Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The hardest rock album ever?, 29 Dec 2001
By A Customer
The Stooges' debut, brilliant though it was, was the sound of a charmingly inept adolescent garage rock band. This, their follow up, is devoid of innocence, and its charm is in its terrifyingly bleak power. The production is cavernous and bass heavy, with none of the gloss of the band's John Cale-produced debut. Iggy sounds dangerous, cynical, and quite insane; his growls and yelps speaking volumes more than his fantastically inarticulate lyrics. The cacophanous closing track, LA Blues, is a structureless instrumental freakout, with the Mighty Ig screaming his drug-addled balls off - perfectly capturing the spirit of the album. Many punk and metal bands have tried to match the visceral power of this album, but none have succeeded.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sleazy Rock and Roll!, 4 Feb 2002
By A Customer
To me, the classic Stooges albums are the first two records. "Fun House" being their greatest moment and one of rock's sleaziest statements ever committed to tape. For those born in the 70's or even later, you must remember what NYC used to be like before Giuliani. "Fun House" was recorded in an age when Times Square was full of seedy bars, porn shops, dirty old men, and junkies. This album, along with the band themselves, inhabited those warrens, and are lucky to have escaped alive. "Fun House" is quite possibly the sleaziest album ever recorded. It is not pretty, nor is it clean. Track 2 sums this album up perfectly. Loose. If this album had not been recorded there would never have been The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, or all the other numerous punk bands that have come our way in the last 30 years. The amazing thing about "Fun House" is that it sounds as if it was recorded yesterday. It has aged well and rocks harder than most bands today. A true classic that no rock fan should go without.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Stooges' greatest album...totally essential, 23 Jan 2006
Given the option, I would have rated this at least 6 stars, despite the last track being something of a disappointment (we'll come back to that...)
First off, this 35 years old album still sounds utterly contemporary. So much wouldn't have happened without it, and none of the innumerable bands influenced by it have come close to equalling it.
Second, let's dispel the notion that this is a bunch of spontaneous stuff they just came up with in the studio. What it IS is their live set of the time, honed by regular gigs and (superbly) recorded live in the studio through a p.a. with no overdubs. Anyone who's heard the sadly no longer available "Complete Funhouse Sessions" will know that they arrived in the studio with these songs pretty much already worked out, and the multiple takes (over 30 on some songs) were just a case of nailing the best possible version. These guys weren't virtuosi, but they could lay down a murderous groove to rival anyone - and as for the singer...
Down In The Street is a mean, lowdown, almost funky opener, with some superb whoops and yells from Iggy. Loose (which took the most takes) is an awesome full on floor the accelerator three chord blast, with some great dynamics. TV Eye keeps up the energy level with a bit more structure. Absolutely superb, especially the bit where Ron Asheton just chugs away on guitar with Iggy's unearthly yowling over the top. And then possibly the greatest thing they ever recorded - Dirt. This is an epic ballad, alternating between a vicious, jerking riff and an almost plaintive section, with a cool guitar solo thrown in and Iggy snarling "do you feel it when you cut me?" with terrifying conviction.
The second half is patchier - opener 1970 is probably the least good actual song on here (still damn fine though), but also marks the debut of excellent sax player Steve Mackay, who plays throughout the rest of the album. The title track is a vicious and extended workout showing clear evidence Iggy had been listening to James Brown, though by no means trying to copy proper funk. It seethes with superb vocals and sax. Check out the 2 CD version for some great out-takes of this. Lastly, we get to LA Blues. Unfortunately the producer wouldn't let them do what they did live, which was break down into LA Blues from the end of Fun House, after building up a full head of steam. Instead, they had to start it cold, and it shows - you really have to be in the mood to make a free-form freakout like this work, and they weren't, especially drummer Scott Asheton - he had to overdub a new drum part over the edit (from a 17 minute jam) used for the album - which was never going to yield ideal results. So five and a half good tracks out of seven, on a 33 minute album - doesn't sound that hot. But be assured that those five and half tracks are at the absolute pinnacle of loud, vicious, evil, dirty (fill in more adjectives when you've heard it) rock music. Just doesn't get any better than this.
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