Q UICK RIFFS
Keeley Electronics Factory Fire
The Keeley Electronics Factory in Edmond,
Oklahoma burst into flames last on
Thursday, January 15, destroying various
workspace areas and some parts inventory.
Conditions were originally reported as
much worse than they appeared at press
time. The most recent word from Keeley
USA is that completed dealer stock was
essentially untouched by the fire, except
for some smoke damage that might
require reboxing of products, according to
Moonphase news.
There were no injuries in the fire, and Keeley
has reported on their website that all customer units that had been sent in are safe.
Keeley had temporarily disabled their
online shopping cart system to prevent new
orders from being placed, but the website
is now up and running again. Questions
regarding existing or future orders are to
be directed to the following email address:
sales@robertkeeley.co.uk.
Lead Technician Dusty Wayne Nelson told The
Oklahoman that he expected the factory to be
up and running in less than two months.
Remembered: Ron Asheton
By Adam Moore
The news of Ron Asheton’s death on January
6, 2009 spread with an urgency and an emotion that likely would have surprised Asheton
himself. Even though he was responsible for
some of rock’s most explosive and enduring riffs with the Stooges, penning brutally
frank, muscular songs like “I Wanna Be Your
Dog,” “No Fun” and “TV Eye” that summed
up the angst and restlessness of the Rust
Belt a decade before punk, Asheton never
seemed to garner much respect outside
of esoteric circles. Even with the Stooges’
recent resurgence among an in-the-know
swath of fans and musicians—culminating in
a triumphant reunion at the 2003 Coachella
Festival in Southern California and Asheton’s
inclusion in Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest
Guitarists of All-Time (29th) soon thereafter—there always seemed to be a contingent of loud, persistent critics who remained
unconvinced that the Stooges’ proto-sound
amounted to anything artistic. His was
ostensibly a life of constant disrespect from
both the mainstream and from those around
him, perhaps best epitomized by his last
encounter with the outside world: Asheton
was discovered alone, several days after suffering a heart attack in his Ann Arbor home.
And yet, the news of his passing spread
quickly even through the most mainstream
of media outlets, proving that Ron Asheton’s
contribution to rock history was much more
lasting than even he believed.
While Asheton’s spartan playing style was
often a target for critics (“The instrumentalists sound like they’ve been playing their
axes for two months and playing together
for one month at most,” read Rolling
Stone’s review of their eponymous debut),
his rhythmic attack and hypnotizing, angular progressions provided both the perfect
accompaniment to Iggy Pop’s onstage
masochism and a direct counterpoint to the
blues and folk sounds that, until then, had
comprised rock’s foundation. Borrowing
from high-powered pioneers like the Stones
and The Who (a band he saw firsthand at
the Cavern Club at age 16), Asheton managed to ratchet the intensity even higher
with a heavy, focused right hand and loads
of feedback. Suddenly the amount of
energy a guitarist put into the song mattered just as much as the notes played; the
Stooges’ magic happened live. “Everyone
thinks it’s really simple: ‘Hey, it’s three
chords. I can do that,’” Asheton said in an
interview with the Chicago Tribune. “It’s not
true. A song like ‘TV Eye’ sounds simple,
but it’s that groove, and I’ve never seen
anybody else hit it.”
It was that combination of groove and sheer
power that marked the Stooges’ arrival on
the music scene, and in turn, an evolutionary step for rock ‘n’ roll. While the Stooges
certainly weren’t the only angry band in existence—they often shared the bill with the
equally bombastic MC5s—they did represent a stark parting with the rock establishment. While flower power and psychedelia
dominated popular culture, the Stooges
personified violence and alienation, not just
aimed at politics or the establishment, but
at society itself. Asheton prowled the stage
clad in iron crosses and S.S. pins, mauling
his trusty Stratocaster while Pop provoked
the crowd in every manner imaginable. It
was such a shift in attitude that audiences
were initially at a loss for how to interpret
the band. “When [Iggy] first started going
in there [the audience], most people weren’t
angry. It was hard to get anyone angry. They
were scared, shocked or like ‘huh?’ It was
a snake, they were mesmerized,” Asheton
recalled in a 2000 interview with Perfect
Sound Forever. “Then they enjoyed the participation. A lot of people would beg ‘Come
over here!’... He’d be lying all over the chairs
and the kids would be throwing beers at
him. To me, that’s what really cracked me up
and that’s when he really started refining it.”
Unfortunately for the Stooges, the assault
wasn’t simply on the audience. The pressures of Pop’s growing heroin habit and
a relentless touring schedule caused the
band to flame out just as quickly as they
had burst forth. The band decided to
take an indefinite break in 1971, and Pop
decided to move to England and assemble
a new group of Stooges before summoning Asheton to play bass on 1973’s Raw
Power (“I was shattered,” he recalled of the
perceived demotion). While he would continue to slug it out in the Ann Arbor/Detroit
music scenes, playing in underground acts
like New Order and Destroy All Monsters
into the late nineties, and would even
work with fellow Michiganite and Reverend
Guitars owner, Joe Naylor, to create one
of the coolest signature guitars ever conceived, he was never able to recapture
the fire of his Stooges days. It was a track
record that clearly frustrated Asheton. “For
me, it’s business as usual,” he said in 2000.
“Ahead of my time, bad timing. Wrong
place at the wrong time. Never a groom,
always the best man.”
And perhaps that illustrates best what is
frustrating for fans and fodder for critics: the
Stooges were ultimately only a step towards
a final musical destination, not the destination
itself. By the time punk and metal arrived,
most had forgotten the Stooges’ original,
anarchic brew of aggression and noise. Until
the recent emergence of entire sub-genres of
rock music that owe their existence to
