Stooges Raw Power re-redux

Just in case you haven't heard the news, Sony Legacy will be issuing two new editions of the Stooges seminal third album, Raw Power, in April. All of the info you might need should be included below...straight from the label. One interesting point, I thought, is the first official acknowledgment of the UK cassette mix, mistakenly released back in the mid 70's. I had posted this mix a couple of years ago. I even got to ask James Williamson about it directly who said he didn't know anything about it. I only had the word of the guy I had purchased the alternate disc bootleg from to go by. And so, it's nice to get some "official" validation.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to checking out the deluxe edition. Especially the "making of..." DVD documentary. Please note the release dates of each edition are slightly different, and the deluxe edition is only available via mail order.

RAW POWER: LEGACY EDITION 2-CD package:
• Original 8-song, 34-minute album with “Search and Destroy,” “Raw Power”
• Full-length one-hour show at Richards in Atlanta, October 1973 – plus two previously unreleased bonus tracks from album sessions and rehearsals
• Booklet with essays by U.S. and UK journalists, plus introductions
by Iggy, James Williamson, and Scott Asheton
• LEGACY EDITION available at both physical and digital retail outlets starting April 13, 2010, through Columbia/Legacy

RAW POWER: DELUXE EDITION 4-disc package (in 7-inch square slipcase):
• Original album (CD One) and Richards show plus bonus tracks (CD Two)
• CD Three: Rarities, Outtakes, & Alternates from the Raw Power Era
• Disc Four – DVD : The Making of Raw Power documentary
• 48-page softcover book adds essay by Henry Rollins; photographs by Mick Rock, Robert Matheu & more; testimonials by Lou Reed, Joan Jett, Tom Morello & more
• Five exquisite 5x7-inch prints, suitable for framing
• Japanese pic-sleeve 45 single repro: “Raw Power” b/w “Search And Destroy”
• DELUXE EDITION available EXCLUSIVELY through iggyandthestoogesmusic.com in advance of April 27th release date

ON TOUR 2010: April 14th and 16th in France;
May 2-3rd at HMV Hammersmith Apollo in London; August 7th in Stockholm;
and 3rd annual “All Tomorrow's Parties” festival in Monticello ,NY, September 3rd

“I always liked Raw Power. A lot. I knew that not a lot of other people would like it at the time it was made, but what could I do?  Seeing it re-released yet again on Sony Legacy is deeply satisfying. The Stooges and I are cocked and loaded to follow up and deliver it live on stage in 2010.”
– Iggy Pop, 2010.

A work-in-progress for decades (and decades), with search-and-recovery efforts in studios and archives on both sides of the Atlantic – pays off in 2010 with a box-load of previously unreleased recordings by Iggy and the Stooges from the Raw Power “era” of 1972-73 – including a full-length nightclub concert in Atlanta whose excerpts have been among the most bootlegged rock relix of all time.

The renaissance of interest and curiosity surrounding Raw Power – the album that almost single-handedly detonated the punk-rock movement in the next few years after its release – could not have arrived at a more appropriate time. The Stooges are inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame at ceremonies in New York City on Monday, March 15, 2010.

On April 13th, the waters will part for the double-disc RAW POWER: LEGACY EDITION, the newest entry in Legacy’s prestigious series of multi-disc packages. Following the Legacy Edition by two weeks, RAW POWER: DELUXE EDITION -- a fully-packed 7-inch square slipcase box set containing three audio CDs, a DVD documentary, a 48-page book, five 5x7-inch prints, and a bonus 7-inch 45 rpm picture sleeve single – will be released exclusively through iggyandthestoogesmusic.com. Pre-orders are being taken now in advance of the April 27th release date.

Both the DELUXE EDITION and LEGACY EDITION are produced by Iggy Pop, Bruce Dickinson, and Robert Matheu. Dickinson is a 15-year Legacy veteran who has produced projects for the company ranging from Cheap Trick, the Clash and Bob Dylan, to John Cale, Mott The Hoople, Peter Tosh, Patti Smith, Blue Öyster Cult, and dozens of others.

Also working closely with Iggy is Matheu, author of last year’s definitive The Stooges: The Authorized and Illustrated Story.  Named official Stoogeologist by the band, Matheu has been archiving and chronicling their history ever since his teenage years as a music photographer in Detroit, where he attended the earliest Stooges shows.  His work has appeared in Playboy, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, and Mojo, as well as on over 200 albums, including the Stooges' 2007 reunion album, The Weirdness. 

Raw Power

At the core of both the DELUXE EDITION box set and LEGACY EDITION is the original Raw Power album by Iggy and the Stooges (James Williamson on guitars, the late Ron Asheton on bass, Scott Asheton on drums), as iconic and influential a rock record as has ever seen light of day in our lifetimes, with its unforgettable Mick Rock photography on the front and back. Nearly four decades after its release on Columbia Records in February 1973, the eight-song, 34-minute sonic blitzkrieg – source of “Search And Destroy,” “Gimme Danger,” “Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell,” “Penetration,” “Raw Power,” “I Need Somebody,” “Shake Appeal,” and “Death Trip” – is still capable of causing ears to bleed and hearts to flutter.

This Raw Power CD restores the original release – as it was produced in the fall of 1972 at CBS Studios in London by Iggy Pop, and mixed in Hollywood by David Bowie. This 2010 version is newly remastered by Grammy®-winning Sony Music engineer Mark Wilder, and should finally put the lie to years of stigma attached to Bowie’s mixes. As Dickinson points out, “Bowie’s mixes were at the mercy of old-school mastering engineers in 1972 who, quite simply, had never heard anything like Raw Power before, and their final EQ proved it.” With Wilder on board, Bowie’s mixes, unjustly skewered, now turn out to be up-to-the-task and beyond.

(In 1996, Iggy finally acknowledged those criticisms of the album’s sound and accepted Legacy’s invitation to personally remix Raw Power. “Everything’s still in the red, it’s a very violent mix,” Iggy said at the time. “The proof’s in the pudding.” That single-CD configuration of Raw Power has been a perennial catalog staple for Sony Music around the world ever since its release in 1997, and will stay in-print in Legacy’s Original Album Classics series.)

“Georgia Peaches”

Also featured on the DELUXE EDITION and LEGACY EDITION is disc two, titled “Georgia Peaches,” a one-hour performance at Atlanta’s notorious rock club Richards in October 1973 where Iggy and the Stooges played three or four nights, two sets each night, with one long set on Friday and Saturday nights. Many collectors (including Matheu and Dickinson) were in possession of various heavily-edited shards from Richards, as much as a half-hour’s worth on cassette.

After the Stooges reunion got underway in 2003, Ron Asheton made Matheu aware of a Richards cassette he had stored away. Matheu employed due diligence and his sleuthing led him to Joe Neil, the original recordist of ‘Sam’s Tape Truck’ parked outside Richards (who now runs an archive house and digital recording facility in Atlanta called Doppler Studios). Many, many shows were recorded at Richards for the top labels, for use on syndicated radio shows like King Biscuit Flower Hour. But radio was never ready for Iggy and the Stooges, and so the original pristine board tapes languished from 1973 on. Their discovery on Joe Neil’s desk is akin to the Rosetta Stone of Iggy and the Stooges missing links.

A few of the album’s songs were still in the set by the time they played Richards – “Raw Power,” “Gimme Danger,” “Search And Destroy,” “I Need Somebody” – but as Matheu observes, “They weren’t just going out and playing the Raw Power album in its entirety. They were constantly writing new songs and updating the setlist with new songs, always thinking forward.” So the other four “Georgia Peaches” songs – “Head On,” “Heavy Liquid,” “Cock In My Pocket,” and “Open Up And Bleed” – would all be part of the set by the time Iggy and the Stooges were in their final stages together as a band five months later, back home at the Michigan Palace in February 1974, as first documented on the Metallic KO album.

The “Georgia Peaches” disc concludes with two previously unreleased bonus tracks. The first was part of a long studio jam that originated as an outtake from the Raw Power recording sessions, and was titled “Doojiman” because of its island jungle vibe. The second version of “Head On” originated in 1973, when Iggy and the Stooges were holed up at CBS Studios in New York City, rehearsing for their upcoming gig at Max’s Kansas City in advance of their U.S. tour.

The “Georgia Peaches” set (which took its name from one of Iggy’s rants at the Southern crowd) features West Coast journeyman pianist Scott Thurston in the Stooges lineup. He was “discovered” by Williamson in Los Angeles, soon after the widely-bootlegged Whisky A Go-Go engagement, when the Stooges pianist Bob Sheff (who had been in the Prime Movers with Iggy) decided to leave. Thurston stayed with the Stooges until the bitter end in ’74.

LEGACY EDITION

RAW POWER: LEGACY EDITION will include a 24-page standard CD-size booklet chronicling the evolution of Iggy and the Stooges, and the album’s creation. Two essays go into extensive detail on the history of the band, their associations with Elektra and then Columbia Records, Iggy’s recruitment into Tony DeFries’ MainMan Management stable that also included David Bowie, Mott The Hoople, and Lou Reed, the album production in London and its influence on rockers from Steve Jones (Sex Pistols), Brian James (the Damned), and Mick Jones (the Clash), to Kurt Cobain (Nirvana), Henry Rollins, and Bobby Gillespie (Primal Scream) – to name a few.

The first essay, titled “The Stooges’ Supernova Death Trip Revisited,” was written by British journalist Kris Needs, and focuses on Iggy’s sojourn in London, the Mainman situation, and his import of Williamson and then the Asheton brothers to work on the new album. Needs started running the Mott The Hoople fan club for MainMan in 1972, going on to edit original fanzine ZIGZAG between 1977-82, while writing for numerous publications from then until present, including NME, Sniffin’Glue, Creem and, most recently, MOJO and Record Collector. He has also written books on the Clash, New York Dolls and Keith Richards, among others.

The second essay in the LEGACY EDITION booklet, titled “Raw Power Got A Son Called Rock ’N’ Roll,” was written by veteran Michigan journalist Brian J. Bowe, who has written extensively about the Stooges. He focuses on the American side of things – the Stooges origins in Detroit, Ann Arbor, and New York City; their return to the U.S. after recording in London; Richards in Atlanta; and a coda that brings the story full circle to 2010.

The LEGACY EDITION booklet also includes personal introductions written by survivors Iggy Pop, Scott Asheton, and James Williamson (who returned to the lineup after Ron’s death on January 6, 2009). They continue to tour as Iggy and the Stooges, with bassist Mike Watt (formerly of the Minutemen and Columbia group fIREHOSE) and saxophonist Steve Mackay.

DELUXE EDITION

As explained, RAW POWER: DELUXE EDITION will include the same discs one and two. And then the fun begins. Disc three, titled Rarities, Outtakes, & Alternates from the Raw Power Era, comprises eight tracks from various sources, five of which are previously unreleased. Two of these are outtakes from the Raw Power sessions, songs that do not appear anywhere else in the Stooges canon: “I’m Hungry” (which evolved into “Penetration”) and “Hey, Peter” (the latter conceptually unrelated to anything on Raw Power).

Two songs are from an early aborted Raw Power session, “I Got A Right” (which became an Iggy and the Stooges staple and has been covered by dozens of bands) and “I’m Sick Of You” (another staple, whose version here was previously issued on a rare Bomp EP in 1977). Two more tracks are Iggy’s “violent” alternate mixes of “Gimme Danger” and “Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell,” from the 1997 Columbia/Legacy Raw Power reissue.

Background on two more tracks: Raw Power was cut from the Columbia U.S. catalog within a year or so after its release, but had reappeared on the CBS UK budget-line Embassy Records line, “by popular demand” of Brits at the dawn of the punk rock era. Matheu began importing copies to the Peaches record store he managed in Detroit. He immediately noticed the Embassy LP and cassette mixes of “Raw Power” and “Search And Destroy” were different than the U.S. mixes he knew.

Three decades later, Matheu informed Dickinson of the Embassy issue, and Dickinson contacted Richard Bowe at the Sony UK archive. They were able to find the original tapes – now known as the Embassy Reels – which did, indeed, have different codes and matrix numbers on them. As Dickinson began transcribing the Embassy Reels, it wasn’t just “Raw Power” and “Search And Destroy” that were different, it was a completely alternate mix for the whole album. The alternate mixes of “Shake Appeal” and “Death Trip” on this Rarities CD are some of the fruits of that search.

Disc four of the DELUXE EDITION is a new 30-minute documentary DVD, The Making Of Raw Power, produced and directed by Morgan Neville. It will include interviews with Iggy Pop, James Williamson, Scott Asheton, Mike Watt, Johnny Marr, and Henry Rollins, plus electrifying performance footage of James Williamson’s first performance with Iggy and the Stooges in 30 years (!) at Festival Planeta Terra in São Paulo, Brazil, November 2009. Neville has worked – as producer, executive producer, director, writer – on a score of documentaries for television over the last 15 years, among them: Johnny Cash's America (2008), The Night James Brown Saved Boston (2008), Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story (2007), Hank Williams: Honky Tonk Blues (2004), Muddy Waters Can't Be Satisfied (2003), Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock'n'Roll (2000), Brian Wilson: A Beach Boy's Tale (1999), Nat King Cole: Loved in Return (1998), and many others.

The final audio element of the DELUXE EDITION is a faithful reproduction of a rare Japanese picture-sleeve 45 rpm single, “Raw Power” b/w “Search And Destroy.” The U.S. single was “Search And Destroy” b/w “Penetration,” and Dickinson found single mixes with different EQ’s for all three songs in the Sony vaults. White label promo copies of the U.S. 45 are widely found, but original copies of the Japanese pic sleeve single can command hundreds of dollars at auction.

Adding to the DELUXE EDITION is the stunning 48-page softcover 7-inch square book that accompanies the box set. In addition to the same two essays and introductions that appear in the LEGACY EDITION booklet, the box set book adds a new 1100-word essay by Henry Rollins, as well as testimonials about the enduring legacy of Raw Power from Lou Reed, Joan Jett, Tom Morello, Cheetah Chrome (Dead Boys), Hugo Burnham (Gang of Four), Jim Reid (Jesus & Mary Chain) and more. The book’s essence, however, is the wealth of photography inside – from the collections of Mick Rock and Robert Matheu, among others. Also included in the box set are five exquisitely printed 5x7-inch photographs, suitable for framing.

“Raw Power,” writes James Williamson, “was the confluence of the Stooges’ ages, hormones, creativity, ability, experience, tastes, lack of supervision, contempt for authority and ambition to achieve our rock dreams however unrealistic they might be. The songs from Raw Power were written from deep within our souls and were played with a meaningfulness and authenticity which is rarely captured on record.”


RAW POWER: LEGACY EDITION by IGGY AND THE STOOGES
(Columbia/Legacy 88697 56149 2)

Disc One: RAW POWER (recorded September-October 1972, originally issued February 1973, as Columbia 32111) Selections: 1. Search And Destroy • 2. Gimme Danger • 3. Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell • 4. Penetration • 5. Raw Power • 6. I Need Somebody • 7. Shake Appeal • 8. Death Trip.

Disc Two: “Georgia Peaches” (Live At Richards, Atlanta, Georgia, October 1973, all tracks previously unreleased) Selections: 1. Introduction • 2. Raw Power • 3. Head On • 4. Gimme Danger • 5. Search And Destroy • 6. I Need Somebody • 7. Heavy Liquid • 8. Cock In My Pocket • 9. Open Up And Bleed • Bonus tracks: 10. Doojiman (previously unreleased outtake from Raw Power sessions, 1972) • 11. Head On (previously unreleased CBS Studio rehearsal performance, New York City, 1973).
__________________________________________________________________

RAW POWER: DELUXE EDITION by IGGY AND THE STOOGES
(Columbia/Legacy 88697 65714 2)

Disc One: RAW POWER (recorded September-October 1972, originally issued February 1973, as Columbia 32111) Selections: 1. Search And Destroy • 2. Gimme Danger • 3. Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell • 4. Penetration • 5. Raw Power • 6. I Need Somebody • 7. Shake Appeal • 8. Death Trip.

Disc Two: “Georgia Peaches” (Live At Richards, Atlanta, Georgia, October 1973, all tracks previously unreleased) Selections: 1. Introduction • 2. Raw Power • 3. Head On • 4. Gimme Danger • 5. Search And Destroy • 6. I Need Somebody • 7. Heavy Liquid • 8. Cock In My Pocket • 9. Open Up And Bleed • Bonus tracks: 10. Doojiman (previously unreleased outtake from Raw Power sessions, 1972) • 11. Head On (previously unreleased CBS Studio rehearsal performance, New York City, 1973).

Disc Three: Rarities, Outtakes, & Alternates from the Raw Power Era Selections: 1. I’m Hungry (outtake from Raw Power sessions) • 2. I Got A Right (outtake from an early aborted Raw Power session) • 3. I’m Sick Of You (outtake from an early aborted Raw Power session) • 4. Hey, Peter (outtake from Raw Power sessions) • 5. Shake Appeal (alternate mix version from recently discovered alternate mix reels, “The Embassy Reels”) • 6. Death Trip (alternate mix version from recently discovered alternate mix reels, “The Embassy Reels”) • 7. Gimme Danger (alternate mix from the 1996 Iggy “violent” remixes) • 8. Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell (alternate mix from the 1996 Iggy “violent” remixes). (All tracks previously unreleased except tracks 3, 7, and 8.)

Disc Four: DVD – The Making Of Raw Power, produced and directed by Morgan Neville (featuring interviews with Iggy Pop, James Williamson, Scott Asheton, Mike Watt, Johnny Marr, and Henry Rollins; plus performance footage from James Williamson’s first reunion concert with Iggy and the Stooges, at Festival Planeta Terra, São Paulo, Brazil, November 2009).

Bonus Japanese 7-inch 45 rpm single reproduction: Side One – Raw Power b/w Side Two – Search And Destroy.