Album Reviews

To those of us at a certain age and religious persuasion, there's something bizarre about Iggy and the Stooges playing  Kutsher's Country Club, once one of the Borscht Belt's premiere venues. Of course Kutsher's and the Borscht Belt aren't what they used to be but Iggy and the Stooges still are!

To those of us at a certain age and religious persuasion, there's something bizarre about Iggy and the Stooges playing  Kutsher's Country Club, once one of the Borscht Belt's premiere venues. Of course Kutsher's and the Borscht Belt aren't what they used to be but Iggy and the Stooges still are!

Kutsher's Country Club was once a glamorous, luxurious summer watering hole for New York City area Jews, who would make the almost day long drive up then rural two lane Route 17 on weekends to hang out at the pool and shmooze, eat the 3 artery-clogging meals a day, play golf and be entertained evenings by the likes of Jackie Mason, Milton Berle, Sam Levinson, Henny Youngman, Joan Rivers, Jerry Lewis, Stiller and Meara, Buddy Hackett, Myron Cohen, Shecky Green, and the other Borscht Belt comics plus musical acts like Steve and Edie, Sophie Tucker, Jerry Vale and probably a very young Barbra Streisand.

Often, the husbands would leave their wives to stay during the week. Often, the wives would carry on "shtupping" the pool boys, the waiters and any other hot numbers they could find, or so the stories were told—and I heard plenty of them! 

Along with Grossinger's, Kutsher's was a top spot, followed by dozens or maybe hundreds of lesser venues, like The Nevele, the Fallsview, Brickman's, Brown's and the Homowack (don't try that name today!). But then the signs "No Jews, no dogs" started coming down,  jet travel came along and the Jews and others started vacationing in more exotic locations.

The hotels fell on hard times. Most closed. A few, like Kutsher's survived, but in a severely diminished state. So diminished, they were forced to take on festivals like the All Tomorrows Parties festival (named after the V.U. song) that attract types once undesirable at Kutsher's.

Anyway, I think Kutsher's has finally closed and the party has moved on to Asbury Park this year, but this document from a September 3rd, 2010 performance remains and it's testament to the restorative powers of rock and roll.

63 year old Iggy sounds fresh as ever and the re-formed band (Iggy. Scott Asheton, James Williamson, Steve Mackay, plus Mike Watt filling in for Ron Asheton on bass) kills on these live performances of the songs from the Raw Power album neither played live in order or strung together that way here. There's also a bonus track: "I Got a Right."

You'd never know a bunch of gray haired geezers were doing this, that's for sure and like sex when you get over 50, you're probably better off listening with the lights out than watching (unless you look fabulous like Iggy or me). In fact I don't think kids could do this regardless of superior conditioning. It's a generational thing. 

Now you're not going to be buying this if you're not a fan so I don't think I have to run through the tunes. You'll either know them or not. So if you do know and love them in the studio, you will doubly love them live as the guys just rip into them at breakneck speed with a precision and intensity you might think impossible from guys this vintage.

You can be sure the recording is digital. It's extremely well done considering the difficulties involved in recording live to begin with, and especially when it's this loud and intense, non-stop. 

Despite that, the picture is remarkably clean, well-focused, remarkably three-dimensional (Iggy is way out-front), well-organized and fucking loud the way it should be! The cut by the guys at Got-a-Groove Records is excellent, as is the 180g pressing, from a CD resolution file for all I know, but one hopes it was at least a 24 bit file. 

But who cares? The idea of listening to The Stooges on a CD is repulsive. This is a great acid rush to the brain that belongs in the vinyl collection of any Iggy fan of any age.