steve mackay

A Fire of Life – The Stooges (Easy Action)

Pertinent Question: Who else but Easy Actionwould have issued this and shown such a high degree of care? The Stooges are no more. Every listenable recording of the band during any of its phases surely has been exhumed and put into the marketplace by now.

Incorrect.

“A Fire of Life” is the Pop-Asheton-Asheton-Watt-MackayStooges at the height of their reformation powers.

The first half combines broadcast quality sets from Sydney (2006) and New Orleans (2003) while the second act is audio of a pay-for-view, live-in-the-studio 2007 set, showcasing one song from “The Weirdness” with five re-recorded classics. It’s rounded off with an in-store appearance by Iggy, Rock and Ron at Newbury Comics in Minnesota in 2003.

Nobody loves a band more than a diehard follower of the Stooges. Through thick and thin, they cling to whatever recording detritus or tidbit of lore is handed down, like a drowning man clutches a life preserver in an ocean liner sinking.

They chase every bootleg with the fervour of a pre-urban renewal Cass Corridor junkie hustling a hit. They celebrate the band’s posthumous legend status and annoy non-believers with trivia, simultaneously living vicariously through the stories of the Stooges' addled (pre-reunion) stumbles and falls.

All this and more is why the news that broke in June this year about a high-quality desk tape concert recording of the original line-up materialising, a full five decades after the event, hit the faithful like a phalanx of neighbourhood leaf blowers at 7am on a hungover, suburban Saturday morning.

Peter Whitfield photo

Tributes are flowing for Stooges saxman Steve Mackay who has passed away in hospital in California following complications from surgery.

MESSAGE FROM IGGY ON STEVE MACKAY'S PASSING: pic.twitter.com/haOUe7Wd7p

— Iggy Pop (@IggyPop) October 11, 2015

Expatriate Americans living in Shanghai in China, Round Eye have unleashed a video to accompany their song “Billy” which is a stringing critique on the state of politics back home.

Round Eye recently signed to the Canadian label Sudden Death Records (owned by DOA’s Joey Shithead) and collaborated with the late Stooges sax man Steve Mackay on an eponymous record "Round Eye" last year which you can hear and download via theiur Bandcamp (link below).

“We've lived here for 6 years but have never neglected the issues of home,” explains singer Chachy. “This video is our open letter to the United States.  We really put a lot of work into this to ensure the message is very loud and very clear.”

Round Eye on Bandcamp

Round Eye on the Web

Sonny Vincent’s address book is fuller than a well-hung pornstar’s underpants so it’s no surprise to see him working with another star-studded gang on his latest album.

With his band drawn from the ranks of the Sex Pistols, the Stooges and The Damned, “Spiteful” is a gold-plated punk rock blast from go to whoa.

Steve Mackay - saxophonist for Iggy & the Stooges, Snakefinger's Blues Band, Commander Cody and Violent Femmes, among others - is critiically ill in hospital in San Francisco following complications from surgery.

Friends say he went into Seton Medical Centre in Daly City a few days ago with sepsis, a life threatening condition that can lead to inflammation and organ shutdown.

Close friends and family are understood to be at his bedside.

Mackay is best known for his contribution to the second Stooges album, “Fun House”, and was recruited by the band from Ann Arbor avant garde band Carnal Kitchen. 

Mackay toured with the group throughout 1970 but parted company late that year.

He came back into the fold for both lives of the reformed band and continued to tour heavily with them until their recent hiatus. He played on both “The Weirdness” and “Ready To Die” and toured with his own band in the 2000s.

Heather Harris photo

Confession time. I love Wendy James. But not in the way you're probably thinking. The five bottles you see at the end of this review are well earned but some will not share my enthusiasm. Wendy’s blistering hysterical British syllables may well strike terror in the sensitive ears of some. Fuck ‘em.

You'll immediately remember Wendy from '80s pop punk band Transvision Vamp. She'd tell that girl to shut up. She wanted your love. But baby she didn't care. A fierce blonde strumpet in a short black dress. The pin up girl who launched rather more than a thousand lustful teenage fancies for those too young to have noticed Debbie Harry.

Live at Goose Lake: August 8th 1970 - The Stooges (Third Man)

Are you kidding me? This is conniption material. A high-quality soundboard recording of the original Stooges, plus saxophonist Steve Mackay, at a time when they were at the primal peak of their considerable powers? It’s proof-positive - not that it’s needed - that the Stooges of 1970 were indeed America’s Most Dangerous Band.

The Stooges were a few months fresh from recording the epochal “Fun House” album and in a mind to confront Middle America on the sort of scale that could only be achieved off the back of substantial record sales.