stooges – Plain Or Pan

TV Eye

March 31, 2025 Craig McAllister

Diggin’ through the debris of daytime TV so you don’t have to.

I’ve been unwell and off work last week and this, and I’ve lacked a real oomph to do anything other than sit on the couch and watch TV. At the prospect of this, lots of folk in my situation might rub their hands together, fire up a Netflix series and settle in for the duration, but I’ve not had the mental scope to involve myself in anything quite as cerebral. Up and down the channels my attention span and I have gone, from the glossy national networks – apparently the retirement home for old pop stars and athletes with a neat line in self-reinvention – and where, for £2 plus standard network charges, you can text in and maybe win yourself a £6 million super-home in the Cotswolds, to the up-the-numbers, non-HD, +1 channels that spit out their drivel in between frequent ad breaks for animal charities, JML multi-purpose tools that you can’t buy in shops and actual lift (as in elevator) systems for the home. I doubt even your most hardened of daytime TV watcher knows this sort of stuff exists. It’s a real carnival of nonsense when you venture through the cathode glass.

You can break your daytime TV schedule into four handy genres:

Upcycling and recycling of old tat for profit, sometimes charitable profit, but never profit of more than a few pounds. Whether it’s the well-spoken lady who waits by the recycling centre then asks if she can rummage through the boot of your car for anything interesting, or it’s a posh old classic car-driving English guy with pink chinos and mustard teeth zig-zagging his way across middle England’s antique shops, or it’s a former soap star turned DIY expert, the concept is the same. A bit of spit ‘n polish and the auction house will help you shift this shiny new old tat to its next gullible owner who, in 10 years or so, will turn up at the recycling centre with the same old piece of crap. It’s the circle of life, as Elton once sang.
Home shows. These fall into two categories; fixer uppers/mover on-ers or secondary homes in the country (can’t do Spain anymore, mate, Brexit innit?!) for Home Counties twonks (also often in pink chinos) with more money than they know what to do with. “Yah. We’ve a budget of two hundred and forty-two, but we can p’raps stretch to two fifty for the right place.” Oh, fuck off.
Human interest shows. Neighbourly disputes, people who’ve overcome the odds to get on in life, ordinary people ripped off by bogus tradesmen, relationships that cross boundaries, borders and age gaps, menopausal women discussing their sex lives. It seems we’re a nation of nosey so and sos, eager to find out the gossip whatever it may be.
Quiz shows. Loads of them. I don’t mind a good quiz show….but in the middle of the day, a good quiz show is hard to find (Countdown excepted). Wooden presenters and stupid contestants do not good telly make. Have you seen Tenable? Or Lingo? Or that Ross Kemp one? Oh boy! And yet…the thicker the contestants, the better the prize money. Mind boggling.

I don’t actually mind some of the upcycling shows either – the posher the host, the brighter the chinos, the wonkier the teeth, the more outrageous the combo of hat and cravat the better the show, but I’ve learned very quickly to draw a thick and divisive line at Storage Hunters UK.

As the title suggests, this is a franchise show, brought in this instance from America, with a rude US presenter who switches to a ridiculous rrrrrapid fi-rrrre vocal style when he hits the auction sections of the show. The premise, if you don’t know – and why would you, you’re all highly intelligent people, possibly in full-time employment, who wouldn’t ever consider watching such trashy telly – is simple; Our American host gets access to a storage unit where the previous renter has defaulted on payments to the point where the container’s contents can be sold at auction. A merry band of modern-day pirates and hawkers follow the US host around as his muscled-up heavies break locks, allow the potential bidders a minute or so to look inside – No touching! No removing of covers! – and then put the contents up for auction there and then as a job lot. If you think the host is rude, that’s nothing compared to the Cock-uh-knee wide boys and resting bitch-faced wimmin and aggressively-stanced baying motley crew who make up the show’s regular ‘cast’ who, with barely a glimpse of the leg of a potential Queen Anne chair, or the sight of the corner of a stuffed pigeon, or a milk float, or a hint of arcade machine behind a mountain bike, or a dumb bell sticking out an old box can instantly tell that there’s money – pwopah wodge – to be made in this ‘bin’. It’s all scripted of course, but the bidders all hate one another and often provoke an adversary into dropping out or – even better – bidding waaay over the odds for a storage unit of shit. After sitting through six episodes over three days in a row last week, I gained the courage to go for a long-needed shower. Never again.

I hit rock bottom this morning, the absolute peak of the nadir, when I stumbled on, then downloaded to watch from the start, an episode of Undercover Boss USA. You know the score with this, right? The self-made CEO of a mid-west burger franchise chain or similar goes back to the ground floor as a new employee to find out what makes his company click and what makes his company clunk. Between sweeping floors and flipping burgers he’ll encounter bully bosses, hard working staff with multitudes of personal problems (but they just gotsta keep workin’ for ya), faulty machinery that makes the job three times as difficult, at every turn meeting a real cross-section of the people who represent his company. By the end of it, the bullies are told they don’t demonstrate the family values of the company and are removed, the temperamental machinery is fixed and the teary-eyed hard workers who’ve just been told who the ‘new guy’ really is are rewarded with promotion and/or cold hard cash and/or a school fund and/or a new car and/or a fully-paid holiday. Like Storage Hunters, it’s heavily scripted. Unlike Storage Hunters, it’s highly watchable.

Today’s episode was a break from the norm. Billed as Celebrity Undercover Boss USA, it featured the singer Seal incognito with wig, facial hair and a flimsy story about making a film about the music business with three struggling artists. Seal calls himself Victor and visits the three artists in turn; New York, Chicago and L.A., hearing stories of broken vans, broken lives, working multiple jobs, getting multiple rejections, yet all still with a burning desire to turn dreams of singing for a living into a reality. Seal, of course, sees a piece of himself in each of these hopefuls, torturing himself with the notion that he can’t yet break his cover and help them. He plays guitar for one of the unsuspecting singers at one point – “Hey! You pretty good, Victuh!” and it’s only after he brings the three singers together for a show as part of his ‘documentary’ finale that he reveals his true self. Do 20-something Americans even know who Seal is? Apparently they do.

“Hey Victuh!” calls one of the girls at the show. “We wanna hear you sing first!”

With a shrug of calculated bashfulness he instructs the assembled band – there just so happens to be an assembled band – to fall in as he plays Kiss From A Rose, his Billboard Hot 100 number 1 record that featured on a Batman movie and won multiple Grammy awards. The camera pans the small crowd and films as Seal hits the high notes in the chorus. Bay-bee! His three starlets eye-pop in amazement at their documentary maker’s previously unknown vocal skills. Should I compare you to a kiss from a rose…? You can see it dawning on most people by the end and, after rapturous applause, game old Victor rips the wig off his head and the prosthetics from his face to reveal yr actual Seal, exactly as he’s known to the world.

It’s box office telly. You really should look for it.

I really need to get back to work.

Wild, feral, hot-wired punk blooze, TV Eye is the real jolt you need to get back to normality after falling into the trap of daytime TV.

Seek out that Seal show though…!

Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

Iggy Stardust

January 19, 2017January 19, 2017 Craig McAllister

It’s well-documented that David Bowie was something of a non-stop workaholic. That long golden run he went on, from Hunky Dory in 1971 to Lodger in ’79 – 10 amazing albums in 9 short years, all killer and no filler (’74’s Diamond Dogs might faintly be described as the runt of the litter, though it yielded Rebel Rebel as well as the album’s title track, so scratch that, naysayers) remains unparallelled, unlikely to ever be equalled, let alone beaten.

What’s all the more remarkable is that while he was on this winning streak, David was sustaining himself on little more than milk, red peppers and the finest Class As that came his way. Not only that, but when he wasn’t changing musical direction and band members and haircut and trousers every nine months, or sticking out the odd non-album track to keep the fans happy between releases (between releases! d’ye hear that, Radiohead?!?), he was still finding the time to help out other artists.

An on-the-brink-of-break-up Mott The Hoople famously kickstarted their attack on the charts with their version of Bowie’s All the Young Dudes. Last time I checked, Mott were still playing the odd Hall Of Fame gig here and there, thanks in no small way to yer man Dave.

A not-quite-post-Velvet Underground but fed up Lou Reed went spinning into orbit on the back of Satellite Of Love and its parent album, Transformer. Satellite… had been written, much like Bowie’s Space Oddity, on the back of the public’s fascination with space. Reed had high hopes for the song, reckoning it was perfect hit single material. Satellite… was considered, then disregarded for inclusion on the Velvets’ Loaded album, so when Bowie entered his orbit showing an interest in his music, Lou was keen for his song to be taken seriously second time around. Both the single and album were produced and enhanced by Bowie, his uncredited vocals on Satellite… worth the price of admission alone.

Iggy Pop, careering out of control on a spiral of illicit substances and ever-decreasing sales (Stooges were hardly big-hitters to begin with) found himself on the receiving end of a post-Ziggy kiss of life when Bowie, fresh from minting his second stone-cold classic in as many years, helped produce, or rather re-produce, Raw Power, Stooges’ third album.

Iggy himself had taken the producer’s chair, creating a chaotic mess of almost unsalvageable pre-punk rock. Of the 24 individual tracks available to him at the mixing desk, he chose to put the entire album onto just three – the band on one, the vocals on another and James Williamson’s lead guitar on the third. When Columbia heard it, they refused to release it until it was cleaned up somewhat and made more presentable.

Cue Bowie. The man with the golden touch. Using all manner of up-to-the-minute recording technology, he twisted and turned Iggy’s 3 track raw Raw Power into something slightly more commercial and releasable. Perhaps not the radio-friendly unit-shifter that Columbia had in mind. Not that many folk bought it anyway, but those that did – cliche klaxon alert!!! – ended up forming bands of their own. But you knew that already. Listen to the album and you’ll hear the embryonic howls of The Jesus And Mary Chain, Sonic Youth, Nirvana and a million other six string stranglers. The teenage Johnny Marr was fixated by the feral guitar playing on it. His bequiffed foil was in love with Search & Destroy‘s glorious abandon and poetic lyrics; streetwalkin’ cheetahs, handfuls of napalm ‘n all.

“I’m the world’s forgotten boy,” drawls the Ig at one point, poetry indeed to the ears of the bedroom bard of Salford’s Kings Road. No Stooges, no Smiths. No Iggy Pop, no indie pop. Imagine that.

Iggy & The Stooges – Search & Destroy

In the mid-90s, ahead of a Stooges reissue campaign, Iggy himself was given the opportunity to remix Bowie’s remix – are you still following? – and used his time to unravel all of Bowie’s work, replacing every guttural grunt and primordial proclamation that had been wiped from the first release. He turned the faders up, up and away into the red until the guitars became ear-splitting, spitting shards of broken glass from both speakers.

Iggy & The Stooges – Shake Appeal

For much of the record, it’s a painful sonic assault on the ears, even during the two ‘ballads’, one on each side, where the guitars somehow still manage to creep into dog-bothering levels of pain.

Shake Appeal, above, surfs above the racket like the noisiest garage band in the world having their first go at a Motown track, all Jagger-pouting handclaps and barking yelps, Iggy’s skinny backside (what waist size was he? 24″? A chunky 26?) bending and jerking like a pipe cleaner in time to the fuzz bass, the Four Tops if they were fighters, not lovers. It’s a sloppy, angry, petulant, white riot of a record. Quite fantastic, of course. Beautiful music wrapped in a beautiful sleeve. What’s not to like?

*Bonus Track!

Iggy Pop – Wild America (Long Video Version)

Here‘s Iggy’s on take on it all.

“Most likely to succeed. 9th Grade.“

“10th Grade, formed Iguanas! High school rawk bayund!“

An audio autobiography, if y’like.

Hard-to-find

Larry, Moe, Curly and Iggy

October 20, 2008 Craig McAllister

I was watching the BBC’s fairly decent Alan Yentob-presented 3 part documentary on the history of the guitar last night. The Johnny Marr bit was excellent. You’ll find it here. Learn how to play ‘There Is A Light..’ from the man himself! Iggy Pop was also on, waxing lyrical about how being a guitar player was all just about being a bit of a prick (!) He must know something I suppose, and given that The Stooges only recently became friends again, he may be right.

Ron Asheton was the bit of a prick he was referring to. At the tail end of the 60s he was the proto-punk, perma-shaded, primal riffmeister on ‘The Stooges’ and ‘Funhouse’, The Stooges first 2 albums. By the mid 70’s, James Williamson’s introduction as co-writer and lead guitarist had relegated Asheton to bass playing duties on the Bowie-assisted and aptly named ‘Raw Power’. To these ears, the riffs became less prowling and menacing as a result. Iggy talks about writing the riff for ‘Search & Destroy’ here. It’s very funny. Johnny Marr rates ‘Raw Power’ highly, and while it’s still a fantastic record, for me it’s just shaded by the first two albums, in particular ‘Funhouse’.

When I first got broadband I went absolutely nuts, downloading anything I could get my hands on. Well, not anything. I wasn’t interested in the latest Bloc Party album (is anyone?) or The Doors back catalogue (I’d buy that), but I actively sought out hard-to-find gems. I was in heaven when I found the Complete Funhouse Sessions, a 7 CD set that presented in chronological order every take of every track that The Stooges recorded for Funhouse. Plus all the studio chatter you could want. “Someone’s guitar string was ringing on that one!” moans Iggy at one point. Clocking in at 7 hours and 52 minutes long, it’s not the sort of thing you’d want to play all day. Well, maybe you would. But it would drive you crazeeee. The box set was quickly out of print (only 3000 made for sale), so I had no qualms about downloading it.

Dipping into it now and again reveals wee bits and pieces I had never noticed before, and it gives you a great insight into how the tracks developed as the sessions continued. Some of the squaking sax that made the final cut isn’t on these sessions. Other tracks had the squaking sax and wah-wah mayhem taken off before the final album was sequenced. Much as I love them, Spacemen 3 clearly made a career out of re-hashing these cast offs. Much of this is uneasy listening. In fact Mrs Pan hates this stuff when I play any of it, so I tend to keep it for when I’m washing the floor. Mop in hand, I’ll strut about like Iggy. Only, with my trousers on. Here’s some of my favourite outtakes.

Down On The Street (take 2)

Fun House (take 1)

Loose (take 3 – false start)

Studio chat regarding drum roll in ‘Loose’

Loose (take 4)

See That Cat aka TV Eye (take 1)

1970 (take 1)