[This review is part of our Take Your Kids to Work Day special]
by James Ubaghs (age 17), brother of [Charles Ubaghs->http://www.tinymixtapes.com/_Charles-Ubaghs_]
How do you begin a review of something as monumental as The Stooges Fun House, arguably their crowning achievement? I don’t know how to start that review but I will say this: Fun House is a fucking badass rock and roll album.
In an era of spineless, hollow sentimentally, and nice serious musicians making nice serious music (that’s still boring no matter how weird it’s trying to be) Fun House makes my little 17 year old mind explode. It’s daring, it’s innovative while remaining entirely tangible. It makes a tired old genre seem rife with limitless possibilities, and simply put, it rocks.
Opener “ Down on the Street” sets the tone for a consistent 37 minutes of raw rock roll. A deceptively simple but violently effective rhythm section stomps along, with Ron Asheton’s brilliantly simplistic guitar lines driving it all forward. Iggy Pop gives possibly his best performance ever recorded. His irreverent lyrics “Out of my mind on Saturday night…I feel all right” are delivered with awe inspiring passion and his singing/un-hinged screaming manage to give an untold depth to what could merely be idiotic at the hands of another singer.
No single song stands out like “I Wanna Be Your Dog” on their debut but instead each song complements the album as a whole, constantly building in momentum until it explodes into the savage cacophonous wall (and attached apartment block) of sound in the album closer, “ L.A bBues,” that escalates the rest of the album to it’s logical conclusion.
Sadly they don’t make ‘em as great as they used to. In fact they never did make them this good, because I have a strong suspicion that punk rock never managed to match the brilliance of this zygote.
Instead of lamenting on this predicament like a poor emo kid steadily carving nice little geometric shapes into the side of my arm I find myself filled with a new urge. Besides the urge to fuck and get wasted, I feel the urge to go out and make my own Fun House. It’ll probably amount to nothing but I’m going to do it anyway.
What the hell are you going to do?
[Editor’s Note: I’m so proud of my little brother]
