The Stooges vs. The Dolls

[koganbot]

Right. I finally capitulated. Blackout is the album of the year. Blackout vs. Insomniatic is like Raw Power vs. New York Dolls once was, and what my decision finally came down to then and now was force (power, wantonness, viscera seizing you by the throat, insinuatingly nervy sexiness) vs. love (passion, vulnerability, warmth, sympathy, desperation, smarts, idealism), and I had to admit that it was the Stooges (force) more than the Dolls (love) that I incessantly craved in my musical synapses. The Dolls had more good songs than the Stooges, fewer dead spots, smarter lyrics, more open available humanness (and humaneness), more tunes, more beauty, just as the Aly & A.J. album has more good songs than the Britney, and fewer bad ones (in fact, no bad ones, though I do get annoyed by "Division").

But I think it helps Britney that her voice is older than Aly's or A.J.'s. Even with this great half-piercing scratch thing that Aly and A.J. do with their vocal chords (you get the sense that their throats could break into feedback any second), their voices are still young; Britney's has more presence. I SIMPLY DO NOT COMPREHEND THE REVIEWERS WHO ARE WONDERING WHERE BRITNEY IS ON THE ALBUM. Blackout has an overwhelming - sometimes unpleasantly overwhelming - personal force to it, in the same way that Mick Jagger's personal force is all over Aftermath and Eminem's is all over The Marshall Mathers LP. Whether it's the brat thing in "Piece Of Me" or the sprite thing in "Radar," there's a persona and a body that's coming right out at you. And yes, for all I know the producers coached her to this persona, or used the takes that ensured this is what they got - though this would mean that the different producers on the different songs all made more or less the same artistic choices; and whoever chose the songs for the album (is there any evidence that it wasn't Britney? she's the executive producer of the thing) wanted and got a coherent emotional tone; the leaked outtakes show a more varied and generally less hectic sound.

On the basis of the personalities presented on record, I'd rather get to know Aly & A.J.: their reflectiveness, their thoughtfulness, their gorgeousness, their wordplay. But it's the Britney on record - acting out and lashing out and going out clubbing and partying - who rocks me harder.

Comments

[koganbot]

(Consumer guide to those of you who have never heard Raw Power, or even those who have. Go get the original vinyl copy, or the cassette. David Bowie was in on the mixing and production, and the general feeling is that he made the sound too thin and murky and that the album needed a remix. This is probably right; unfortunately, when Iggy went and made the remix about nine years ago he totally botched the thing, eq'd the levels up, made it louder but all punchy, killing the flow, the pulse, so he lost what had made the thing dance and what had made it exciting and savage. The bass is louder but it loses its bounce and its swing.)

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

(Some of us do not own the equipment required to play the vinyl, or the cassette. Should we bother?)

[koganbot]

Oh, someday the equipment will come into your possession. There may be copies of the CD that are the old mix (I've read that the sound on the old mix is almost lost on CD, but that was in Iggy's liner notes of the new mix), though I don't know if you could tell the difference by looking at the covers.

I don't know how much you'd like Raw Power in any version. Do you like the Stones' "Sympathy For The Devil"? Raw Power is like that, but scrappier and more exciting, I think. I actually prefer Iggy's singing on the first two Stooges albums, The Stooges and Funhouse, which I assume are fine on CD; but I prefer the band and the overall speed of Raw Power. I think Funhouse is the one that most critics would pick.

I really don't like much that Iggy's done solo. The Stooges were late '60s, early '70s, broke up in '74.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I do, actually. I don't go out of my way to listen to the Stones, but I generally like their stuff from like '66 through '70. What keeps me from loving it is probably that it isn't scrappy enough.

[koganbot]

Hah! I forgot that last year in my Idolator comments and on the Rolling Teenpop thread I identified Aly & A.J. with the Stooges, not with the Dolls, mashing the words of "Rush" and "Chemicals React" into the words of "Raw Power."

This is what I wrote:

Aly & AJ are a couple of Darwin-shunning home-schooled evangelical Christian teenagers who act and record for Disney and sing songs urging us to throw ourselves into life, into the unknown, as the crucial condition of our expressing ourselves; and they sing other songs about their terror of life, their difficulty in growing up while being racked with fear, afraid of strangers, helpless in the face of bullies. It's as if every Aly & AJ song has an equal and opposite Aly & AJ song. Minds in motion. Into your head, into your mind, out of your soul, race through your veins, you can't escape, you can't escape. Accidentally like Iggy Stooge. Desperately wanting to be touched, afraid to be touched. Raw power got a healing hand; raw power can destroy a man. Can you feel it, can you feel it, rushin' through your head, rushin' through your head, can you feel it, can you feel it? (Raw power is a guaranteed O.D. Raw power is a laughin' at you and me. Can you feel it? Can you feel it?) It took me two seconds, after seeing that there was an Artist Of The Year category, to know that Aly & AJ were it. Both of us broken, caught in a moment, we lived and we loved, and we hurt and we jumped, yeah.

So, it's not as if the Stooges and the Dolls, or Britney and Aly & A.J., are opposites.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Yeah, seriously. Here's my blurb for Blackout:

"Critics have seemingly allowed themselves to embrace Blackout by hearing it as a producer's album that Britney had little part in. Then again, most critics have never made an album. Everything about Blackout sounds meticulous, including and especially the singing; Britney didn't write it, but she embodies it. That's the pop machine at full output, and Brit's a part of it as much as the producers. Moreover, she's the center of it. Without her, there's nothing."

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

Ack! You're so wrong! "Piece of Me" is better (and more ferocious, more visceral, more hip-gyrating passion) than anything on Insomniatic. But that's it. "Blush" is better than the rest of Blackout. And "Potential Breakup Song" is also better than the rest of Blackout. In fact, outside the one song "Piece of Me," Insomniatic thrashes Blackout.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I was going to write comments with my Idolator ballot, but I didn't know what time today the deadline was, and I was drunk last night, so I locked it. Don't think I voted for 'Don't Talk' :(((

(though lord knows what it would have REPLACED - ten is such a paltry number for tracks.)

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Well I agree with most of your analysis, but it just confirms why I think Insomniatic is for me the greater record. I guess right now its attributes mean more to me than Blackout's.

By the way, I'm gonna zShare the acoustic version of "Bullseye" with you in a minute, since you said you hadn't heard it.