The 500 - #128 - Raw Power - Iggy And The Stooges

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #128
Album Title: Raw Power
Artist: The Stooges
Genre: Proto Punk, Hard Rock, Garage Rock
Recorded: CBS Studios, London, England
Released: February, 1973
My age at release: 7
How familiar was I with it before this week: One Song
Is it on the 2020 list? No
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Search and Destroy

Although I’m on a two-week winter break, I’m still focused on report card writing. If I don’t start now, January will hit like a freight train.  Elementary school volleyball season, several social obligations and publishing this blog will collide with lesson prep, report card delivery and everything else that makes the first month of the year a whirlwind of deadlines and distractions.

Despite all of this, I’m excited to bring back to the classroom an old favorite activity: CNN10. Each weekday, network host Coy Wire, a former Buffalo Bills player with infectious energy, delivers a 10-minute recap of current events. It’s quick, digestible, and engaging – the perfect way to help my middle school students think beyond four walls and connect to the wider world using their critical thinking and listening skills.

Coy Wire presenting the news on CNN 10.

I teach several literacy and social studies activities that are enhanced by the short and snappy CNN program. Moreso, I connect with a colleague at another school, Chris Wilson, who creates a current events-based trivia game based on CNN10 via a program called Kahoot! that lightens up Friday classes.

Using CNN 10 reminds me of the first time I paid attention to the news. I was about eight years old and my parents had CBC Radio on constantly. The evening news program As It Happens was a staple, often playing as we ate dinner. The voice of host Barbara Frum became as familiar as family and her recap of Canadian and world events made me feel tuned in.

It was as if I had discovered a secret window into the world of adults. Most of the headlines flew past me, but I remember the word "impeachment" tickling my brain because it sounded like a cocktail of "peach" and "mint". soon deciphered it had nothing to do with either.

Promotional poster for CBC's As It Happens (circa 1974)

Watergate was everywhere. Nixon, in my mind, was like a comic book villain. He was shadowy, scheming and, with his rubbery face and jowl-wagging delivery, larger than life. He was the kind of character who could have stepped out of the panels of a Batman or Superman monthly. The grown-ups whispered about scandals while the radio hummed with tension, and even as a kid, I could feel something cracking at the edges. I  later recognized that the optimism of the 1960s was gone; the air was heavy with mistrust and exhaustion.

That sensation of a country fraying feels like the same energy The Stooges bottled in Raw Power. It wasn’t polished or polite. The four-piece garage band from Ann Arbor, Michigan, had created something that was jagged, feral and loud. It was the sound of a world coming apart at the seams, and lead vocalist Iggy Pop didn’t just sing songs, he detonated them.

Iggy Pop performing (circa 1974)

Raw Power is the third record by The Stooges on The 500 list. I wrote about their self-titled debut (#185) in November, 2024, and their second record, Fun House (#191), a month earlier. In each post, I recap their formation and the development of their sound, as they moved from minimalist hypnotic and psychedelic grooves to a more aggressive and chaotic proto-punk sound.

Shortly after the release of Fun House, the band was on hiatus. Three of the four members, including Pop, had become serious heroin users and, in 1972, they had relocated to England in an attempt to reconstitute the group. Their new line-up, now dubbed Iggy and The Stooges, featured Pop on vocals, James Williamson on guitars, with brothers Ron and Scott Asheton on bass and drums respectively.

The Stooges (1974) (l-r) Williamson, Pop, R. Asheton & S. Asheton

The record was produced by David Bowie, who was also helping Pop recover from his heroin addiction. It sold rather poorly on release, with many critics complaining that Bowie had mixed it poorly. However, the album’s raw and rough sound gained in popularity among the earliest pioneers of punk rock, a genre which exploded in 1976.

Listening now, one can recognize its intensity. It is as if the guitars were tearing through the fabric of the era, shredding the last remnants of peace-and-love idealism and spitting out something raw, honest and dangerous. As Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong said when inducting the group into The Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2010: "They symbolized the destruction of Flower Power and introduced us to raw power".

Pop (left) with Bowie (1974).

If history doesn't repeat, it does echo. We’re living through an era of deep political divides and alarming international tensions. Who can guess at how the future will unfold?  I can already see some of my students starting to tune into the world beyond their own circles, the same way I did back in the early ’70s. That awareness often leads to something bigger and I am sure that some of them will seek clarification of the mayhem we are living through. I think our daily 10 minute check-ins with Coy Wire and the team at CNN10 will help facilitate that.

They might, for instance,  discover a musician or band that rises above today’s cacophony and uncertainty, and bring a new era in music that reflects how we got through the current upheaval. Honestly, I can’t wait to look back a decade from now and ask: Who gave us the 2020s version of Raw Power, a record that didn’t just play the times, but ripped them wide open?

Kendrick Lamar? Run The Jewels? Childish Gambino? Fontaines D.C.? or someone currently writing their debut record?

Not me for sure. I'm too old for tearing up stages or reinventing genres...beside, I have to get back to report cards.

The 500 - #355 - Having A Rave Up - The Yardbirds

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: # 355

Album Title: Having A Rave Up

Artist: The Yardbirds

Genre: Blues Rock, Experimental Pop

Recorded: March, 1964 (Live), Summer, 1965 (Studio)

Released: November, 1965

My age at release: 3 months

How familiar was I with it before this week: A little

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Smokestack Lightning Selected by my Twitter chum & 500 fan, @teajaygee

There is a tiresome formula used in creating crime stories for many films and television programs. A detective, usually one struggling with strong personal issues such as alcohol, divorce or childhood demons has become obsessed with an unsolved crime, typically murder. The stakes are raised when the police chief shuts down the case without explanation, which compels the suffering protagonist to take a leave of absence to "get his damn life together!"

The detective's partner, a genuinely concerned friend, visits the beleaguered cop’s home to give support and comfort. The house is a shambles. A living-room wall has been painstakingly bestrewn into chaotic, patchwork of evidence from the case, each article, map and clue connected by a web-work of yarn.

A typical example of an investigation wall

As I looked into the history of The Yardbirds for this week's record, 1965's Having A Rave Up,  I felt as if I was at the center of a rich investigation into music history. The "yarn-strings" of my research symbolically stretched back to the Chicago and Mississippi-Delta blues (the birth of rock-and-roll) and forward through three of the biggest rock guitarists of my generation, and beyond -- Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. The trio are ranked second, third and fifth respectively on Rolling Stone Magazine’s article on the 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time.

(l-r) Clapton, Page & Beck

There are too many historical connections to this record to cover in this forum, but I will touch on a few. For example, this record features one of the earliest studio uses of the “fuzz-box” guitar pedal. The fuzz-box is an audio signal distortion device that alters the sound of amplified instruments (typically guitar) to create a growling, "fuzzy" tone that became a staple of the hard rock, psychedelia, heavy metal and punk that dominated the music of the late-sixties and early-seventies.

The Gibson Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz Pedal (First Generation)

The Yardbirds formed in London, England, in 1963 as a blues-based group well known for their live performances. In fact, side two of Having A Rave Up was recorded at The Marquee Club in March, 1964, with Clapton on lead guitar. The material was taken from their debut record Five Live Yardbirds, an album that had a limited, U.K.-only, release.

Five Live Yardbirds - U.K. only debut release by The Yardbirds

In March, 1965, Clapton left the group to join John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers. Beck joined the group shortly after and The Yardbirds went to the studio to record the music that would appear on side one of Having A Rave Up.

The Yardbirds 1965, (l-r) Beck, Page, Chris Dreja (bass), 
Keith Reif (vocals/harmonica) & Jim McCarty (drums)

A signature element of The Yardbirds' sound is the "rave up" -- a music idea borrowed from the world of jazz. A rave up is an extended instrumental jam (improvisation) in the middle of a song. The beat of the song increases over a few bars until it is in double-time. The guitar-driven melody is forced to build in energy to a climax before the band returns to the normal beat and concludes the song. In his book, Sixties Rock: Garage, Psychedelic And Other Satisfactions (2000), music historian Michael Hicks described it thusly:

"Wherever it occurred, the rave-up made a small narrative curve that introduced a basic conflict (backbeat vs. off-beats), drove that conflict to a climax (by getting more and more raucous), then resolved it (by returning it to a 'normal' beat). Through this technique the Yardbirds created a rock mannerism; sometimes the rave-up seemed the whole point of the song." 

I love a rave up. As a fan of improvisational jams in rock music, it scratches an itch. The growing energy is intense and thrilling. Anticipating the climax can give me cranberry-sized goosebumps. It may be one of my favourite parts of live music -- when the band goes "off-script" and finds a “groove-pocket” to play in. As a hobby player, I envy that level of musicianship.

Roger The Engineers - Yardbirds (1965)

We'll be back to The Yardbirds in five weeks when I check out their next release, Roger The Engineer. Until then, let your hair down. Enjoy a Rave Up!