stooges were original nihilistic drug-crazed wild men, the pistols were a prefab boy band invented by mclaren in ripped t-shirts (style stolen from richard hell) and naughty words.
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I was expecting something that sounded like a Whitehouse gig, rather than sloopy boogie-woogie on a run-down tape recorder.In the essay "Iggy Pop: Blowtorch in Bondage" critic Lester Bangs calls the album a "documentation of the Iggy holocaust at its most nihilistically out of control." He describes the Stooges concert he attended that immediately preceded the Metallic K.O. performances:
"By now the hatred in the room is one huge livid wave, and Iggy singles out one heckler who has been particularly abusive: "Listen, asshole, you heckle me one more time and I'm gonna come down there and kick your ass." "Fuck you, you little punk," responds the biker. So Iggy jumps off the stage, runs through the middle of the crowd, and the guy beats the shit out of him, ending the evening's musical festivities by sending the lead singer back to his motel room and a doctor. The next day the bike gang, who call themselves the Scorpions, will phone WABX-FM and promise to kill Iggy and the Stooges if they play the Michigan Palace on Thursday night. They do (play, that is), and nobody gets killed, but Metallic K.O. is the only rock album I know where you can actually hear hurled beer bottles breaking against guitar strings.[3]
Yeah, that might well be true.
It's just that after reading stuff like this
I was expecting something that sounded like a Whitehouse gig, rather than sloopy boogie-woogie on a run-down tape recorder.
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To be fair though, I've got a Pistols bootleg from '76 in Manchester (the same night I was born, that legendary Free Trade Hall gig) - musically it just sounds like a very typical and bland pub rock covers band (with all the Small Faces, Who numbers, etc) - even the versions of Pretty Vacant and Did You No Wrong just sound like an average 70s pub group; amazing to think everyone who saw this performance claims it changed their lives.
Funhouse is genuinely unhinged though, theres no way you can just lump it in with the admittedly fairly stodgy-in-places debut
To be fair though, I've got a Pistols bootleg from '76 in Manchester (the same night I was born, that legendary Free Trade Hall gig) - musically it just sounds like a very typical and bland pub rock covers band (with all the Small Faces, Who numbers, etc) - even the versions of Pretty Vacant and Did You No Wrong just sound like an average 70s pub group; amazing to think everyone who saw this performance claims it changed their lives.