Raw Power peaked at #182 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart.
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2 Personnel 3 ... A personal comment ... |
I believe Lemmy Kilmister, lead singer for Motörhead, once described the band’s ambitions as the following: “If we moved in next door to you, your lawn will die.” Well, thanks to the technology of car sound systems, the deforesting power of just one brilliantly loud symphony of discord is nearly infinite. This is music that gives the impression that it will come through the speakers and beat you up if you don’t turn it up to 11.
Perhaps, if one really tried, one could find the words to say, “Yes, Iggy’s vocals truly have an immediate urgency; a primal wail that bespeaks the blues bedrock upon which all rock is built. Indeed, James Williamson’s lead guitar is incendiary, with flaming licks stoking the fire whose foundation is laid by brothers Scott and Ron Asheton, whose tightness as a rhythm section rivals the legendary Watts/Wyman.”
Of course, I have no idea if any of this is true; any attempt to distill the noise into music is almost as foolish as to dismiss the music as mere noise. Listening to Williamson’s guitar, one doesn’t hear an isolated part; one hears just another piece of a majestic, property value-lowering ensemble achievement.
Iggy’s lyrics are exactly as insightful as they should be. Perhaps his greatest moment of poignancy was a quatrain in his early ‘80s magnum opus, “Repo Man”:
An illustration: In 1993, riding the coattails of the succesful show, Mike Judge and MTV put together an album called “The Beavis and Butt-head Experience,” featuring totally cool bands like Anthrax, Megadeth, White Zombie, and Nirvana. Included on that compilation was the Red Hot Chili Peppers covering “Search And Destroy” twenty years after the release of Raw Power. After hearing the song, Beavis is so moved as to proclaim, “Heh heh… Destroy! DESTROY!” This is the correct reaction.
David Bowie's original mix to Raw Power was critically maligned, and it has been discarded on the latest CD version for a new mix from the original tapes done by Iggy himself; in the liner notes, he writes, "It's a very violent mix. The proof's in the pudding."Track listing
Personnel
... A personal comment ...
Iggy was a people’s poet, a modern-day Woody Guthrie for the dumb, stoned teenage masses who had no leader to guide them through the modern wasteland but a tube of glue and a couple slices of wax.