The Stooges: The Stooges, Fun House, Raw Power, California Bleeding [live], Metallic K.O. [live]

First, there was Sinatra. After that, Elvis. Then came Jagger. They all had swagger. They all implied the words sexy and dangerous in their time. Not until Iggy was the implication a reality. He was/is danger and sex personified. In his prime, he goaded crowds to boo him, exhorting that the men in the audience were jealous because their women wanted to sleep with him. There was no hinting with Iggy. Volumes could be devoted to The Stooges importance, but I will leave it at this: the Stooges created aural pictures of darkness, fear, sexual excitement, danger and desperation that no one likes to admit is seen in the deepest depths of our psyches. Like forbidden fruit, the more one resists The Stooges, the more they draw you in. Often given the title of the fathers of punk rock, The Stooges were far more than that. Where the Sex Pistols were a media manipulated vision of anarchy and disorder, Iggy and the Asheton brothers were no product of the media. They were as real as the blood on Iggy's chest as he rolled around on glass on stage. Iggy and The Stooges forced you to look at what your dark side secretly desires to see, like a fire or a car crash. Certainly, such deep thoughts are not pretty nor socially acceptable, but powerful and real. That illumination of our dark side makes Iggy and The Stooges as important to the history of rock 'n roll as any other artist or band.

MC5: Kick Out the Jams Recorded in Detroit's Grande Ballroom, this recording for years was like the holy grail of records you could never find and had never heard. Likely the most political band of all time, the MC5 combined rock influences, jazz influences, politics and an aggressive, articulate hippie mentality to create a recording that represents a defining moment in rock 'n roll as revolution. Kick Out the Jams is a powerful, earthy, intense, in-your-face testimonial to rock 'n roll. See, also, Back In the USA, High Times