Leadfinger's "No Room At the Inn"

Between 1999 and 2002, I was a frequent and regular contributor to the I-94 Bar, the Sydney-based e-zine whose webmaster, the Barman, pulled my coat to heaps of mighty Rock Action that made me imagine the Antipodes as a kind of alternate universe America, where all the Detroit and garage noise I took shit for liking when I was a snotnose working in the hipi record store was actually popular and influential.

Among my favorite practitioners of that style was Brother Brick, a band I once interviewed for the Bar, fronted by singer-guitarist Stewart Cunningham. Stew had an impressive resume, having apprenticed in the Proton Energy Pills and Asteroid B-612, and played in Challenger 7 and the Yes-Men concurrently with the Brick. (Speaking of which, you can cop Brother Brick's comprehensive Stranded In the '90s 2CD comp digitally via Amazon.)

The Barman recently hooked me up with some music by Stew's current band, Leadfinger (a nickname stemming from a childhood BB gun accident), including their 2011 I Belong To the Band EP (available digitally via the band's store or iTunes) and their brand new full-length, No Room At the Inn (available on CD or sweet, sweet vinyl via the estimable Aussie indie Citadel Records). He's got a lot of new tricks in his trick bag, and I was most pleasantly surprised to hear what he's been up to.

I Belong To the Band contains three originals and three covers that map out the territory Leadfinger inhabits. "What Did You See In Me?" opens the proceedings with Stones-y swagger before the Replacements' "Can't Hardly Wait" -- a song that, to these feedback-scorched ears, shall ever belong to Fort Worth's late, lamented cowpunk no-'counts Woodeye -- sets the stage for acoustic original "December Runaway," which jangles like the 'Mats' "Color Me Impressed" but also has an American roots flavor. (There's mandolin, but not in a Mumford & Sons way, thank Ceiling Cat.)

Rory Gallagher's "Tattoo'd Lady" tips its hat to the Irish blues-rock avatar without being slavishly imitative. Stew sees a parallel between Gallagher and Fred "Sonic" Smith, a connection I wouldn't have made, but which makes sense if one considers both men's penchant for relentless forward motion, minor keys, and idiosyncratic note choices and phrasing in their solos. "Leadfinger Theme" is all pummeling Detroit high energy, with an opening riff that shares a bloodline with the one in Wayne Kramer's "Sharkskin Suit." The title track's a nice surprise -- a deftly fingerpicked and soulfully sung rendering of a tune by acoustic ragtime bluesman Reverend Gary Davis.

No Room At the Inn puts it all together: a seamless and original synthesis of rock drive, pop sensibility, and roots flavor, built on a solid foundation of ace songcraft, impassioned singing, and expressive playing. On opener "You're So Strange," the introductory vocal, accompanied by shimmering tremeloed chords, recalls the work of Eric "Roscoe" Ambel of Roscoe's Gang/Yayhoos fame. The song's a mid-tempo rocker with an irresistible chorus, propelled by handclaps and adorned with female backing vocals. "It's Much Better" careens along like an out-of-control freight train, highlighted by a hook-laden guitar line. Stew sings it in an ebullient yelp.

"Gimme the Future" mixes ethereal backing voices with layers of ringing guitars, while "Cruel City" is another fervent rocker, recalling Brother Brick, but more melodic. "The Lonely Road," with its flatpicked intro, invokes the spirits of Gaelic ancestors in the same way as some of Rory Gallagher's music does. In a just universe, the jangle-rocker "The Wandering Man" would be a transcontinental hit. "Pretty Thing" isn't an homage to the '60s Brit despoilers like you might expect; rather, it's perfect pop worthy of Freedy Johnston, Brendan Benson, or Dom Mariani.

"The Other Ones" borrows the intro from the MC5's anthem of post-'60s disillusion, "Over and Over," then heads off in a whole 'nother direction, transforming into a minor-key guitar tour de force worthy of Neil Young when he steers his LincVolt for the ditch -- except Stew's got a lot more vocal power than ol' Shakey can muster. "Segue Three" is a cinematic snippet of modal guitar noodling, leading into the title track, a banjo-driven nod to the post-Uncle Tupelo Y'allternative nation, with a heart-tugging vocal performance from Stew. Closer "Don't Think Twice" juxtaposes crunchy six-string and chiming 12-string guitars, and is emblematic of the whole album's strengths. Rather than steamrollering you the way Brother Brick would have, it invites you in and then beguiles you to into staying.

Scott Morgan, Steve Hunter

Finally got my copy of Easy Action's incredible Scott Morgan Three Chords and A Cloud of Dust box set and have to admit that it's kind of overwhelming hearing all of this stuff in one place -- although also validating after being a Morgan fan for over four decades now.

I was on tap to write liner notes for this, but circumstances (a family situation) intervened, so my buddy Geoff from Philly (who has an insider's insight, having once managed Scott and amassed an unmatched collection of live Morgan recordings) stepped up to do the honors (I do get one page in the liners for something I dashed off on the quick; my blogged review is here). Makes me want to go back and dig out the cassettes Scott gave me of the Jones Brothers, the first Hydromatics album, and the Rationals' "fan club album" when/shortly after I met him at SXSW '98 -- for sentimental reasons.

Easy Action honcho Carlton Sandercock being the gentleman that he is, he always gives you something extra -- in this case, an Extended Play EP with a selection of tracks from various stages of Scott's career. A bedroom acoustic recording dates from 1963; if that date's correct, it's pretty incredible, as his mature vocal style is already in place at that early date, and the song's quite deep and soulful for an Ann Arbor teen who hadn't yet sung in public. A live version of Little Milton's "Feel So Bad" by Guardian Angel -- the band Scott fronted between the Rationals and Sonic's Rendezvous Band -- is a taster for an upcoming Easy Action release for which I penned an essay; it smokes.

"Rhythm Communication" features his early '80s outfit with two drummers, SRV-esque guitarist Mike Katon, and second vocalist Kathy Deschaine. "Heaven" is a re-recording of an SRB tune by his '90s-Millennial Euro band the Hydromatics, previously only available on a rare 7-inch (a copy of which I got from Hydros guitarist Tony Slug, a fine Dutchman to know and be associated with). "Wang Dang Doodle" is live from a rare 1995 Scots Pirates appearance in New York City, while Al Green's "Full of Fire" comes from a live radio broadcast by Scott's contemporaneous hometown band, Powertrane. Better order fast, as there are only 100 copies of the EP, and all 21 dollars American for the box set go to help defray Scott's medical expenses.

Speaking of classic Detroit jams, back in the early '70s, Steve Hunter was responsible for two slabs of white-hot guitar damage that were most influential on my young psyche: the fiercely aggressive biker-rock version of Lou Reed's "Rock and Roll" on Mitch Ryder's Detroit LP -- still one of the great rock records of the '70s, for my two cents -- and the epic intro to "Sweet Jane" on Uncle Lou's Rock and Roll Animal, on which Steve and his guitar partner, ex-Frost bossman Dick Wagner, also invested "Heroin" with incongruous beauty and majesty.

Hunter and Wagner also did yeoman work for estimable producer Bob Ezrin (on his odyssey from Detroit to The Wall) with artists including Alice Cooper (in whose "original" lineup Hunter now subs for the late, lamented Glen Buxton), Aerosmith, and Peter Gabriel. Hunter made a solo album, Swept Away, for Atco in '77 (including a version of the Beach Boys' "Sail On Sailor," if memory serves), then dropped off my radar (although he remained active, recording three more albums and doing sessions including those for Bette Midler's The Rose).

Imagine my surprise, a couple of years back, to realize that the grinning fella in the wool beanie behind the SG in the Lou Reed Berlin DVD was none other than Hunter. For an album with such a downer rep, the performances director Julian Schnabel captured radiate the pure joy of music-making; if you could bottle drummer Tony "Thunder" Smith's performance on "Caroline Says I," you could put the makers of Prozac out of business -- never more so than when Steve and Lou trade licks on "Oh Jim," the New York street poet turned cranky old man coaxing the hot Motor City axe-slinger to go just a little bit further.

Now, through the generosity of fellow fan Kerry Kudla, I hold in my hands a copy of Hunter's new, Kickstarter-funded solo CD, The Manhattan Blues Project. Off the bat, what's most striking about the music here is the gentle, ruminative nature of the settings in which Hunter frames playing of quiet lapidary beauty. It's not a Big Rock Record; those expecting Son of Rock and Roll Animal might be disappointed; its pleasures are much more subtle, but equally rewarding, if approached in the correct spirit (try listening while alone in a quiet house). Hunter renders his notes with as much exquisite detail as Jeff Beck, minus the bombast.

Hunter played most of the instruments here himself, with vocal contributions from his wife Karen and mostly unobtrusive assistance from a handful of stellar guests that include bassist Tony Levin (who also played on the original version of Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill," reprised here). "The Brooklyn Shuffle" is sort of a Freddie King-meets-the-Allman Brothers type thing, with solos from guest axe-slingers Johnny Depp (that's right, ladies, he can burn on git-tar, too!) and Joe Perry (paying Steve back for the first half of "Train Kept A-Rollin'"). A soulful version of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" radiates spiritual peace, while "Twilight in Harlem" inserts Joe Satriani and Marty Friedman's fretboard gymnastics in the middle of a performance otherwise marked by taste and restraint. Guitar geeks with a contemplative bent take note.

Hickoids/Grannies, Pinata Protest

I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could.

When I was looking to escape, Brooce Springsteen-like, from my nowhere town on Lawn Guyland back at the ass-end of the '70s, the two places I considered (after being dissuaded from moving to Boston -- what a mistake that would have been! -- by an acquaintance who'd moved there and was back in six months) were Louisiana and Texas, on the basis of their being the last two states in America with thriving indigenous musical cultures. When my drummer from college called after seeing the Sex Pistols in Dallas and told me they sucked, but local openers the Nervebreakers were great, not to mention the fact you could make $9 an hour "raking rocks in the road" (the only work he thought I was capable of doing, evidently), you could drive your car without liability insurance (I was paying $900 a year with a clean record in New York), and you could "drive up to a cop with a beer in your hand and he'd just wave" (unless you were in the Fort Worth Stockyards, in which case he'd probably be drunker than you and beat the shit out of you), my mind was made up.

It's a truism, but it's also true that in Texas, you get a cornucopia of musical styles, the product of the Lone Star State's confluence of cultures -- country, blues, Tejano, polka, jazz, Western Swing (jazz with cowboy hats, born in Fort Worth), rockabilly, psychedelia (a lot of the seeds of the "San Francisco sound" were transplanted from Austin), even punk (after the Nervebreakers came a deluge that included the Huns, Big Boys, and Dicks, to name but three) -- as well as its unique sensibility, which is unpretentious and often humorous. The archetypal Texas muso is a musical omnivore along the lines of Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Willie Nelson, Doug Sahm, or James Hinkle. Even musicians whose style remains in one genre have been nourished by more than one root source; the cats in Fort Worth doom-metal juggernaut Solomon, f'rinstance, teethed on both Led Zeppelin and Vicente Fernandez, and retain an appreciation for both. Which brings us to the latest release from Saustex Media, the San Antonio label helmed by Jeff Smith, frontman for long-lived (formed in 1985) cowpunks the Hickoids.

300 Years of Punk Rock, a split LP with Bay Area-based "fuckpunks" the Grannies, is both a taster for the Hickoids' soon-come Hairy Chafin' Ape Suit album and a souvenir of the two bands' recent rampage across Europe. The Hickoids' side comprises four tracks to the Grannies' six, with lots of room for guitarist Davy Jones -- one of the band's prime onstage visual vectors, looking for all the world like a psychedelic scarecrow staked out in the middle of the Hickoids' cornfield as he churns out the nasty Stooge-esque fuzz 'n' wah-drenched rifferama -- and utility muso Scott Lutz (pedal steel and keys) to stretch out. This includes two covers of songs by their familiars the Loco Gringos, a legendary Dallas outfit whose aesthetic revolved around Schaefer beer, tequila, corndogs, and bales of hay. (The Gringos' saga is memorably recounted in an oral history Jeff Liles penned for the Dallas Observer on the occasion of a 2009 reunion gig.)

Musically, the Gringos' "TJ" is a ringer for "Me and Bobby McGee," which means that the ghost of Janis J. hovers around the tequila bottle, but it's set to a bumpa-chicka beat worthy of '70s Waylon Jennings, overlaid with the Hickoids usual miasma of feelthy guitars, that takes off into a wailing rave-up worthy of the Stones ca. Some Girls. The other Gringos cover here, "Fruit Fly," is a suitably desperate-sounding minor-key romp. On "Stop It You're Killing Me" and "The Workingman's Friend," Smith comes across like a corn-fed Jim Morrison, intoning a tale of sexual misadventure on the former and navigating a barfly's odyssey on the latter (before taking a detour into the most bizarro Hendrix homage you'll hear this year). All of which whets one's appetite to hear Hairy Chafin' Ape Suit complete.

As befits a Bay Area crew, the Grannies are a little more visually extreme, if a little less naturalistically so, than the Hickoids, looking like a dystopian nightmare vision of glam and sounding like a holdover from the '90s wave of Scandinavian turbo rawk. They tip their collective lid to '70s punk via covers (Boston's Nervous Eaters -- frontguy Bjorn Toulouse is a Beantown expat -- and Brits Slaughter and the Dogs) and the "Chinese Rock"-alike intro to "Sonic Granitosis." "God Loves the Hickoids" pokes good-natured fun at their tour mates by approximating their sonic shtick, while elsewhere, the Grannies kick up a mighty ruckus, anchored by a hot rhythm section, and a mighty high time is had by all.

Pinata Protest, whose debut disc Plethora managed to slip by me last year, plays an unlikely hybrid: conjunto-punk. Front dude Alvaro Del Norte came late to Mexican music, studying accordion at community college, and recruited his band mates from a San Antonio skateboard shop that was also a local punk hub. On El Valiente, producer Frenchie Smith of Jet/Toadies fame gives their synthesis a big-label sheen, from the relatively straightahead (albeit uber-amped-up) conjunto of "Vato Perron" to the unalloyed hardcore of "Que Puedo." Separated from its cultural context, "Life On the Border" could be mistaken for Dropkick Murphys yerdy-yerdy Irish-punk, but there's no mistaking the provenance of Vicente Hernandez's conjunto classic "Volver, Volver" (which it took cojones the size of the Alamo to cover) and the venerable "La Cucaracha": the sound of a young band not just owning its cultural heritage, but making it stand up and roar.

(Speaking of Bay Area-Texas connections, listeners for whom Pinata Protest whets an appetite to hear the genuine article, unalloyed, are directed to the Mexican selections in the Arhoolie Records catalog, which include crucial releases by Flaco Jimenez and Lydia Mendoza. Arhoolie founder Chris Strachwitz is the subject of the documentary This Ain't No Mouse Music. Watch for it.)

Five decades (!) of top 10 albums

Here's a little something I posted in Facebookland a few years ago. Stumbled on it today and surprisingly, there's really nothing here I would change. Just a list of rekkids that were most impactful on me from their respective decades, along with my general recollection of what I was doing at the time.

'00s (Tending my garden)
Lou Reed - Ecstasy
Hochimen - Totenlieder
Woodeye - Such Sweet Sorrow
Goodwin - S/T
Top Secret...Shhh
M. Ward - Post-War
Jack Rose - Kensington Blues
Mark Growden - Live At the Odeon
Boris - Smile
Joe Strummer - Streetcore

'90s (Working)
Sonny Sharrock - Ask the Ages
Lou Reed - Magic and Loss
Turbonegro - Apocalypse Dudes
Deniz Tek Group - Le Bonne Route
Monks - Black Monk Time
Sonic's Rendezvous Band - Sweet Nothing
Sundays - Reading Writing and Arithmetic
Freedy Johnson - This Perfect World
A Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Marauders
Beastie Boys - Ill Communication

'80s (Guarding freedom's frontier)
George Clinton - Computer Games
Richard & Linda Thompson - Shoot Out the Lights
Lou Reed - New York
Ornette Coleman - In All Languages
Ronald Shannon Jackson - Mandance
Captain Beefheart - Doc At the Radar Station
Minutemen - Double Nickels On the Dime
Replacements - Tim
Bob Mould - Workbook
Clash - Sandinista!

'70s (Fucking up)
Stooges - Funhouse
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
Velvet Underground - Loaded
Who - Quadrophenia
Flamin' Groovies - Teenage Head
Heartbreakers - Live At Max's Kansas City
Rationals - S/T
Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
Ornette Coleman - Dancing In Your Head
Miles Davis - Get Up With It

'60s (Growing up)
James Brown - Live At the Apollo
Beatles - Revolver
Velvet Underground & Nico
Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced?
Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica
The Who Sell Out
Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
Miles Davis - In A Silent Way
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme
Jefferson Airplane - After Bathing At Baxter's

Further thoughts on the Stooges record

1) I've been listening to it non-stop since I finished the review. So far, so good.

2) Even the songs I was less than stoked with on at first listen are starting to kick in. While on one level, "DD's" is Iggy's one opportunity here to play his crass old dude card (which he did for all of The Weirdness, to its detriment), on another, the melody sticks in my head, and Mackay's horns remind me of the Saints when they added horns. And "Dirty Deal," which was my least favorite fast song at first, is becoming my most favorite. It's something about the way the song's relentless forward motion reminds me of being a kid and running down a hill as fast as I could, and the little 5th-to-7th riff at the end of the cycle reminds me of trying to stop.

3) Curiously, the record this most reminds me of is Sticky Fingers: It's short, to the point, a small batch of very diverse but memorable songs (although on Ready To Die, the fast-to-slow-songs ratio is the inverse from the Stones' album). Comparisons being odious, The Weirdness was a big batch of songs that all sounded the same.

4) The title is Truth In Advertising. Iggy's preoccupied with mortality here -- which is fitting and proper for a gentleman of his age.

5) I do believe that Ready To Die is James Williamson's masterwork, in terms of writing, playing, and production. So there.

6) While the bonus track "Dying Breed" fits in thematically, it doesn't really add anything to the pristine ten-track album. Musically, it demonstrates what a fine slide guitarist James is, but it does so in a way that's shrill in the same way as the Ron Wood-era Stones tend to be. I haven't heard the instrumental version of "The Departed," but I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. Perfection doesn't require enhancements.

Mo' scrawl on polish-jazz.blogspot.com

A review of Coherence Quartet's album Coherence is online now.

My scroll on polish-jazz.blogspot.com

A review I penned of Shofar's Ha-Huncvot is online now.

J=J's "2013 EP"

These days, some of the best jazz and experimental music originates in Poland, a fact I discovered by hearing Dallas-based trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez's work with Polish musicians and reviewing albums for the Polish-Jazz website.

During Dennis' most recent visit there, he performed with the strikingly coiffed Joanna Duda, a pianist who's appeared solo and as a member saxophonist Wojtek Mazolewski's quintet, the groups 3D (with her brothers Tomasz and Radek) and AuAuA, and in a piano duo with Katarzyna Borek. 2013 EP is the debut of both J=J, her collaborative project with drummer Jan Emil Mlynarski (Nervy, 15 Minute Project, Oszibarack), and OESSU FANTASTIC, their independent label.

Clocking in at just over half an hour, 2013 EP is as long as a lot of band's "full-lengths," and although improvised, the music sounds through-composed. There are a lot of influences audible here: minimalist classical music, Kosmische space-rock, Brian Eno ambience, the more ethereal realms of dance music. Duda and Mlynarski use their synthesizers to craft atmospheric soundscapes and weave webs of texture, out of which snippets of medley occasionally swim.

When all the elements coalesce, as they do on "Odysseia II," the results can be hypnotic and riveting. On "Unfall," Ive Ostrowska's treated vocals lend the piece an air of anguish and desolation. It's followed by "Sunny Side," which hits like a forgotten slice of icy '80s synth pop. "Process I" is a feature for Mlynarski's traps, while "Process II" closes the proceedings with a delicately realized orchestral miniature.

The fact that this music is improvised is a testament to the artists' empathy and clarity of thought. There's no self-indulgent clutter here; the pieces unfold in an organic way, transitioning seamlessly from one musical idea to the next. Worthwhile listening.

Iggy and the Stooges' "Ready To Die": Twilight of the gods?

This one's just for the fans.

By which I mean, if you're new to the Stooges, don't buy this record. Instead, buy Funhouse, then The Stooges, then Raw Power.

If you've already got those, plus Metallic K.O., Kill City, all those quasi-legit James Williamson-era recordings on Revenge/Bomp/Easy Action, maybe even Rhino's Funhouse box set and Live At Ungano's, Easy Action's A Thousand Lights and You Want My Action, and especially the post-reunion audio and video artifacts, pull up a chair. Because if you're a dyed-in-the-wool Stooge obsessive, you're probably still dubious after the disappointment that was The Weirdness, and wondering whether this'll be worth it.

I feel you. I was there, too. I tried hard as hell to like The Weirdness, wrote a highest-rating review of it for the I-94 Bar, even learned a song from it that the Stooges cover band I used to play in performed a couple of times before we realized there was a shit-ton of material we liked playing better than "My Idea of Fun." But I've never been motivated to listen to it since then, not even once. That album is not a fitting epitaph for Ron Asheton. But now there is one; I'll get to that in a minute.

But first, realize that this is a whole different band than the one that made The Weirdness. Ron was the greatest at playing a certain type of bare-bones fundamental psychedelic blues-based rock guitar, which he perfected in the spring of 1970, and the songs that he and Iggy cooked up for the first two albums encapsulate the anomie of young 'Meercuns better than anything since Eddie Cochran. That said, Ron's track record post-Stooges was somewhat less than stellar (slight exception: New Race, but that was just for two weeks in Orstralia).

The partnership between James Williamson and Iggy was more long-lived and fecund, including Kill City and New Values, my pick for the last good Iggy album prior to the Oh-ohs' Stooge renaissance. James is a more developed songwriter than Ron, although you couldn't always tell on Raw Power. The fact that the lion's share of the material he and Iggy wrote for the Stooges wasn't released until after the band's '74 implosion has forced fans to listen to Williamson-era Stooges the way Paul Williams listens to Bob Dylan. That is, since no "official" release exists, one is forced to become attuned to nuances of performance between the myriad bootleg versions.

Indeed, some of us were hoping that with Williamson back in the fold, Ig 'n' James would pull a maneuver similar to what Rocket From the Tombs did with Rocket Redux before David Thomas broke terminally bad with Cheetah Chrome -- e.g., laying down the old repertoire with contemporary studio sonics. But boy, did we have something else coming.

Because in the same way that the Stooges never played "old shit" back in the day -- by the time you caught 'em live, they were playing a whole new set from the one you expected based on the current record -- so they went into this project determined to prove that they weren't just reliving former glories and counting the money. Rather, Iggy insisted, they're a real band with something to say in 2013.

On the basis of the first couple of spins, I'd say he wasn't bullshitting. Most crucially, the retired Sony VP behind the cherry sunburst Les Paul doesn't sound like he's lost a step since he walked out of the Soldier sessions wa-a-y back in 1980. James has grown as a musician in ways that Ron, bless him, never did, developing an interest in Hawaiian slack-key guitar, among other things. His guitar style remains equal parts propulsive chording a la Keef Richards and jagged-edged soloing, steeped in the mid-'60s masterwork of Jeff Beck and Mike Bloomfield.

More to the point, Williamson's more into the craft of songwriting; besides writing rockers with more chords than anybody's this side of Blue Oyster Cult, his slow songs like "Johanna," the "St. James Infirmary" rewrite "I Need Somebody," and maybe best of all, "Open Up and Bleed," were the most complete expression of the '72-'74 Stooges' psychodrama. While there's nothing here that sounds as terminally desperate as those excursions into the soul's dark night, there are a couple of opportunities for Iggy to explore some atypical emotions -- copping to some vulnerability in the acoustic slide-driven "Unfriendly World," expressing a sense of exhaustion on the Exile On Main St.-ish "Beat That Guy" (which features lovely, ethereal backing vocals from Petra Haden and a tortuously lyrical solo from Williamson).

The album's spiritual center, though, is closing track "The Departed," an elegy for Ron that was first performed at a 2011 memorial show in Ann Arbor (the DVD release of which is delayed but imminent). In it, the signature riff from "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is recast as a dirge for its author, played by Williamson on slack-key guitar, giving way to heartfelt lyrics, tinged with regret, which Iggy intones in his blasted sexagenarian's voice -- recorded with the same extreme-close-up quality as it was on "1969" -- over martial drums: "There's no one here but us / By the end of the game / We all get thrown under the bus." Listening to this song, I remember hearing Iggy interviewed on a local Detroit station immediately after Ron's death. He sounded dazed, and mainly talked about their early acquaintance back in the '60s. It occurred to me that that interview was probably the first time I'd ever heard Jim Osterberg speaking, rather than Iggy. That voice is in this song, too.

The rockers are a mixed bag. "Burn" fulminates with Williamson cranking out the chords and wrestling off-kilter solos from his axe. "The man of the future's a bully and loser," sings Iggy in a voice more seasoned and nuanced than his '70s snarl, but not as operatic as his post-Bowie incarnation. "Sex and Money" and "Job" echo the Ron-era Stooges in the same way as some of the songs on the first side of New Values did, but they provide a much rougher ride, with handclaps, Haden's sultry backing vocals, and Steve Mackay's sax adding a Roxy Music/Mott the Hoople pop veneer to the former. On the latter, Iggy sings, "I've got a job and I'm sick of it" -- a clue that he's contemplating retirement, perhaps?

The Stones influence on "Gun" is reminiscent of Raw Power's uptempo numbers, while on "Ready To Die," with its strutting riff, Williamson layers on the crunchy guitars the way Keef used to back when his well of inspiration still seemed bottomless. "DD's" -- yes, folks, it's a song about tits -- has a Memphis soul groove, while "Dirty Deal" sounds cut from the same cloth as "Death Trip."

By now, Mike Watt's worked the four-string axe longer than any other Stooges bassist, and while Scott Asheton is more workmanlike here than he was in his adventurous younger days, when the tension between his reach and his grasp provided palpable excitement, he's still an original and it's a drag that he's been replaced for touring; his traps still cut it on record.

Bottom line? Comparisons being odious, I think Ready To Die is actually a more consistent record than Raw Power was. It's not as ground-breaking -- how could it be? -- but I'm betting it'll hold up to repeated listenings, the way The Weirdness didn't. Come back and ask me again in six months. Or...you could try it yourself.