Ron Asheton a year or so prior to that. It's a live recording of them playing through the Raw Power set and, I suppose, it's pretty good, its loud and Mike Watt's playing the bass. But I still yearn for the weirdness of the original recordings. There's a strange sense of space within these versions that is entirely missing in the Iggy mix from late in the 90's, the way the guitar cuts in on Search and Destroy, the trailing last chorus of I Need Somebody, Williamson again as he winds up Death Trip with little licks of pain on his Les Paul and you finally take a deep breath and relax. But you know that in the studio Iggy is still bouncing off the walls and shouting at musicians for making funny noises when they're not supposed to.
Iggy Pop, James Williamson, Ron Asheton, Scott Asheton
Side 1 (This is for the cassette)
1, Search & Destroy
2, I Need Somebody
3, Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell
4, Penetration
Side 2
1, Raw Power
2, Gimme Danger
3, Shake Appeal
4, Death Trip
..and it's still good with the songs backwards.
CBS, Embassy, Sony, whatever 1973.
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