Iggy And The Stooges - Live At Whisky A Go Go, 1973

 Guitar-god and Star Trek extra, James Williamson

This tape with a complete gig from Whisky A Go-Go in Los Angeles, 16th September 1973, is worth a listen if not only for the long version of "Open Up And Bleed"(ending up into a freak-out, with a chaos of feedback, not unlike how The Stooges' 1971 material was presented) alone. A firework of a gig helped by a brilliant performance of the entire band. Especially by Ron Asheton, who here make an example of how to play the bass in a punk group.

There are several records with variations of the Whisky gigs from 1973. Believe the band played a total of 18 gigs at the Whisky that year.
Releases on Revenge("Live At The Whiskey A Go-Go") and Snapper("Live In La 73") is also supposed to be from 16th September as the tape is. The choice of songs and the order of them(the tape have the right order on the songs) is a little different, the mixing is different, and it's much more communication with the audience on the tape-version. The tape have medium-much hiss.



Songs:
Raw Power
Head On
Gimme Danger
Search And Destroy
I Need Somebody
Heavy Liquid
Open Up & Bleed.


Part 1
Part 2
Part 3


Most of the tape-hiss is in the left channel. Here is the right channel only:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

"Open Up And Bleed" is no doubt a loss on the Revenge release(which is mixed by none other than Ron Asheton himself, and therefore have the bass in the loud, in front of the mix), but it's replace by a if possible just as strong version of "She Creatures Of The Hollywood Hills" that is together with "Open Up And Bleed" the strongest track The Stooges have never released officially. "She Creatures.." is probably picked from another Whisky gig.
The "Snapper" version have both songs, and a little different mix. A bootleg single "Whisky A GoGo 1973" also had the same version of "Open Up And Bleed", where the song is slitted over both sides.

The versions of most of the songs(among others "Head On") on the mentioned records is as good as it gets, even this was a time where the band was supposed to be struggling, and already had been fired by Elektra, Main Man and Columbia Records.