01-04-2003
No
record has ever so brutalized the concept of music like THE STOOGES'
FUN
HOUSE. It is still hard, today, to find such forms of musical captivity all
contained
in one single release.
Back
in 1970, when FUN HOUSE was issued, it barely sold
a
few copies, and was bound to be glorified only 5-6 years later, when, in 1976
the
Punk Movement came out and caused the decease of rock'n'roll and its fellow
artists,
what I simply defined THE GROUND ZERO OF ROCK MUSIC.
Starting
off with the raw, pounding DOWN ON THE STREET, the album, track after track,
reaches
peaks of subliminal animal-power, augmenting the inhuman climax which
seems
to wrap the listener's soul. The opener, together with LOOSE and TV EYE,
sets
the "ordinary standards" for this hystorical ante-litteram-punk opera.
It's
only with DIRT, arguably their masterpiece, that Iggy and C's mood takes
its
true and definite shape: introduced by a hypnotic, obsessive bass riff,
Pop
silently launches himself into an erotic, "killing" performance,
leaving the
audience
astonished and pleasantly scared; it will be the only fragment of
melody
in a record that does not seem to require melody. DIRT is a soothing,
magnetic
"slow-acid-blues" featuring a wild, blistering solo by one of the
most
underrated and unknown guitarists ever, RON ASHETON: his guitar tones
may
appear you quite primitive and dumb-oriented, but you have to consider
the
contest, place and time when FUN HOUSE came out: a few guitarists
ever
seemed to "kill" their own audience with demoniac, raw riffs that
ended
up
in the "nowhere land", while Mr. Iguana screamed like a possessed man
in
search of dirty sex and never-ending pleasure. FUN HOUSE has also its
weird
psychedelyc touches, as revealed by Asheton messy but irresistible
guitar
chops, topped by the evilly-raucous Iggy, singing his own desperation and
bad
intentions like no-one else previously had ever dared.
SIDE
B is where the murder "takes the stage". A menacing guitar chord
breaks
into the silence and leaves Pop's brutal vocals sinking into the realm
of
unknown madness: the air seems to be splitted by his "twilight zone
figure",
vomiting a music for hopeless men constantly on the border,
cut
out of Society: Iggy is the prophet of nowhere, the "torn apart"-singer
who
wants no absolute compromise, a man who needs no favour or praise.
He
chants a never-heard underground drama, permanently hung on the
line
which divides consciousness from raw insanity. The "primal-screams-like
wailing"
he delivers at the end of the track, leaves no reason to be ex-
plained:
the obsessive, maniacal "I FEEL ALRIGHTs" he "cries" and
spits
on the microphone is probably the best ever example of over-
whelming,
astonishing "musical murder".
The
following track (the title one, FUN HOUSE) confirms the overall
feel
beneath IGGY POP'S savaged, tormented soul: it reaches new heights of "no-
control-raw-power",
marvellously adorned by a vaguely free-jazzy
saxophone
courteously by STEVEN McKAY: his instrument, here,
seems
to "steal the show" for a while and it's quite clear that without
it
the track itself would have lost much of its true potential.
FUN
HOUSE appears to be a messy, madness-related jam arranged
and
played by primitive musicians and this stated fact proves strong
contradictions:
THIS is the point, my dear friends: it's just the
often-unfocused
intentions of the members who make this record
so
accomplished and highly seminal. By listening to FUN HOUSE
you
probably feel they can handle only a few chords and
nothing
more, or the fact
their
jamming is uneven or totally missing a common point. But
the
beauty of this masterpiece is it did not have to have ANY common
point
or particular musical solutions about creating a good, solid effort.
I
think it's the "inner secret" of FUN HOUSE's sheer immortality.
I
won't talk about L.A. BLUES, maybe the greatest provocation
in
Rock Hystory: 5 minutes of storming, devastating "no-chord-
screams
and distortions": it's the triumph of the "un-listenable",
the
epitome of self-distruction, the absolute peak for a dead soul.
And...
well... the most unbelievably depraved record of all time...
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