 I'm crawling in from the fun house... Once the stuff of legends, this newly unearthed recording of one of the most legendary nights in Stooges history, the night Iggy fired bassist Dave Alexander because he supposedly froze up and didn't play a note in front of an estimated crowd of 200,000 people, the night the original version of the Stooges last played together, and it is now available for your listening pleasure and as the stimulus for Stooges aficionados like me to forever debate the wisdom of Mr. Pop's decision that fateful day. This stuff is pretty historical. The original tapes of this concert were found buried in the basement of an old barn somewhere in Michigan (who knew barns had basements?), and after Third Man Records (Jack White's label) cleaned them up and made it sound as good as it could (the tapes are straight from the soundboard, monitor mix it sounds like), they then released it on all formats known to man and priced it to make a pretty profit off of it while doing so. Now if that's not Punk fucking Rock nowadays than I don't know what is! 😂 And as for the concert recording itself, welllll, it sounds like the Stooges. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on your point of view. Ron Asheton's guitar work is spectacular, on point, and mind warping. Scott Asheton's drumming is rapid fire and pummelling, pacing the band when they bother to follow him, and despite what the legend says, Dave Alexander's bass playing is just fine. He can be heard playing on every song, and his performance is no more drug addled or booze influenced than anyone elses on the stage that night, so if anything this recording just confirms that Iggy Pop is an asshole and that he fired the poor guy for no reason whatsoever. This concert took place a few days before the release of the Fun House album, so the set is basically all the songs from that album played in a different order, and like I said, it sounds like the Stooges, for better or for worse. There are a few better sounding bootlegs out there of the Stooges in 1970, and this one is definitely for the completionist fans of the band like me, and as a standout release there are better places to start your introduction to the Stooges music, but like all the Stooges live recordings, this one has it's charm, warts and all, and like all Stooges bootlegs, there are brief, shining moments, where everything lines up perfectly and the band sounds incredible, right before someone fucks up a riff or forgets the change and things go south quickly, and it's at those moments, few and far inbetween as they are, where you can understand why people like me consider the Stooges one of the deadliest, most powerful, simply overwhelming bands to ever crawl on the face of the Earth. Their music still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up everytime I hear it. The Stooges did damage, and their legendary Hell raising reputation was well earned and easily proven on any given night. They don't make 'em like the Stooges anymore, and that's a sad thing to write. Live At Goose Lake: August 8th, 1970 is not the best sounding Stooges bootleg, nor is it the worst, but it rocks, even though the sound fluctuates all over the place, which is annoying, but what do you want from a bootleg, right? And while it may not be the first Stooges album you reach for when you wanna blast some Stooges loud as fuck, but it shouldn't be the last one that gets played either. Rock and fucking Roll. Doesn't get any more real than this. God bless the Stooges. Seriously. ❤
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