Raw Power (2 CD Legacy Edition)

Iggy & The Stooges | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 13, 2010)
• Original Release Date: 2010
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Sony Legacy
• ASIN: B00383ZTXO
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (209 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,406 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

If punk rock didn't start with the Stooges' first album or their second, it DEFINITELY started with their third, as Iggy and producer David Bowie put together one of the most crudely powerful (and crudely mixed) albums ever. Now, that same album is back with its original Bowie mix and an entire CD of unreleased material, including Doojiman from the Raw Power studio sessions and Head On from a 1973 CBS Studio rehearsal, and an unreleased concert from the Raw Power tour (new guitarist James Williamson shreds!) featuring such classics from the album as Gimme Danger; Search and Destroy , and I Need Somebody . New liner notes, unseen photos and personal notes from Iggy, Williamson and drummer Scott Asheton accompany...open up and bleed!

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

99 of 103 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece, almost totally ruined by bad mastering August 1, 2006

By Willy

Format:Audio CD

Raw Power! Whether Bowie's or Iggy's mix, this album deserves 5 stars and a place on any shelf that contains punk, rock, punk-rock, proto-punk, classic rock or any other kind of rock.

UNFORTUNATELY the "remastered" album in front of you is borderline unlistenable due to The Idiot and the incompetence of the mastering engineer. Judging by the liner notes, Iggy does not know the difference between analog distortion and digital clipping and treated the remaster as if on an analog medium, which is a huge %$&^ing shame given the greatness of the album.

Using analog distortion creatively is an art form, while clipping in the digital realm results in a total loss of acoustic information. If you record analog distortion onto a digital medium and master it correctly, it sounds pretty much identical to the original, but alas instead of pre-mastering 'in the red' on an analog console, some fool let Iggy into the digital mastering toolkit where 'in the red' means something a bit different. It means no dynamic range and heavily clipped peaks (in fact, almost no peaks at all, everything is uniformly loud), which defeats the purpose of using a compact disc entirely.

This album clips more than any album I have had the displeasure of hearing, which distorts several songs (Death Trip, Search& Destroy) into near inaudibility. It is Loud, but white noise or britney mastered to 99dB is also loud. Again, this is due entirely to the inept mastering.

While one cannot help but love Iggy's aggressive impulses, one imagines that he should have been left to master an analog record re-issue and the CD mastering should have been done by someone not under his influence.

There is a reason the volume knob exists, and that reason is so you can TURN IT UP.... Sadly, turning it up is almost pointless here.

BUY THIS ALBUM.

But, buy a used copy of the record and record it onto disc, seriously.

Your only other recourse is to record this remastering onto a computer, put it through a software audio editing suite and run a declipping algorithm on it. While it's not a real solution since the information that is clipped is forever lost to you, it does make the album sound much better. A better sounding album sells more copies and will be listened to more often. It's also less likely to wind up in the bargain bin due to terrible mastering.

Try it again Columbia, and give us both mixes while you're at it!

If only the rhino people could get ahold of the tapes like with the first two Stooges albums. Read more ›

86 of 98 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Worst Remaster Ever March 24, 2006

By LHB

Format:Audio CD

I bought this when it first came out in 72, and I pity 14 year old kids today who don't have a record like this "to do all the things that kids aren't supposed to do" to (if that makes any sense). If my old vinyl copy could talk, I'd be in jail for the rest of my life. That is, if I could find the damn thing. And that's a BIG deal, because the remastering of this album completely ruins one of the wildest listening experiences ever created. On the original album, every tune sounded like it was recorded in different venue with a different producer. Every mix was completely different, and by objective standards, unbelievably horrible. By subjective standards, however, the uniquely ridiculous sound of each track made for one of the ten best rock and roll albums ever. "Search and Destroy" was all trebled-out, overdriven Stratocasters and virtually no bass, with an up-front metallic clanking throughout that really hurt the ears, even at low volumes (listen to any track on the Mary Chain's Psychocandy to hear roughly what it used to sound like). Raw Power growled away muddily, with lots more low-end sludge than on this version. Death Trip sounded just like the name implies, with the lead guitar sounding like it was recorded with the mike about an inch away from the amp, and turned up to 11 with an outrageous treble boost. Shake Appeal (which fares best on this CD) sounded like it was recorded in muddy mono, until the up-riff ended, and then the power chords exploded in a huge wall of stereo sound, and then shrank back to mono (the effect was mind-boggling at high volume). But the crown-jewel, the piece-de-resistance, was "Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell...." If ever a dirtier, sludgier fast rocker was ever recorded (with Iggy's absurd growling-screeching buried behind the wall of unbelievably distorted guitars and bass)I've never heard it. Just thinking about the way it used to sound after a micro-dot is putting a big smile on my face. But it doesn't sound anything like that on this remaster, nor does any other track sound remotely as good as on the original (with the possible exception of Shake Appeal, which I preferred in the old mix but which has a lot of power in the new version). And unless you've ever heard the original release, you can't possibly imagine the roll that the right mix can play in turning an excellent album into something that changes your life (not always for the "better" in this case). I've been collecting records and CD's compulsively for over 30 years, much to the detriment of floor-space in my domicile, and I've never seen a re-mastering ruin an album the way Raw Power has been eviscerated. The re-mastering is really loud, but that's not the point. I've got a volume control to deal with the relatively low levels of the old masters. For the love of all that's Holy, somebody get ahold of the original masters that were used on the old albums and re-release this thing. Then, kiddies, you're in for some real fun. Read more ›

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars BUYER BEWARE June 18, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Audio CD

As someone who clung to the original album of Raw Power like a life preserver at one point in my life, I was pleased to see that someone finally took it upon themselves to upgrade the album's sound. But: there are some changes on this album. Most of which I really like: the "1-2-3-4" count into "Shake Appeal"; the new "hey!"s on "Search and Destroy"; the extended ending of "Death Trip". However, the guitar solo on "Raw Power" is NOT the solo that appeared on the original album. Having spent more hours than I care to admit playing that spiraling-out-of-control James Williamson explosion over and over again, I was more than a little dismayed to hear a similar but still different solo on the song I loved so much. And the guitar solo at the end of "Search and Destroy" is mixed way down from the original release. Not like it matters - this is the way Raw Power will be forevermore, and that's alright. The sound is substantially better, especially in the lower frequencies, and the Iggy Pop interview in the liner notes is funny and informative. So: a slight letdown in some ways, but still snarling and alive and revelatory in ways that Limp Biskit won't ever be. Get it now.

42 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm a street walkin' cheetah with a heartful of napalm.... April 16, 2010

By Thomas Plotkin VINE™ VOICE

Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase

The first thing you notice is the guitar; a virtuoso take on the classic trebly Chuck Berry/Keith Richards axis, but with a difference. It abrades against your ear, it's a little too dissonant to be conventional, it feels like a succession of paper cuts, and it has fought for space and beaten out victorious everything else on the tape -- bass, drums, rhythm guitar are reduced to a dull clatter behind the six string eruption. The next thing you notice is the voice, screeching out the lines that provide the title of this review; mixed co-equal with the guitar, it too abrades against the ear, while on key it sounds like its about to shatter, the sound not of a braggart but a warrior too long out on point and about to bust in a million pieces. It's 1973, and welcome to the first few bars of that most aptly titled record Raw Power.

The Stooges story has been told far too many times to be recounted here; suffice to say that by the time of Raw Power they had already broken more barriers in three or four years than any of their contemporaries, fusing psychedelic garage rock, proto-metal,free jazz, and avant-garde performance art out of Artaud's theater of cruelty with an absolute lack of self consciousness, their artier conceits always rooted in the perspective of messed up suburban Detoit high school drop outs too young to buy the false promises of the '60's. To call them punk, which they invented, sells them way short.

By the time they recorded this album, the sheer psychic pressure of their epochal live performances coupled with the world's indifference had led the band to snap -- heroin and recrimination had broken them up.... Enter superfan David Bowie, then on the cusp of his Ziggy-era fame, who performed for the Stooges the same act of noblesse oblige he demonstrated to Lou Reed and Mott the Hoople, resurrecting their careers and giving them a chance to record. Cleaned up and reconstituted with new guy/virtuouso guitarist James Williamson on board and sharing the writing burdens, the Stooges went into the studio with actual songs, in contrast to their previous method of jamming while Iggy did his thing until songs emerged out of the muck. But what worked for Lou and Mott did not work for the Stooges.

On the surface, Raw Power sounded like a conventional hard rock album of '73, not the avant garage of the band's previous work. But Iggy's voice is too terrifying to fit that mold -- and the lyrics all convey the impression of a man in a car with no brakes careening down Dead Man's Curve, they are all about impending death, and celebrating it. Most importantly, there's the sound of the album. Until 1997, when Iggy rebuilt the tracks for reissue from the ground up, the officical word was something went horribly wrong in the mix, with Bowie and Iggy each pointing fingers at the other. The rhythm tracks are way in the background, the vocals are alternately too far up front or too recessed, and Williamson's explosive leads bore a hole through the listener's eardrums, as they are so far up in the mix the album sounds like a free-jazz/metal guitar solo with the other elements darting in and out of the background. Humorously, because a generation of postpunk musicians grew up thinking this sound was not bad, but in fact extraordinary, post punk avant garage groups like Sonic Youth and Black Flag deliberately began to emulate the Raw Power mix in the '80's, and a whole lo-fi No Wave movement was born.

Bowie's effort at rehabbing the band was a fiasco -- the record, messed up mix and depraved vision sank like a stone, the band's performances degenerated into fabled brawls with hostile audiences, and the band, ironically clean at the time they made this hellhound-pursued record, sank back into addiction and dissolution, with Iggy eventually homeless and then insitutionalized, with several lost years passing till he rose like a phoenix to reclaim his crown, but now as a solo. Raw Power did the band in, and its very sound forecasts the autodestruction. That's one thing that makes Raw Power special

Like I said, in '97 Ig re-mixed the record for the alt-rock generation, and the result was greeted with hossanahs. Crunching rhythm guitar riffs hitherto unhearable moved to the foreground with the bass and drums; Iggy's voice now had a tremendous presence, and many of his spontaneous grunts, cries, exhortations, vocalise, his famed shamanistic "composing at the mike," was restored. The record now had the sonic ambience of a live band in a room rather than demons clattering in a wind tunnel in one of Hades' dicier neighborhood. Most significantly, Williamson's lead guitar, the elephant in the room on the original album, was restored to parity with the other instruments. The only nay-sayers were the other Stooges, all of whom went on record as saying they detested what Iggy wrought with his tinkering. He made Raw Power into a normal-sounding punk rock record.

Now we can judge for ourselves who was right, Iggy or the Stooges. Sony Legacy has released the original 1973 "Bowie" mix. For years, I too thought the new version was a vast improvement, despite the fact I had grown up on my vinyl copy of the caterwauling original. But a couple of days of deep listening and comparison of the two version has restored the Bowie mix to preeminence. This is not, and never was, a normal record. This is an extreme record, a documentary snapshot of a band on a "death trip" (song title), sounding like they are on the ragged edge of nowhere. Only the original version preserves that deviant, demented quality. Accept no substitutes.

BTW, Sony has generously added a live show from '73 in Atlanta that adds little to the legacy, except for some prime audience-baiting from the Ig; the double-disc is at single disc price, however. Read more ›