siLLy puPPy Quite a hard rocking album for 1969. To me this sounds like THE STOOGES are using The Rolling Stones as their blues rock template but ramping up the adrenoline with a harder edge and a tasty wah-wah lead guitar. This debut album was a commercial flop at the time but the balls-to-the-wall rock they were delivering became a cult hit and would eventually catch on almost a decade later in the form of punk and metal. In particular I tend to hear influences on Alice Cooper and AC/DC.

This first album is a strange mix as it drifts from hard rock to psychedelia and back again. They originally only had five songs but needed more and actually had to lie to get the record deal by telling them they had needed to record them. The three tracks "Real Cool Time", "Not Right" and "Little Doll" were written overnight and improvised on the spot in the studio. This album feels a little controlled compared to the next one where they unleash their aggressive energy and capture the raw live performance vibe. Despite the material varying in quality this is a decent debut that certainly has made more of an impact in retrospect than it ever did when it was released.

UMUR "The Stooges" is the debut full-length studio album by US hard rock/proto punk act The Stooges. The album was released in August 1969 through Elektra Records.

The music is a distorted and noisy kind of hard rock and is understandably called proto punk by many. The snarling "fuck You" attitude is certainly there and considering the album was released in 1969 it´s at times a quite extreme hard rock album. To contrast the predominantly short and aggressive tunes the album also features the 10:18 minutes long "We Will Fall" which to my ears is a complete The Doors worship. Psychadelic, chanting, repetitive and bleak "We Will Fall" in many ways reminds me of "The End".

While the musicianship isn´t on the highest level, there´s an honesty and organic delivery about the whole affair that is rare. This is raw and "In your Face". Add to that lead vocalist Iggy Pop´s generally flippant attitude and the album comes off as a good example of a noisy and loud, sex, drugs and rock´n´roll type album.

The Stooges deliver with this album, there´s no doubt about that, but it´s also obvious that they weren´t very mature as songwriters yet, and not all tracks are queally interesting. Alledgedly the band didn´t have enough material to record a full-length studio album but The Stooges lied to Elektra Records and said they had enough material to enter the studio. That resulted in "Real Cool Time", "Not Right", and "Little Doll" being written so close to entering the studio, that The Stooges didn´t have time to rehearse them properly before recording them. Despite a few shortcomings I think "The Stooges" is a great debut album and a 3.5 star rating is warranted.

Warthur Although it completely fails to capture the mayhem of the Stooges' live performances, their debut album is still a great slice of proto-punk/proto-metal. Ron Asheton's guitar work is quite simply the heaviest and most "metal"-like to have been heard on record up to that point - not even Jimmy Page could compete - whilst Iggy's anxious yelps hint at the explosive energy he's keeping pent up inside him. The second album would unleash all that, of course, but it's here that we first caught some tantalising glimpses on it. Standout songs are No Fun and I Wanna Be Your Dog; worst track is probably Ann but even that's a blast if you're in the right mood for some feedback-heavy noise.