Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

In the last few years we've been seeing more and more of the Iggy & The Stooges influence on countless newcomers to the Rock scene so it's only fitting that the band, under-appreciated, even underachievers in their time, would be prominent enough some twenty plus years later to scrape off the last remaining resin and throw it on disc. So here, a band known today as much for sound recording deficiencies as for their groundbreaking on and off stage exploits thirty years before, "The Detroit Rehearsals & More" reveals an as-yet unheard version of this infamous band. And backpedaling for a moment, I use the suggestion of "recording deficiencies" in only the most endearing of terms.
What made Iggy and his band so great all those years ago? Lotsa things actually but none more prevalent than the attitude which this band possessed -- and having a front man willing to risk life and limb for every live and presumably in-studio performance holds a bit of relevance as well.

First of all, kudos go out to Greg Shaw who displayed an unprecedented fortitude in compiling the collection and liner notes, nearly as painful to read as some of these songs are to… listen to.

Okay so there's beauty in imperfection and let's face it... anyone expecting flawless production with no seams and complete end-to-end action, well, no, David Bowie's three albums down to your left.

Similar to other recent Stooges revivals, "Wild Love" is an amalgamated mess of outtakes, rehearsals, demos and just about anything else that could've been thrown on tape and labeled "music." There is an endearing quality to be sure that a song like "Wild Love," or "I Come From Nowhere," unmistakably Stooges, yet akin to shaving with a dulled blade… it can be painful, to say nothing of the poor soul who drowned himself in hours worth of tape spools, yet we'll come up on an I'm So Glad" cover or the "Ballad Of Hollis Brown" seven minute jam and we're suddenly caught in an unexpected groove -- and thanking God for the editing process.

But I'll tell ya I kinda like their "I was born in a trailer" line that goes with the latter and that rambling guitar riff beneath Iggy's psychotic scream gives you that up a little too close and personal vibe!

The tunes, thirteen in all, an hour plus of pure Stooges, raw and unrefined and never before released, their promise not mine, is aimed specifically to those hard-core fans that can't get enough from the old Columbia days -- those, an absolute must for a first listen for the modern day Punk rocker archivist.

And then may we slowly embark on this musty journey through the catacombs and come across much of what might've been had the band not self-destructed. "Wild Love" does, in a way, give us a cool behind the scenes listen to the making of a Stooges record-one that initially never was, from a band that'll never die.