Produced by John Cale of the Velvet Underground, the Stooges' eponymous debut is deliberately and deliciously lame-brained, the side of VU that never really developed. It peaked at 106 on the Billboard album charts, but was listed at #185 on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list.
Though all three of the Stooges records are essential for fans, Fun House perhaps shows best what the Stooges and Iggy brought to the table in terms of attitude, aesthetic, and sheer ferocity. "Down on the Street" is the opening song.
Released under the name Iggy and the Stooges, as opposed to just the Stooges, which no doubt created tension in the band, this is their last album until 2007's reunion with The Weirdness. The Stooges would later omit these songs from their live repertoire, feeling they didn't represent the real band.
Still, Raw Power is arguably the Stooges album that had the biggest influence on what would become punk rock, cited by such notable punk rockers as Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, and Henry Rollins of Black Flag, who even has the name of one of its songs, "Search and Destroy," tattooed across his back.
Iggy Pop's second solo album and second collaboration with David Bowie as producer boasts classics like "Lust for Life" and "The Passenger," songs whose riffs will ring only too familiar for fans of contemporary garage rock bands that derived their sounds from them.