What happened to "1969", I Wanna Be Your Dog" and No
Fun"? Stuck in a time capsule along with the decade later "Life On
Mars", "Changes" and "Heroes" probably. The old men of
rock and pop have an era they belong, and they should stick to it. Now Mick
Jagger swaggers and Leonard Cohen reads poetry, Dylan dangles and don't even
get me started on yours truly who decided to release an album of French covers
last year. John Derek once said: "Live fast, die young," Buckley's do
it well. We might as well add 'out with the old, in with the new' while we're
at it. Iggy Pop was once the cool, attractive and inspiring frontman of The Stooges... Yeah.
"Burn" is one of the tracks taken from The Stooges upcoming fifth album Ready to Die. It's been six years since the abysmal fifth album The Weirdness, and in that time Pop has managed to collaborate with Ke$ha, do advertisements and slag off The Smashing Pumpkins for not being a 'real group'. Well at least they didn't release The Weirdness. Well Pop and co are back, with former guitarist James Williamson after Ron Asheton's death. It's almost nostalgic to read up on The Stooges, listen to their new material and imagine Johnny Rotten in my head. Two similar chaps, both hypocrites, both incredibly facetious individuals and both release average at best music in their later years. "Burn" is no different to The Weirdness, so much that it's almost unlistenable. It has loud guitars, a pounding aspect of noise and little direction. The bass is interesting and the drum breaks work with the loud layered guitar. It's not utterly terrible like what you would find on The Weirdness, however it's noting to show off pre-release.
Now these guys know how to record, they know what
works in a studio, noise wise. They can put together a decent sound and hand it
over to a production team good enough to tweak their old age flaws. Ready to
Die is being plugged as the follow-up to Raw Power, although we'll
never forget the atrocious The Weirdness, you can't erase that.
"Burn" happens to be an indication of this, but Pop's character, the
melancholy atmosphere and image of The Stooges just is non-existent. Like
Bowie's upcoming flop and The Rolling Stones present mediocrity, the old
struggle. The females know how to handle age, but the males can't quite grasp
it. Stay tuned for more OAP's in the future.
~Eddie