The Stooges vs. Black Sabbath

Stooges. I do like the Sabs but heavy metal in general has never meant too much to me.

I kinda wanna say the same thing, but Sabbath has enough blues in their sound that they appeal to me on a pretty similar level. I'm still torn.

You arrive at the party, 'Funhouse' is playing, and you just know . .

You arrive at the party, 'Paranoid' is playing, and you just know . .

Does this formulation work here?

Ach, Stooges for me anyway. Ozzy sounds like a man forever trapped inside his own brain. Iggy is more like a man who has smashed his way out with a broken bottle.

Close, but it was the other member of the rythym section, Geezer Butler, who wrote about 90% of the lyrics on the first 8.
Thanks for clearing that up. I think its a common misconception that Ozzy wrote the lyrics and I knew that wasn't right.

Asheton Bros vs. Geezer'n Bill?

ASHETON BROS ASHETONE RBOS ASHETON BROOOSSSSSSS

Dudes now how to rock, dudes know how to partay. Pure class.

Maaaan...I think I'm going with the Stooges, as pained as I am to choose. There's talk of Sabbath being more virile sonically, but I'm not sure I agree seeing as the Stooges were far more raucous and disorderly and cocky and adventurous, and they sure as hell had deadly riffage, too, from both Ashton and Williamson. They put on a much better show and Iggy sang about his dick instead of wizards. It all just holds more appeal for me (err, ahem). I listen to Funhouse and Raw Power more than anything by Sabbath. And as much awesome fun as it is, as a matter of personal preference/aesthetic, the comic book satanism vibe is the final nail that's keeping me from voting for BS.

lol masonic boom :)

"Asheton Bros vs. Geezer'n Bill?"

I'm on record throughout ILM that I would take Geezer and Bill over pretty much anybody.

from ILMs '70s albums poll:

84. Iggy and the Stooges - Raw Power
63. Black Sabbath - Paranoid
19. The Stooges - Fun House

gee, i wonder which band will win here...

"You arrive at the party, 'Funhouse' is playing, and you just know . .

You arrive at the party, 'Paranoid' is playing, and you just know . .

Does this formulation work here?"

In both cases, you just know. . the place is jumping with people who gave up on the VU party. And, whichever record is playing, the other one would work next.

why would you think this? Iggy has always struck me as deeply masculine.

there's a lot of submission/receiving imagery in iggy's lyrics ("I wanna be yr dog", "I'm loose", "penetrate, penetrate me") so I can see the feminine angle.

as bill points out, sabbath were neither pro nor anti women, women rarely show up in sabbath songs except as some sort of blues trope - "that wicked woman broke my heart etc".

You arrive at the party, 'Funhouse' is playing, and you just know . .

---shit, this could be a pretty good party!

You arrive at the party, 'Paranoid' is playing, and you just know . .

---man am I gonna get stoned

Man, this is the first difficult poll I've seen in a while. I grew up in Michigan, and had this just fetishistic love for The Stooges (hell, my column for some six years was called Gimme Danger)… But lately, I've been really listening to a lot of Sabbath and have kind of given up on Stooges—they just don't surprise me anymore, whereas Sabbath outside of a couple of albums is mostly new to me.

Stooges, not really that close.

stooges

No hesitation, the Stooges

I mean, I love the Sabs, one of my favourite bands, but why aren't the Stooges walking away with this?!!

because black sabbath has better tunes

stooges have funhouse & raw power, which may be better albums than sabbath's strongest, but not even the "no fun" riff can touch paranoid's or war pigs's or sweet leaf's or lord of this world's or a sabbath bloody sabbath's - I mean, there's a power the stooges have that's rich & deep & complex & ambiguous - dionysiac is the pretentious way of describing it, but it's probably accurate. sabbath on the other hand just crank out tune after tune of monolithic fucking riffs with scary-because-he-sounds-kinda-lost ozzy being agitatedly dysphoric about it all. Iggy keeps the company of David Bowie; Black Sabbath have no friends. Iggy's an open-eyed excursion into self-harm as self-expression; Black Sabbath's replacement singer totals his car driving drunk while recording Born Again. I loved the Stooges first, but I love Sabbath more.

This poll belongs to the Clash.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41KS1CF2K1L._SL500_AA240_.jpg

I think I'll vote Stooges, but..

"Supernaut" vs. _____________ (by the Stooges)?

the more i read of this thread, the more i'm being convinced that my vote lies with sabbath.

listening to the entirety of "paranoid" now, in the gloom of a dreich glasgow morning.

"Supernaut" vs. _____________ (by the Stooges)?

^ OTFM

Stooges hands down ..but then my favourite SAbs album is Sabbath bloody sabbath so what do I know

Stooges. Metal is silly.

lol smearing yrself with peanut butter is SERIOUS BUSINESS

OK, got me. Stooges are silly too.

I think I'm going to give my vote to Sabbath - partly because of the quantity of quality output (at least 4 completely solid, amazing albums, with a smattering of good stuff thereafter), but also partly because they are just better songwriters. Sabbath has a better hit-to-miss ratio, and their methodical, slavish dedication to heavy riffage - only occasionally leavened by folk-psych deviations (which are all a damn sight better than the Stooges' lone attempt at similar on their debut) - is a fantastic marriage of vision and technique. Sure the Stooges are "rawer" or "edgier" or "not as silly" (altho come on Iggy is plenty damn silly) in some ways, but there are fewer highs with the Stooges (2 1/2 great albums) and yes I know they painstakingly assembled "Funhouse" but there just aren't as many tricky little surprises in their catalog as there is with Sabbath. And yeah, Sabbath basically invented a genre - whatever that's worth the same cannot be said of the Stooges.

one could argue that as much as zeppelin + sabbath are the inventors of metal, vu and stooges are the inventors of punk

also

"Supernaut" vs. "1970"

"Supernaut" vs. "1970"

Supernaut in a blowout on par with the latest Kimbo Slice match.

Nice post Shakey

one could argue that as much as zeppelin + sabbath are the inventors of metal, vu and stooges are the inventors of punk

I don't think's punk's lineage is all that er, linear. Punk owes as much to countless Nuggets-style 60s garage bands as anything else (see "Louie Louie") - I think VU's role is often overstated, primarily by those who would like to re-write punk's origins as being exclusive to New York (a la "Please Kill Me"). Whereas with metal you really can narrow it down in a much more direct way - there's the first few guys who took standard rewrites of the blues into heavier territory (Hendrix, Blue Cheer, etc.) and then there are the guys who really wrote the rules for much of what would follow in the subsequent decades (ie, Zep and Sabbath). With punk, things are a lot messier.

Sabs have better songs, better riffs, sure, but the Stooges are like a direct channel into the primeval ooze from which songs and riffs spring. It's like beautiful volcanic mountains versus molten lava.

Still haven't voted. It is like defusing a bomb.

i have voted, and it was for black sabbath.

i know i'll wake up in the middle of the night and think, gah, shoulda voted for the stooges.

but then i'll wake up again in the middle of tomorrow night and think, no, i did the right thing.

"supernaut" vs. "funhouse"

i will play master of reality while reading katherine anne porter's "noon wine" tonight

I did that with Vol. 4 and John Donne's Holy Sonnets earlier.

"Supernaut" vs. "1970"

Supernaut in a blowout on par with the latest Kimbo Slice match.

nah, last 2 minutes of "1970" >>> any two minutes of "supernaut"

not buying it.

Punk owes as much to countless Nuggets-style 60s garage bands as anything else (see "Louie Louie") - I think VU's role is often overstated, primarily by those who would like to re-write punk's origins as being exclusive to New York (a la "Please Kill Me").

I guess I view the VU/stooges influence on punk as narrowly as you view sabbath/zeppelin's on metal. sure, lots of diffuse & disparate things inspired punk bands, and the same could be said of metal.

but between vu and the stooges you've got about 90% of the moves punk bands would pull in situ. just like sabbath/zeppelin provided the template for metal bands that came after them.

I'd reposition this argument to take "influence" out of the equation and say that as earlier practioners of the form vu/stooges embodied the rulebook. you could erase every nuggets band in history and still derive the essentials of punk rock from vu and the stooges. and I mean punk in the broad sense; not just ramones/pistols but television, pere ubu, wire, etc. and I think I've talked about zeppelin being the collective unconscious of rock here before somewhere...

aw c'mon, who waits until the song's almost over for the saxophone to come in? and when it does it's a coltrane clarion call waking archangels to man chariots of the gods as the locked groove of a j.b.'s detroit death machine bears down on them! and I feel alright! I feel alright! I feel alright!

"TV Eye" vs. ??????

i really do not understand either of these bands

or rather their appeal.

but what do i know.

Tough choice, but Stooges. Know what puts them over for me? "LA Blues." Know why?

STEVE MCmotherfuckin'KAY.

Sabbath don't got nothin' nowhere close to him anywhere in their catalog.

"TV Eye" vs. ??????

This is the nubbins of it for me really - Sabbath's riffs seem overwrought in comparison.

And yeah, Sabbath basically invented a genre - whatever that's worth the same cannot be said of the Stooges.

Whoa.. horsey!!

Why does that matter anyway?

It's true, the Stooges aren't as boring as Sabbath