Dam! One of my original guitar heroes!!! RIP with sonic fury.

reprinted without permission.



Punk-guitar pioneer Ron Asheton of Stooges dies at age 60
The godfather of punk guitar, Ron Asheton of the Stooges, was found dead Tuesday in his Ann Arbor, Mich., home.

Asheton, 60, had not been heard from for a few days, and police were called to the guitarist’s house by his personal assistant to check on him. An investigation continues, but police do not suspect foul play.

The Stooges emerged in 1967 out of Ann Arbor with Iggy Pop (aka Jim Osterberg) on vocals, Asheton on guitar and his younger brother, Scott Asheton, on drums. Dave Alexander played bass. The band fused experimental techniques, including the use of amplified oil drums and blenders as percussion devices, with Pop’s charismatic stage presence and Ron Asheton’s driving guitar to create a dynamic, divisive new sound. The quartet was never commercially successful, but their live shows achieved legendary status and their first three studio albums – “The Stooges” (1969), “Fun House” (1970) and the David Bowie-produced “Raw Power” (1973) --- are now regarded as blueprints for punk, post-punk and alternative rock.

Asheton and the rest of the band came from blue-collar families. He played accordion as a child but picked up the guitar at age 10 and was playing in bar bands around Michigan when he formed the Stooges with Pop while still a teenager.

“We were outsiders in this college town,” Asheton recalled in a 2007 Tribune interview. “The frat boys would throw cans at us when we were walking down the street -- way before we even got onstage people were throwing stuff at us. We would go into restaurants and not be served because of the way we looked. [Pop and the Asheton brothers] were like the real ‘Three Stooges,’ hence I came up with the name ‘Stooges’ and we just added acid, so at first we were the Psychedelic Stooges.”

The band reveled in free-form concerts and never formally wrote songs until it was signed to a record deal and went into the studio in 1969 with Velvet Underground founder John Cale to make its first album.

“We go in and we start to record and we’re used to playing how we like to play, which is through a Marshall stack set on ‘10’ and the engineer says, ‘Fellas, you don’t do that,’ ” Asheton said. “So we had a little sit-down strike where we actually did go into the vocal booth and sat on the floor. Then Iggy brokered a compromise. We could set the amps on ‘nine.’ So we turned down a little bit. After that it was fine.”

That album produced classic songs such as “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and “No Fun.” A 1970 follow-up, “Fun House,” was named after the Stooges’ hang-out in Ann Arbor, and added free jazz solos inspired by John Coltrane and a funkier beat borrowed from James Brown.

“You take a little of the truth from everyone and mix it with a little bit of your blood and it comes out with your music,” Asheton said.

His iconic riffs were the basis for many of the band’s best-loved songs. He played in a simplified style that cut against the grain of the guitar-god era, when long blues-based solos were the standard by which musicians were judged. Yet a few years ago he was ranked among the top guitar players of all time in a Rolling Stone magazine poll.

“Everyone thinks it’s really simple: ‘Hey, it’s three chords. I can do that,’ ” Asheton once said with a laugh. “It’s not true. A song like ‘TV Eye’ sounds simple but it’s that groove and I’ve never seen anybody else hit it. Even with Iggy when I’ve seen him in his bands as a solo artist, he does Stooges songs, it’s not the same.”

The feeling was apparently mutual. After the band broke up acrimoniously in the mid-‘70s, Pop went on to a long solo career. But he sought out the Ashetons a few years ago and reformed the Stooges, with Mike Watt taking over on bass for the late Alexander.

The punk-era bands kept the Stooges’ legacy alive, and when the original trio started playing reunion concerts with Watt in 2003 they were hailed as icons. In 2006 they came to Chicago to record a fourth studio album, “The Weirdness,” with Steve Albini engineering. The next year, the band played a triumphant show in Grant Park at Lollapalooza, joined by hundreds of fans dancing madly on stage while Pop exhorted them and Asheton hammered out chords that were now a permanent part of punk’s DNA.

The guitarist was thrilled by the response, a dramatic turnaround from the reaction the band usually received during its first incarnation.

“We’d go to places like the Boston Tea Party where we opened for Ten Years After and we finished our first two songs and there’s like four people applauding in the whole club and that’s our fan club president and her vice president, secretary, whatever,” he said. “And everybody else is booing. That was part of the fun. To get any reaction that strong out of somebody was cool. But now it really is great to go and play and have the crowd know the songs, totally love it, enjoy it. It feels like we’re being vindicated.”

say what?
i'll have to *choke* look this up.

Ron Asheton, guitarist from the Stooges, was found dead this morning. :(

Dinah Cancer
Lux Interior
Bobby Pin
Blixa Bargeld
Pat Smear
Rob Graves
Kid Congo Powers
Jello Biafra
Tomata du Plenty

darby crash
captain sensible
johnny thunders

Dinah Cancer
Lux Interior
Bobby Pin
Blixa Bargeld
Pat Smear
Rob Graves
Kid Congo Powers
Jello Biafra
Tomata du Plenty

Mick Sick ex Sick Things guitarist
Ron Murder
Smeer ex guitarist of Depression.
Robert Gotobed of Wire (most un punk pseudonym)

oh and I forgot Krista Crisis!! Sara said:

Poison Ivy, Polly Styrene, Sara Juana

Poison Ivy, Polly Styrene, Sara Juana

The Hoodlum Circus said:

Blag Dahlia
Lux Interior
Kid Congo Powers

Lux Interior, I wish I said that, I always thought that was a good one.

Blag Dahlia
Lux Interior
Kid Congo Powers

Sneaky Sperm Shooter!(Mentors) thee Siesta Molester!(Coyotemen)Al Bondega!(Thee Meatballs)

Stiv Bators

Handsome Dick Manitoba

Chuck Dukowski's play on Charles Bukowski

Dee Dee Ramone!
Iggy Pop!

How could it be anything except Never Mind the Bollocks!

just off the top of me head:
Damned: Damned Damned Damned
Johnny Thunders and the Heart Breakers: L.A.M.F.
Germs: G.I.
Ramones: Rocket to Russia
Dead Boys: Young Loud and Snotty
Real Kids: All kindsa Girls
Saints: Stranded

The latest episode is up! Thanks to Dan Electreau of the Flying Saucer Rock'n'Roll podcast for submitting this one... http://www.garagepunk.com/2009/01/06/garagepunk-surfcast-13/ Don't forget that all-important RSS feed for subscribing in your favorite podcatcher! http://feeds.feedburner.com/GaragePunkSurfcast If anyone would like to take a stab at hosting their own episode of the Surfcast, just shoot me a message! This is a community effort. Cheers, kopper

Jan 4th

Lowcut Virus Preburner:

Twink - 10000 Words In A Cardboard Box
High Tide - Death Warmed Up
Village - Man In The Moon
Deviants - Billy The Monster
Man - Erotica
Moha - B1
Gong - Squeezing Sponges Over Policemen's Heads/Foghat Digs Holes In Space
Takehisa Kosugi - Mano Dharma

Lowcut Classic:

Valient Thorr - Red Flag
The Wavves - Loser Year
Pistons Misfire - Jam In E
The Pink Noise - Micro
Leathervein - Suicide Pledge
Dead Instrument - Swallow The Fire
The Johns - Hun Ka Godt Li At Bob + Animal Hater
Blank Dogs - Before The Hours
Pete Shelley - Homosapian
Spider Babies - My Cock Your Ass
Kim Salmon & The Surrealists - Bellyful Of Slugs
Tyvek - Sidewalk
Violent Soho - Black
Crystal Stilts - Bright Night Nursery
Hellhammer - Triumph Of Death

Dec 28th

New Year Show with guests - Lowcut/Det Knuste Øre:

Human Eye - Fragments Of The Universe Nurse
Fleshpress - Omega Monolith
Dungen - Samtidigt 1
Black Hollies - Paisley Pattern Ground
Dragontears - The Freedom Seed
Catatonic Youth - Out of Control
White Denim - Mess Your Hair Up
Darker My Love - Blue Day
Yoke and Yohs - Tungsten
Grief - Fleshpress (Live)
P.J. Bonneman - Hey Ronni
Endless Boogie - Bad River
Monarch - I Got Erection
Prurient - Memory Repeating
Static Static - Satanic Speakers
Free Kitten - Help Me
Cheap Time - Zig-Zag
Moss - Maimed and Slaughtered
Distortions - Propane 200
Danava - Spinning Temple Shifting
Cola Freaks - Dødt Batteri
Nisennenmondai - Kyuukohan
De Høje Hæle - Røvguitar
Motorpsycho - Year Zero
Alan Silva and his Celestrial Communication Luna Surface Orchestra - From the Lunar Surface
Sonic Youth - Andre sider af Sonic Youth
Electric Wizard - The House on the Borderland
Sun Ra and his Solar-myth Arkestra - Legend
Ash Ra Tempel - Amboss
VEE DEE - Glimpses of Another World
Evil Army - Under Attack
Miles Davis - Uden titel
Digital Leather - Hologram
AV Murder - Missile Command Barbaras
The Fall - Wolf Kidult Man
Menstruation Sisters - Uden titel
Yellow Swans - Untitled
Birchville Cat Motel - Gunpowder Temple of Heaven
The Sons of God Drive Chairs
Jakob Kirkegaard - ?
Stay - Lonely Soul
Jay Reatard - Screaming Hand
Ilhan Mimaroglu - Wings of the Delirious Demon
Mount Eerie - Don't Smoke
Hex Dispensers - Lose My Cool
Pärson Sound - 10 minutter
Amplified Heat - In for sin
FNU Ronnies - Meat
Stick Men - Insatiable

Check out Eskorbuto. I´ve got one song by them called Mucho Policia Poca Diversion (Lots of Police, Not A Lot Of Fun) which is great.

I saw Arthur Lee get kicked out of the Roxy Theatre (circa 19777) and he was packing heat!

I got the DVD on eBay and it's a great movie to watch. I highly recommend it. And yes, there are extras (good ones).

well, tho your review is mixed - I'll still check it out. De Capo is one of my fave records.
i once really thought i saw Arthur Lee in a Borders bookstore on 3rd st. in Santa Monica.

he looked homeless and was drinking a cup of coffee. This was in '99 maybe.
when you live in L.A. you catch sightings like that. and then i heard he was homeless...?

i just saw "Billy Childish is Dead."

what can i say. loved it.

Any punk records stores in your area? I got mine at one for a standard price. Also ebay.com has lots of reasonably priced Trashwomen records.

If you want I can send you some of their stuff to get your fix (send me your email addr) but you should really purchase them from the record store if you can. Or like Sectmaniac said contact Elka on myspace, she is quite the friendly lass.