Project Description

THE STOOGES’
LIVE AT GOOSE LAKE:
AUGUST 8TH, 1970

Music review and interview with
BEN BLACKWELL
(Third Man Records Co-Founder)

Reviewer/Interviewer – Karen Lowe

.

.

When anyone says the name Iggy Pop, it immediately brings to mind images of a shirtless, wild, crazy, drug-fuelled front man who’s penned classics like Lust For Life, The Passenger and, with The Stooges, I Wanna Be Your Dog. He’s also the first performer to have stage-dived into the crowd and has influenced so many artists including The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana.

So when Third Man Records (TMR) announced to the world that they had found a full recording of the original Stooges last performance at Goose Lake, it excited fans around the world. After all, not many recordings exist of the original line up and certainly nothing that you’d really want to listen to on repeat.

I had the absolute pleasure of speaking to TMR’s Ben Blackwell (below) in relation to the album and the work that goes into restoring 50 year old audio that has not been stored correctly. By some miracle, the tapes were in good condition and TMR was able to save it and are releasing the vinyl to the world.

Blackwell mentioned that he expects that some people will complain about the sound as it’s not ‘perfect’ but in all honesty, before the first listen, I was expecting the sound to be a bit scratchy, hollow – you know – like a REALLY old recording.

From the second it starts however, the sound quality just absolutely blows you away. You would never believe that the recording itself was from 50 years ago. It certainly makes you wish that you could have been there and witness the spectacle and talent of Iggy and The Stooges in their heyday (although that’s not quite fair because even as a 73 year old… the man kicks some serious arse over most modern performers).

As a reviewer, the usual structure of course, is to review the songs but to do here would be a complete injustice. It’s Iggy Pop and The Stooges and is everything that you expect from them. Fans are going to love it and those that don’t understand the powerhouse that this band was will never understand.

Suffice to say… any live recording that makes you wish that you were at the show has done its’ job and that’s all you need to know.

.

.

LIVE AT GOOSE LAKE:
AUGUST 8TH, 1970
Tracklist

SIDE A

1. Intro
2. Loose
3. Down On The Street
4. T.V. Eye
5. Dirt

SIDE B

1. 1970 (I Feel Alright)
2. Fun House
3. L.A. Blues

.

Third Man Records was launched by Jack White in Detroit, MI in 2001, and in 2009 opened its current Nashville, TN location, which houses a record store, novelties lounge (featuring the Third Man Record Booth), label offices and distribution center, photo studio, and the world’s only live venue with direct-to-acetate recording capabilities. Third Man Records returned to Detroit in November 2015 with its second physical location, Third Man Records Cass Corridor — record store, novelties lounge, in-store performance stage, record booth, and vinyl record pressing plant, which you can witness in action through viewing windows in the store, pressing the very records available for purchase. Third Man is an innovator in the world of vinyl records and a boundary pusher in the world of recorded music, aiming to bring tangibility and spontaneity back into the record business and issue releases that leave no doubt in the minds of listeners that music is indeed sacred.

Other recent Third Man releases include:

Albert Ayler – New Grass (reissue out June 26th)
The Raconteurs (Aka The Saboteurs) – Live At Electric Lady (Spotify Exclusive)
Brendan Benson – Dear Life
Redd Kross – Phaseshifter & Show World (reissues)
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – What That Is! & Because Is In Your Mind (reissues)
Luke Schneider – Altar of Harmony
The Pathetx – 1981
Boris – LØVE & EVØL, Feedbacker & Akuma No Uta (reissues)
France Gall – 1968, Baby Pop & Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son (reissues)
MAGGOT BRAIN magazine

.

.

The original Stooges last performance at Goose Lake is set to be released on 7 August by Third Man Records to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the show and was actually found buried in a Michigan warehouse. What’s the story behind that?
There’s a guy by the name of Joshua Rogers, whose father was a sound guy in Michigan in the 70’s and 80’s named James Cassilly. James passed away some time ago and Joshua’s mum decided she was finally going to sell the family house that had been in the family for years.
They were cleaning it out, finally moving everything out of this house and Joshua found a box that said Goose Lake on it and it was a bunch of reels of tape. One of those reels was The Stooges. He knew of Third Man’s reputation; he was a fan of Third Man and he knew that we had worked with The Stooges and worked with Iggy before – and he came to us and he said “I found this tape. I don’t even have the machine to listen to it on but would you guys be interested in going down this road and seeing what we can determine from it? As far as I know, there’s not even anything on the tape.”
So he drove down to Nashville with a box of tapes. I transferred them all – we transferred them – and the only one I really wanted to hear was The Stooges and sure enough, there was music on the tape. I sat there in my office and my jaw dropped.

.

.

What kind of work goes into restoring audio that old?
This was pretty well preserved in regards to the tape quality. It didn’t really need to be baked or wasn’t falling apart. What was on the tape itself was a little more tricky. It’s two-channel so usually when you have two channels it’s stereo but like calling it two-track stereo… it doesn’t feel like it would be an appropriate description. I would say one of the channels had seventy percent of the information you wanted to hear (the audio information). The other channel had thirty percent of it or whatever so it’s not a stereo recording.
It’s basically two tracks combined. I’m ninety-nine percent sure what we’ve released is in mono but what goes into making that mono; making the track listenable; is lots of micro EQ. You’re equalising frequencies by the second or half of a second of what information you want prioritised in the mix.
It’s not like we could say ‘hey, let’s turn up the bass’. We didn’t have a multi-track where we could do that so it’s like ‘well, let’s push the bass until the bass drum sounds like a fart’ and then you know you’ve gone too far so let’s make sure the bass drum isn’t farting. It’s an involved, in-depth session where it’s all computer clicks on your mouse – we’ll put this here and this here and this here.
You’re probably doing a thousand of those across the forty minutes of recording or something. It’s a great end product – considering what you start with and what we ended with having heard that. People will never hear what we started with so I anticipate people kind of complaining like “well, you know, the recording quality isn’t… you know it’s ok.”
Other things too, one of the other bands that was recorded at the festival was Chicago. Chicago’s a big band and they’ve got a horn section and all that. Referentially, listening to that recording was like ‘oh man, it’s terrible’ because it’s too much information trying to cram in there.
I was happy that The Stooges are basically a four-piece, with saxophone for the last three songs. So we’re very, very lucky. It could’ve easily been, ‘yeah this is the recording of The Stooges but the sound’s not something you could ever release.’
I have to add to what I just said which is if any band you could ever release the worst quality recording of; The Stooges, in terms of bootlegs and live recordings, have done it. People are so bonkers about them and there’s so few actual documents of them that people are just thirsty. They want anything Stooges related but for something this quality, it’s unparalleled. This has never happened for the band or this line-up.

.

.

Iggy Pop is well known for his drug-fuelled stage antics. What are some of your favourite stories of him? Have you had the pleasure of meeting him?
I’ve met Iggy Pop twice. First time I met him in Ann Arbor in 2006 – he was backstage at a Raconteurs show and for me it was like ‘wow… Iggy Pop in Ann Arbor. This is his home; he owns this town’. Actually no, I’ve met him a bunch of times because The White Stripes did Big Day Out with The Stooges that same year in 2006.
I gotta give you a whole different side-track of my Stooges story because one of the greatest Stooges memories I have takes place in Perth! The day before Big Day Out, we checked into the hotel. I’m just sitting in my hotel room, nothing to do and my tour manager calls me up and says “what are you doing right now?” and no one ever calls me on my room phone. I said “nothing, I’m just sitting, probably gonna read a book or something.”
He said, “well, I just went through the lobby and all of The Stooges except for Iggy are in the hotel bar drinking” and he said “go down there, pay for all their drinks; you can put it on your room, I don’t care, I will pay for it out of the tour budget. Just get stories out of them, just go talk to them.”
So it was like hours I sat there with those guys. It’s Mike Watt, it’s Ron Asheton, it’s Scott Asheton, it’s Steve Mackay and it was just one of the nearest, dearest memories of my life. At some point, Meg (White) came down and she started drinking with us.
Those guys were all just like, you could see them just besotted with Meg. She made some comment about being in a relationship with someone not in a band, who doesn’t understand touring life, and she said, “you know, going out with civilians, blah blah blah”. Ron is hugely into military history and World War II and all that stuff. The fact that she used the term civilians… Ron just lit up; he was like “YEAH! It’s like civilians!”
But man, we talked for hours and it was so pure. At the end of it, the next day, Jack (White) came up to me and said “hey, I talked to Ron today and he said you asked him better questions than any interview he’s ever done” and I was just like “oh my…” – like it’s the warmest feeling in my heart. You know, Ron and Scott aren’t with us anymore so I think back to that moment of talking with them and spending time with them. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before, just knowing about Perth or whatever. That just makes me feel warm. I feel like I’m doing a service to them and their memory.
I didn’t answer your question about Iggy’s stage antics but you asked if I met him. Third Man (Records) put out a book called Total Chaos which is Iggy telling his oral history version of The Stooges. The author of the book, Jeff Gold, asked me to write an essay for it; very, very flattered and so I wrote an essay about how The Stooges and the history of the state of Michigan kind of intertwined. It’s just like a mental exercise, there’s no real basis or fact in any of it… but it was fun to write.
We did a release party at our Third Man Records spot in Detroit when it came out and Jeff’s like “have you met Iggy before?” and I was like “I have but I don’t know if he’ll remember me.”
He took me backstage and I said hi to him and Jeff said “so this is Ben. He wrote the essay in the book.” First thing Iggy said – “you look exactly like the guy that threw a bottle in my face at…” you know, some show that they had played. Oh, man I had long blonde hair and I had a Brooks leather jacket on, which is like the counter-cultural uniform for the past fifty years… but then he said “you’re a very good writer.”
He said he was really, really impressed and I was like “fuuu… alright, I won’t say bye… I’ll see you later.” Where do you start with a guy who invented the stage dive and taking his pants off and all that stuff.
Whatever stories you’ve heard or have preserved, there’s probably another dozen that have been forgotten but I personally think that’s what you want in a lead singer. You want a lead singer that’s right on the edge of scaring people… like rock ‘n’ roll should be scary and it should be dangerous. I think over the years, it’s become less and less so… but that’s a key he so wholly injected into The Stooges live performances.

.

.

You are a co-founder of Third Man Records which is also Jack White’s label. How did it first come about? And for you – what is the importance of vinyl records?
Jack called me in 2008 and said “hey, I got the vinyl rights to The White Stripes back catalogue and it’s out of print. I bought a building in Nashville, why don’t you come down to Nashville?” (I was living in Detroit at the time) “let’s put out The White Stripes records…’
I had been working for him and The White Stripes since the beginning, since 1997; roadie, running their website, selling merch at the merch table… you know I was with them in Australia on that trip. So, I’d been working with The White Stripes forever and then in 2003 I started my own vinyl record label in Detroit.
Not too many people started vinyl record labels in 2003 but that was something that I really loved; that was what I committed to. So, at that point he said, “you’ve worked with The White Stripes longer than anyone else and you know vinyl better than anyone I know.” It seemed like a natural fit so for me, vinyl has been this… you know it was the first way I experienced music as a child and then it’s also how I discovered music.
You know how people talk about finding their tribe, like that’s how I found music that I truly loved and identified with; whether it’s like garage records, or Seattle sub-pop kind of stuff when I was in my teenage years and then even further on when I explored it as a hobby when I started my own label. I was like I’m never gonna live off of this but this is what I want to do. I want to spend my free time and my disposable income and I want to put out vinyl records.
Six years later where Third Man starts, that it turns into my job! Like hey! Your job is to put out vinyl records and keep people interested in it. Then years later, when we start our own vinyl pressing plant in Detroit, which is like gosh man, I’ve had such a crazy relationship with vinyl records, now you’re actually in charge of manufacturing, and not just creating them but the ideas behind them and someone else goes and gives you the physical product but now, that’s our job.
Jack was just telling me today, he says he saw a limited colour vinyl version of Dark Side of the Moon at Target or something and he was pointing it out to his kids, like ‘look at that, is that not crazy?’, and I don’t know if they actually got it because it’s been around all their lives but I wanted to say to him, I didn’t say it, but I wanted to say “did you tell your kids this is because of what Third Man does? This is the hard work that we’ve done that people are now doing limited edition coloured vinyl at the second biggest retailer in the United States?” So yeah, vinyl is intrinsically linked to just about every aspect of my life.

.

.

I have to say, TMR is definitely a cause of many arguments between myself and my husband since I started buying vinyl records…
(laughs) Alright, I will happily continue those arguments.

For those in the Vault, can you give a sneak preview of what’s coming up over the next few issues – other than the Johnny Cash one of course.
Ooooh that’s a good questions which I just had a conversation about today but of course, I am not at liberty to say (laughs). There’s always interesting stuff. Always things we have percolating. A lot of it is timing. Like Johnny Cash was perfect as that came out right at a point where we were able to. Like – if Jack had a new album coming up it would have been “oh shoot… we can’t do it at this time” but that timing was perfect.
In terms of Vault and archival stuff, we are putting out live recordings through Nugs. There’s The White Stripes, Jack White solo, The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs. We do one a month – Third Man Third Thursdays. It’s worth checking out. If you have more than a surface level appreciation of The White Stripes, we’ve collected a shit-ton of… I’ve recorded these shows over the past 20 years or so.
So that’s what I’ve been doing. Getting them transferred, mastered and all put together so it’s like my own little mini-Vault package once a month that I have to keep on top of.

What have been some of your favourite vault packages so far?
Ooooh. Well – I don’t dislike any of them and I’m not just trying to be political or whatever but it’s truly the fact that people sign up and hand over their hard-earned money is never lost on me because I’m a record buyer too. I know there is budgeting that goes in for someone to trust you with their money like that.
The ones that personally resonate with me – there’s a Live in Detroit 1999-2000-2001 which is a collection of three different White Stripes live recordings. That one and there’s Live at The Gold Dollar which is a bunch of non-White Stripes bands – Jack White and The Go, Jack White and The Bricks and Jack White and the Two Star Tabernacle – those really, really stick out to me because when I look at the packaging; the recordings; the art work, the ephemera like printed set lists and flyers and all that stuff… I look at it and I’m like – this is just like my scrapbook.
This is personal shit that I grabbed and this is my life. I was THERE for all of these things so to see that – which would have been like a cool mix tape I would have made if this band didn’t turn out to be stuff that people cared about is being mass-produced and made available to fans all over the world. You’re getting Vault packages down in Australia and that still boggles my mind.
So those ones where there is actual connection – like personal – I was there or I grabbed that flyer off the wall or I pulled that setlist off the floor. It’s just that reminder that I’m still, to this day, I’m coming to this as a fan. I’ve been so lucky and that’s The Stooges as well. I am the biggest Stooges fan in the world and I still can’t believe that we’re putting this out. I keep on waiting to be woken from this dream.

.

.

I’ve listened to The Stooges release too and from the very second it starts, it’s like WOAH!
You feel it. You feel it in your guts. You really feel it. (laughs)

You do “Record of the Week” for The Vault. How do you decide what album will be the record of the week?
It’s literally… the criteria changes depending on how much time I have that day and what record’s within reach and what else I have to do. It’s not like this is what I’ve been listening to the most this week or is my favourite record and sometimes I’ve reviewed records where “hey, this is a terrible record. Don’t buy it.”
It’s not great to spend too much of your time in that regard but mainly for me, it was like hey we should be creating more content. We should be creating stuff and doing stuff that gets sent everywhere in the world. I made it a personal goal of mine to review about one record a week and I’m gonna keep on doing it as it’s a good exercise for me as a writer and it’s stuff to share with people.
Sharing a record with someone and saying ‘wow I really loved this one’ or ‘I would never have found this one or sought that out on my own’ – that’s the greatest. I feel very lucky about that.

You are also one of the drummers in the band The Dirtbombs. Are you guys still playing together? I literally discovered the band today and immediately became a fan.
Oh man! You missed us in Perth in 2008! We did one show last year and that was at the Third Man Records 10th Anniversary but now it’s a little difficult. The other drummer, Patrick actually lives in Melbourne with his wife and kids. Mick is in New York and then Troy and Ko are in Detroit so we are all spread out and it’s hard to get us together.
Every couple of years or so, something comes up that brings us together. We’re not not together but we are also not actively really tackling much.

.

.

Check out THIRD MAN RECORDS below
Website – Facebook – Instagram – Twitter
YouTube – Soundcloud – Spotify

.

.

.

AMNPLIFY – DB