10 More Perfect Rock Albums Of The 70s With No Bad Songs
1. Raw Power - Iggy And The Stooges (1973)
Although Raw Power notoriously suffered from poor and muddled mixing, the album is one of the most influential on punk, metal and grunge.
Throughout the years, there has been numerous versions of this album. Iggy originally mixed it but the studio, somewhat ironically, found it too raw. David Bowie was pulled into to polish that version up, which was the one ultimately issued to the public. But over the years it's had even more treatment. Iggy remixed a version in '79 and there have been several re-releases since. With all these version it's difficult to pin down which one is the definitive sound. But the 1979 Iggy version is the most celebrated.
There are technical issues on all of the mixes. Either there's too much clipping of certain instruments, or the sound feels too compressed and garbled. But therein lies the charm. The record sounds dirty, it sounds low-fi and unpolished. The opening track Search and Destroy in particular sounds like it was recorded at a live concert with minimal equipment. But it doesn't matter for a second. It captures the frenzied and often chaotic live performances that defined Iggy and the Stooges.
Kurt Cobain explicitly named this as his favourite record of all time.