STOOGES: The Stooges / Fun House CD

If rock and roll has a year zero, a lot of people point to 1970, a basement in Ann Arbor, and Iggy Pop bleeding on stage.

This two-fer pairs The Stooges' debut with Fun House on a single CD, and it's genuinely hard to overstate how much damage these two records did. The self-titled debut gave the world "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and "No Fun," songs so stripped back and confrontational they made most of their contemporaries sound like furniture. Fun House went further, dragging in free jazz saxophone and recording everything live to tape in a room that sounded like it was on fire. Proto-punk is the genre tag, but that barely covers it. This is the direct ancestor of punk, hardcore, noise rock, grunge, and every band that ever decided technique was optional and energy was not. The Stooges were doing in 1970 what most alternative bands are still trying to do.

Format: CD. Two full studio albums.

Fans of: MC5, The New York Dolls, Mudhoney, The Birthday Party.