The Stooges: Fun House (half & half opaque red & black vinyl, indie exclusive) [RHINO]

Why you'll love it

This indie exclusive splits the vinyl half red, half black and comes in a gatefold jacket with a vintage-style Elektra inner sleeve. Fun House sits between The Stooges and Raw Power as one of the cornerstones of punk rock.

This edition

• Half & half opaque red & black vinyl
• Indie exclusive
• Gatefold jacket
• Vintage-style Elektra inner sleeve
• Pressed in Canada
• Stereo mix

About the album

Producer Don Gallucci walked into Elektra Sound Recorders in May 1970 with a sensible plan: baffles between the amps, Iggy Pop on a proper boom-stand mic, a dozen takes a day. By day two the band had talked him into stripping the studio bare, setting up as they did onstage and playing as loud as they liked. They cut one song a day, in album order, and rarely needed more than four takes.

You can hear the snare rattling off the bass amp, and that's the point. "Down on the Street" struts, "Loose" (which the band wanted as the opener) lunges, "T.V. Eye" might be the meanest riff Ron Asheton ever played, and "Dirt" slows things to a menacing blues crawl that Pop credited to Howlin' Wolf. On side two Steve Mackay's saxophone arrives for "1970" and the title track, and "L.A. Blues" dissolves the whole thing into glorious free-jazz noise.

Greg Kot called it a punk jazz opus, and Robert Christgau later wrote that language wasn't designed for the job of describing it. We've tried anyway, and we'd like it noted that it's harder than it looks.

Also at Kops: more The Stooges on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On Elektra / Rhino (cat# RCD1 74071), a reissue of the 1970 album.