Rock and Roll's Turin Shroud

You know what it is and who originally wore it. Long John Gone owns it these days. Read all about it here.

The "Raw Power" Stooges are about to play a festival in Brazil as i type. More on that event as news comes to hand.

JW Week

If you hadn't heard it's James Williamson Week over at the I-94 Bar. Here's my interview with him. Nice fella.

Thought I'd add this as it seems to be a new addition to the YouTubeage of James' return to the stage with the Careless Hearts in San Jose earlier this month.

Raw Power - James Williamson w/ the Careless Hearts, San Jose. September 5

...and Search & Destroy....



...along with Cock in My Pocket.

Seen this?

Iggy & the Stooges live 31/12/1973
Uploaded by Oabetz. - Explore more music videos.

From the Academy of Music in NYC, 1973. The Raw Power Stooges.

Yes, it's true

We have confirmation from someone who knows. Iggy & The Stooges with James Williamson on guitar will rehearse in July. No word on gigs yet.

Stooges 2009?

The Australian's respected rock writer Iain Shedden may have landed a world exclusive.

Stooges Got a Right

Interesting news. The re-born Stooges have taken it upon themselves to play songs from their Raw Power era. Informed comment from reliable sources was that those songs were verboten, on account of the Asheton brothers (Ron, to be precise) having been excluded from the songwriting process in 1972 when James Williamson was sole guitarist.

So, peruse this set list from a recent gig (7 June) in Belgium:

01. Loose
02. 1969
03. I Wanna Be Your Dog
04. TV Eye
05. Dirt
06. Real Cool Time
07. No Fun
08. Band Intros
09. 1970
10. Funhouse
11. Skull Ring
12. My Idea Of Fun
13. Search And Destroy
14. I Got a Right
15. Little Electric Chair

And only one song from the missed opportunity that was the "comeback" album "The Weirdness". Now THAT is no surprise around these parts.

"I'm making $5000 baby - so screw you!"

That quote will be familiar to anyone with a copy of Metallic KO, half of which comes from the final Raw Powerr Stooges show. Here's proof that five-grand was indeed the Stooges' going rate.

ReV RuSSeLL (not his real name) of New York City started his music industry career working at the Michigan Palace in the early '70s and happened to souvenir this contract for a Stooges gig at that venue.

Now working as a guitar tech for a number of bands he'd rather weren't named, he saw the Stooges in all their decadent, burning-the-candle-at=both-ends, desperate glory an enviable 13 times in the Michigan area. The gig that the contract is for pre-dated his working at the Palace.

ReV RuSSeLL has been out to Australia as a touring band crew member and knew this piece of memorabilia would strike a chord.

Click on the document for a detailed look. Then drool at the thought of the shows he saw that you and I missed.

Historic Stooges photos published for the first time

Here's a piece of history for Stooges fans. We're publishing - for the first time anywhere - three sets of photos of the "Funhouse" and pre-"Raw Power" Stooges, from the six shows they played in the St Louis area in 1970 and '71.

CRAIG PETTY was lucky enough to be at all those shows, several of them with camera in hand. His photos were destined for publication in a Stooges book which, alas, appears to have stalled. So we're presenting them for the first time, in copy-protected form. (You may be able to reproduce these photos if you have a worthy project in mind - but please make sure you seek permission here first. OK?)

Craig takes up the story...

"The color photos of Iggy with longer hair, no dog collar and unripped jeans were from Kiel Stadium, St Louis, Missouri on March 7th, 1970.

"The next set of color shots with Iggy in ripped jeans , dog collar and shorter hair come from The Rainy Daze Club St.Louis MO in about July 1970 - a week or so before the famous Cincinnati Festival with the 'walking on the hands' film."

Close observers will note that Iggy is almost identically dressed in that TV footage:


"The black-and-white shots are from May 27th 1971 at the Factory, in St.Charles (a suburb of St Louis.) This show is the one that many bootlegs are from, and many of those are mistakenly labeled Kiel Stadium 1970,"
Craig says.

(There's a bootleg on the mysterious Starfighter label which purports to be this show - a better quality copy of that tape is circulating through traders.)

"The Factory show had Ron AND James Williamson on dual lead guitars for a very rare and short lived period. This was a makeup show for one canceled the night before at The Music Palace when the band's equipment truck didn't show.

"About 35 minutes into the show, Ig whacks Ron in the head with his mic by accident and the gig stops. They come back and try one more but it goes down. The show is over.

"People are pissed. Iggy comes out into the crowd afterward and hangs out and talks to everybody and is very apologetic. This is very cool.

"The promoter stiffs them. That's very uncool.

"A couple of weeks later they're dropped by Elektra and the band goes dormant.

"They came back to St Louis in '73 for two shows at the American Theatre."

Dates Craig recalls the dates the band played in St Louis over 1970-73 were:

3/7/70 Kiel Stadium
3/25/70 Rainy Daze
?/7/70 Rainy Daze
5/27/71 The Factory
8/18/73 American Theatre (two shows)

You can access the photos here. Wouldn't hurt to tell Craig how you feel (to quote Ig) by leaving a comment.