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FRESHER THAN NEXT WEEK NME’S COVER BUFFOONS
Or: How to Record a Great Debut Album In Less Than 24 Hours -
A Review of MC5-Kick Out The Jams, and The Stooges
20 August 2005
You don't get albums like The Stooges’ debut anymore. You certainly don't get a band with faces covered
in pimples taken to a studio with a producer in the calibre of John Cale; even more so, when the songs are
only half baked ideas.
Back then, however, it was revolutionary. Nowadays, even with tons of pimples on your face, you're still expected to
sound polished to death, and worse, with no pimples at all.
The great thing in writing and recording within 24 hours - like this one was - is that you can capture a very specific mood and
sound. It makes the album homogenous, and the improvisations help in making the result interesting even after 30 listens, and 30
years.
Immediate and raw - 'I Want To Be Your Dog' and 'No Fun' are easily amongst Iggy's best 10 songs ever.
Kick out a Primal Scream
It might be less primal than The Stooges debut, but recorded at a live gig, MC5 - Kick Out The Jam has a certain energy that just
can’t be matched by studio albums. It is amazingly intense, wild, dirty and even barbaric at times when the whole band chants
together like a bunch of football fans fronting a rock’n’roll band.
The first minute of the album must be one of the most exhilarating starts ever, with the audience clapping,
drumming and shouting in anticipation for the band. You can hear in this album where The New York Dolls got their sound from,
where punk got its’ attitude, and songs like ‘Ramblin’ Rose’ and ‘Kick Out the Jams’ pretty much sum up the whole Garage-Rock
revival of 2002/03 (with The Hives especially sounding like Iggy Pop fronting MC5).
There are plenty of great moments in the album, and even though The Garage-Rock sound dominates, other genres and
influences do creep in. ‘Borderline’ has folky elements that recall CSN&Y, and Led Zepplelin, ‘Motor City Is Burning’ is a
heavy and dirty blues, ‘Starship’ features a Middle-Eastern oriental vocal improvisation, that actually predates Robert Plant’s
similar exercises. And actually nearly every moment in this record will remind you of something that it predated.
If this album was released Eight years later, songs like ‘Kick Out The Jams’ and ‘Rocket Reducer No.62’ would have been leading
Punk hits. Released 33 years later, they would have been even bigger. Ahead of its time and truly brave a live debut must have
meant commercial suicide, but that’s what also makes it unique to this day. Fresher than next week’s NME’s cover buffoons!
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