Open Up and Bleed

I’ve been posting a lot of new stuff lately, so I thought I’d take a trip back a few years for tonight’s post. I picked up a couple of Stooges disks when I was in Germany last month – they’re on the American label BOMP!, so I imagine they were released here, but I hadn’t seen them before, so I went ahead and bought them.

Through the 90s BOMP! released “The Iguana Chronicles”: about a dozen disks of Stooges demos, rehearsals, and live shows. I picked up two of the later ones, Rough Power and Open Up and Bleed.

Open Up and Bleed, from whence comes tonight’s music, is a collection of songs that would likely have made up the Stooges' fourth album. During 1972-73, the band were recording demos for Raw Power. While eight of these tracks were perfected and appeared on the final album, many were left unfinished and unused.

Open Up and Bleed proves that many of these leftovers were worthwhile. The sound is of varying quality (lo-fi throughout), but with better sonics, the material would easily be on par with the Stooges’ officially released albums.

NME called this album “a testament to rock'n'roll played to its ultimate limits, and for anyone with even a passing interest in unhampered, visceral and pestilent punk rock.”

Open Up and Bleed.mp3 CBS rehearsals, NY, 1973
Cock in My Pocket.mp3 CBS rehearsals, NY 1973
Rich Bitch.mp3 Latin Casino, Baltimore, 1973
Rubber Legs (version 2).mp3 CBS rehearsals, NY 1973