Hey There, Little Stranger

Gimme Danger is finally out in a medium we can easily watch.

I streamed it for $4.99 last night on Amazon. In the beginning of the movie, it says “Amazon Studios” so this might be the only place it’s currently available.

Was it as good as advertised? Abso. Fucking. Lutely.

If anyone wants to watch it and talk about some rock ‘n’ roll, I’m here.

4 thoughts on “Hey There, Little Stranger

  1. Definitely worth seeing even though it’s the same old story. You might say it’s the ultimate in the same old story but me, I’ll throw in double the bad luck and give you the Dolls. I’m not sure the film communicates just how crazy Iggy was. I mean crazy in the sense that you never knew what he was going to do becasue HE never knew what he was going to do. Just that he was going to lay it out. I can see it in glimpses in the film and I already know it, I’m just not sure a stranger would realize that “dangerous” was not an aesthete’s metaphor but the way it was. “This guy could die right here” went through many a mind many a time.

    The film succeeds admirably in comunicating the soul roots of The Stooges and the MC5. It’s been said before but often it’s not said. Another parallel with the Dolls, who covered Bo Diddley, Otis Redding, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Archie Bell & the Drells and of course Chuck Berry.

    Iggy sang with Sylvain and JT of the Dolls in a NY loft in 1975 and they wrote a song together called “Running From The Pain” that was never recorded. Iggy was on his way to Berlin to make The Idiot and he made the CB’s scene, which was just getting big. Iggy spoke highly of the song and I’ve always wanted to hear it.

    I believe Ron Ashton that the Not Right recording was the first time they ever played the song. That happened to me, at least in that the first time Fun/No Fun played Paint It Black we nailed it, in a different way than the record, and we all knew it, but we never got it just right again and we never played it live.

    Bowie’s version of I Wanna Be Your Dog sucks. The Darned’s is damn good.

    Iggy is wrong that Joe Cocker was singing You Are So Beautiful. That was at least a few years later. At that time Joe Cocker was doing some good songs, although I must admit that while I loved his version of A Little Help From My Friends then, I can’t bear it now. But Delta Lady a is good song, as is his version of Cry Me A River. It’s inappropriate to post Joe in a Stooges comment but too bad, it is rocknroll. It’s just not the Stooges.

  2. The film absolutely has flaws. The main one seems to be that it could have gone off in several different directions that it didn’t, sort of like you say, Gene. All in all though, it’s a helluva lot of fun. Between this and the Beatles Touring Years movie, that gives us a couple great rock docs from 2016, more quantity than I can say for albums (I can think of one).

    The revelation that hit me most with this movie was when Iggy described how James Williamson fills up almost all levels of sound by himself and it was difficult finding space for yourself in-between. As a result, Iggy said he sang an octave higher on “Raw Power” than on “Funhouse.”

    In a eureka moment for me I realized that’s a decent chunk of why I always favored “Raw Power,” in addition to Williamson, of course. Iggy’s singing has never been better, before or since. As we’ve mentioned before here, for the last 10 years or so, he’s just been croaking like a frog.

    The movie makes me want to get “Kill City” which I don’t have. I’ve heard it’s great and I’ve heard it’s horrible. Little help?

  3. It’s in between. The songs are mostly great, the sound is thin. “Open Up And Bleed,” which I posted a few weeks ago, is on it, so is the fantastic “Johanna.” You should have it if only for documentary value but it’s more than that. It’s just a little sad in the “what might have been” sense.

  4. Funny, I just got an email from one of the small venue emails that they were showing the movie with Jim Jarmusch participating. It was in Manhattan, but I cannot remember where, but that prompted me to look the film up, and i was going to write about it, but you guys totally beat me to it.

    First, I will watch, Second, just another reason I really love Jarmusch!

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