bloggedy blog: the personal weblog of a music lover and aging punk wannabe

:: Monday, September 06, 2004 ::

Punk Rock Countdown: No. 28
"1969," by The Stooges
"1969," from the Stooges debut album on Elektra Records, predates the punk move by nearly a decade. But the Stooges, along with fellow Detroiters the MC5 and New York's Velvet Underground, are considered the progenitors of punk rock, and for good reason. "1969" lays the groundwork for punk's common theme of boredom in the midst of social upheaval:
It's 1969 okay
war across the USA
it's another year for me and you
another year with nothing to do...
The Stooges' debut album included a couple of other great, nihilistic pre-punk tunes: "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and "No Fun," both later hijacked by the Sex Pistols, who put their own anarchic stamp on the songs. The Stooges' influence on groups like the Pistols and the West Coast punks like X, Black Flag, the Dils and the Weirdos cannot be underestimated. They were the seething undercurrent of punk during the heyday of the hippie movement, as the intro from the Stooges' website on Elektra explains:
In the summer of 1969, most people were humming vacantly to chart toppers like "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In," by The 5th Dimension, "Love Theme from A Summer Place," by Henry Mancini, and "Sugar Sugar," by The Archies. But a Detroit quartet called the Stooges, featuring a shirtless, reptilian frontman named Iggy Pop, was laying waste to the midwest underground scene with a wall of bleak, grimy, anarchic cacophony that exposed the seamy underside of sex, drugs and rock & roll.

:: Andrew 11:38 + ::
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