It took a while to find a YouTube clip with tolerable sound. When Iggy Pop remastered his band’s 1973 proto-punk masterpiece Raw Power in 1996, he set out to “give this thing its due sonically” by overdriving the sound. The stated idea for this was to make the album “powerful and more listenable.” Sadly, it makes a quite powerful band sound tinny.
Still, “Search and Destroy” is a a great song by one of the greatest bands most people have never heard of. Listen to the ferocious energy behind the gauzy curtain of distortion here. This was recorded in 1972. I can’t help but make a connection to the 1960s band Blue Cheer (look up their version of “Summertime Blues”) and see the album as a stepping stone from them to the L.A. punk scene of the late 1970s and early ‘80s. It’s a spirit as old as guitars. Older, really. I imagine cavemen beating rocks with mastodon bones and screaming at the top of their lungs in celebration of dropping the saber-tooth cat that jumped them that day. Yeah, it’s at least as old as that.
Still, “Search and Destroy” is a a great song by one of the greatest bands most people have never heard of. Listen to the ferocious energy behind the gauzy curtain of distortion here. This was recorded in 1972. I can’t help but make a connection to the 1960s band Blue Cheer (look up their version of “Summertime Blues”) and see the album as a stepping stone from them to the L.A. punk scene of the late 1970s and early ‘80s. It’s a spirit as old as guitars. Older, really. I imagine cavemen beating rocks with mastodon bones and screaming at the top of their lungs in celebration of dropping the saber-tooth cat that jumped them that day. Yeah, it’s at least as old as that.
Ah, the earlier days of Iggy Pop & the Stooges. I didn't discover the guy until much later--about the time the SOLDIER came out. In fact, that album (SOLDIER) was the first time I listened to Iggy Pop.
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