THE STOOGES - RAW POWER POLL

Voted "Gimme Danger". So much menace.

'Penetration' for desperate swagger licked by a xylophone

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

lol @ sequencing

Indeed. "I Need Someody" is better than 2 votes, a lot better, I think it's the only song which is improved by the Iggy mix

I voted for it!

Well done you!

ta.

https://www.facebook.com/iggyandthestooges/posts/612406485501776

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM IGGY:
My dear friend Scott Asheton passed away last night.

Scott was a great artist, I have never heard anyone play the drums with more meaning than Scott Asheton. He was like my brother. He and Ron have left a huge legacy to the world. The Asheton's have always been and continue to be a second family to me.

My thoughts are with his sister Kathy, his wife Liz and his daughter Leanna, who was the light of his life.

Iggy Pop

:(

RIP

He was such a tremendous player, and I never felt he really got his due. The knife-edge tension of Fun House is entirely due to his playing.

RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpV2N7VCnpY

RIP

RIP rock action

RIP

Rock Action on drums, indeed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OvB-wDt7mA

Sony just issued a new remaster of all digital platforms (streaming and download stores). I just got a FLAC copy and while the Bowie mix is a slight improvement, the Iggy mix from 1997 is an enormous one - no more digital clipping and distortion from the insane brickwall mastering that marred its CD release, this is how that 1997 remix should have sounded. It's too bad they didn't release this as a CD or vinyl box set - I definitely would have got one. (It's four "discs" with the live show in Atlanta and an album's worth of alternate takes and mixes.

*across all digital platforms

I remember going to a party where someone had the newly-released Iggy mix in their 5 CD changer, and when the shuffle played the tracks from that between the other CDs, it was so much louder than the other discs that the effect was obnoxious. I wasn't much more impressed listening to the remix on my own later, maybe this remastering will help.

I was gonna ignore this because I don't really like the album that much anyway and that CD-era Iggy mix was a fucking atrocity. But based on your description, I'll check it out.

Giving this a listen now -- yeah, pretty good!

I can't emphasize enough how poorly they mastered the 1997 CD. The mix was fine, everyone was happy with it, but when it came time to master it, Iggy wanted it obnoxiously compressed - that's really what he meant about "everything in the red," he wanted the meters to stay in the red virtually the entire time. The engineering team actually explained to him over and over again why on a technical level that was a really bad idea - nothing against loud volumes, but what he was asking for wasn't the same as cranking up the volume on your stereo, it had more to do with the limits of digital data.

Allegedly they came to a compromise where they backed off a tiny bit, but it's hard to believe - if you run that CD through a dynamic range meter, the average dynamic range per song is usually 1 or 2 and even below 1 on one track. At the peak of the "loudness wars," those CD's typically hit like 4 or 5, and before digital, most rock music was about 10 or above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUkUc2O6EAk

This is fantastic but after so many years of blowing my eardrums out with the Iggy CD on shitty stock truck speakers it's confusing to listen to it and not feel like I've been assaulted.

Yeah, I listened to a little of it earlier and had the same reaction…

The Iggy sounds better this way but still *wrong* to me. I get why people don't like it, but the Bowie mix has a certain verve to it that I'm pretty attached to.

I don't think either mix is "good". The Bowie mix sounds like a work print of a movie; all the guitar leads are scotch taped into place and everything is sharp and jabbing at the ear, but not in a good way. The Iggy mix feels like an attempt to flatten everything into a block and thereby make it sound more like a direct sequel to Fun House, so there's a little more low end, but the whole thing feels weirdly muffled, like you're hearing it really loud through a thin wall.

Yeah the remaster of the Iggy mix sounds weirdly muffled to me. I can’t A/B it with the original, cuz they seem to have pulled it off streaming(?) Will have to pull out my CD.

I still can’t get with the Bowie mix, unperson’s description is OTM.

thanks for the heads up, bird. i've always been a bowie-mix man. i had decades to live with it, and it's just so weird and depraved sounding. i'll give the iggy mix (yet) another shot though with this version.

I love that they didn’t fade out “Death Trip” on the 1997 mix.

These new remasters are coming to vinyl at the end of March as a twofer courtesy of RSD Essentials.

"RSD Essentials" - an exciting new oxymoron

There's a book called Real Conversations on the Re/Search label and it includes interviews with Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra, Billy Childish, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti: https://www.researchpubs.com/shop/p/real-conversations-ferlinghetti-henry-rollins-biafra-billy-childish

Here's an excerpt from Henry Rollins's interview with V. Vale:

"You know, I backed up and restored Raw Power. We'd heard that the multi-track had been stolen from England and ended up in Belgium. We ran into a friend who was in Tuxedo Moon, Steven Brown, asked him about this and he said 'Yeah, it's in my friend's studio.' We went there and I said "On Iggy's behalf, we'd like to take it back." The studio guy said "Here, take it." So I took it to Iggy and he went "What am I gonna do with it?" So I said "Then give it to me." I took it to Westlake in L.A., and we had to bring in another 2-inch, 16 track machine which took a while to track down. Then we made a super-high analog copy as well as two digital copies. We made some rough mixes off the dupe masters and vaulted all of it. Luckily the master is still in good shape, but thankfully it's analog and digitally backed up and in storage. I said "Iggy, never give this back to Sony. It got ripped off and they didn't even know or bother to find out or tell you--screw 'em. It's yours." He said "Well, you take it." I said "Even better." I have this closet with an air filtration system so that everything in there is dry, cool, and clean."

This also supports the theory that Bowie was never given the proper multi-tracks when he met Iggy over in LA. to do the infamous LP mix. Because the multis - according to this story - never left England.

i need somebody was robbed in this poll!

Get all your Christmas records for the whole family at Woolworth in 1985 pic.twitter.com/Je7oqrdAW5

— UKADS (@ukads3) December 22, 2023

Excellent.

Hah! At first I thought Gene Siskel gave it a thumbs down.

Hahaha nice!
I posted this before on another thread, but it's worth repeating that the Weasel Walter 2020 mix of "Search and Destroy" is without a doubt the best mix, no contest, not even close.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aagvwJTNeSY
The guitar leads blend in more naturally (don't sound as "punched in"), the drums and bass are higher in the mix where they belong, the vocals are pulled back, etc.
I believe that flange effect happening at 0:38 was unintentional, but it actually works!!

The director or someone involved in the ad must’ve been a fan, as I don’t ever remember seeing anything as outré as ‘Raw Power’ in Woolies.

Bought my first Fall album at Woolworth, Bend Sinister on sale for £2.99.

FWIW, the first time my partner ever saw me was in a picture of me holding this album. Amusingly, when we started cohabiting and I finally played the album for enjoyment, it didn't go over well at all as it set off my partner's anxiety issues. (To this day, I have to play it in a separate room with the door closed.)

i bought an Einsturzende Neubauten album in Woolies so not outwith the realms of possibility they might have stocked Raw Power.