The Stooges - Cock In My Pocket

ORIGINATION Head On
RECORDED IN 1972
LAST LISTENED TO a week ago
RATING ★★★★★

Yesterday I read a news article by a journalist who was either very pushed for time, or just plain lazy. It parroted and assertion made by the music industry that the recently-published decline in physical music sales in the UK is due to online piracy. Not only is this impossible to prove, indeed there never seems to be any proof attached to these statement but some of the proof available actually points to the opposite truth – that online piracy has led to an increase in consumption of paid-for music by these very pirates themselves. On top of that, there is the heavy irony of the music industry accusing others of piracy, given the notoriously tiny percentage of each sale that goes to the artist and that's when the CD is full price, one wonders if artists make any money at all from cut-price CDs.

Which brings me to this morning's song that I found on a double CD of bootleg recordings, apparently officially released, on sale at less than half price. Given the sound quality of the music, and at times the quality of the music itself, the price does seem rather appropriate, artist payments aside. The songs all come from the period when The Stooges where disintegrating between music contracts, although the energy in the music shows that they were still on top of their game. Cock In My Pocket is one of the most coherent songs on the collection. Focused and taken at a blistering pace, it gives the listener to wondering what would have happened to the Stooges if drugs had not taken their toll. As ever, and in particular due to the lyrics that would almost certainly never have seen a commercial release at the time, this is not music for the faint-hearted. From James Williamson's guitar to Iggy Pop's snarl, that is as raw and uncompromising as anything in The Stooges official catalogue. It also stands apart from that official sound with the addition of a piano, here not only used for colour as happened on occasion previously, but as a full part of the song. Indeed both the pianist Bob Sheff and Williamson are invited (or possibly directed) by Pop to takes solos during the song. Memorably Pop calls out Williamson by shouting "Any time James" during Sheff's solo. For an supposedly unfinished piece, it is quite a song.