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Mike Watt, J Mascis, Ron & Scott Asheton - London, Mean Fiddler Sunday 8th December 2002
"I'm calling from the funhouse baby with my love," I am a prize fucking div. Last month I was wracking my brain trying to think of any gigs I'd been to that I could write about in Unpeeled. I could remember nout, true I had witnessed Ron Sexsmith… but without photocopying my ass, and putting it next to a picture of the dopey canuck prick with a poorly drawn cock on his head, I couldn't really see me doing that justice (he redefined the words "boring" and "rubbish" very effectively for me).

Then suddenly the other day I realised that I had in fact seen one of the best gigs ever in the world ever, EVER! The sheer awesome scale of it's monolithic brilliance had left, as it were, a blind spot in my memory… inhabited only by the eardrum busting sound of Mike "best bloke in the world ever" Watt playing the riff from Funhouse incredibly LOUD.

That's right I went to see The Stooges! Alright so the guitarist looks like two of Elton John stuck together and his brother is rocking a disconcerting "Albert Steptoe dresses as a gas station attendant" look… but man alive they have the aforementioned Watt on bass and vox and living guitar legend J Mascis busting out some serious wah wah psychedelic ROCK action on guitar. Basically this show was like a massive dream come true for me, I love The Stooges, I love Mike Watt, I worship J Mascis (and can't bear the fact that generally these days he's so fucking miserable and tight he tours on his own).

I saw them before with a different drummer, when Watt and Mascis, encored J's solo Fog shows by bringing out fat Ron and busting out some of these numbers, but celebrity dickhead Bobby Gillespie spoiled that by twatting someone with a mic' stand in a fit of Iggy Pop style flouncing.

Tonight no such fuck-uppery is allowed, just stunningly loud and tight versions of every song off the first two Stooges albums (except the really long crap one with John Cale on but that's bollocks anyway), bloody marvellous.

So what more do I want... well actually it would maybe be nice if Lou Barlow former Dinosaur JR partner to J, could come onstage to perform with him for the first time in over 10 years, unlikely, though since they hate each other loads. BUT wait Mike Watt, like a punk Cilla Black, has brought Lou on for the encore and he's singing "I wanna be your dog" - admittedly he sang it fucking badly mind, but they got some total loon out of the crowd to do ‘No Fun’ so who cares! It's Sunday night and Mike Watt's ad hoc band, essentially formed as a way for Watt to get back into gigging shape after his battle with cancer (which is leaving him looking more and ragged every time I see him), has saved the world for total dumbo riff punk yet again. ALTOGETHER NOW. "NOW I WANNA BE YR DOG"

Ian Unpeeled (the zine that covers the John Peel shows, info from shane@unpeeled.freeserve.co.uk)

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