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Wanna know why Raw Power kicks ass, despite shitty production, over forty years later? Two things: the songs, the performance. It sounds simple, but so many bands overbalance, fall either to one side or the other. Why’s it so hard? Cos songwriters don’t value bands, cos bands don’t value songs. The Rolling Stones, they valued both. And the Stooges, by the time of Raw Power, they did too, thanks in part to the influence of their English precursors. And in both cases, they built their way to song-mastery via hard grunt work – they learned to rock before they wrote. Now I’m a Stones fan, but the Stones are dated. Raw Power has something that doesn’t age. The attack is brutal, the conviction 100%; it’s adrenalin-fuelled and dark as pitch. Me, I love Barbed Wire Kisses, XTRMNTR, the Pistols’ darker moments, but in some kinda virtual shoulda-been way Raw Power tops them all. It sounds like shit, and though I just praised the performance that performance is all over the place. (Are they playing to a f**king click track – at Bowie’s or James Williamson’s insistence, maybe – or just on some cheep, heinous speed?) The Ashtons stutter and race to keep up. Williamson’s treble-encrusted bum notes slice through the murk. But they mean it, man. This ain’t just some backing band, this is the motherf**king Stooges. Take Raw Power, flawed as it is, and the “I’m Sick of You” demos they did in Detroit immediately prior (which demos Frank Black famously combined with the Mamas and the Papas to cook up his conception of the Pixies) and you have the recipe for the virtual late 20th Century rock band to end all late 20th Century rock bands. Hell, I’m willing to believe if they’d played this stuff in 2016 it’d have even more effect. Never did a band have their tongues less in their cheeks and get away with it. Maximum rock ’n’ roll.