I can still remember the bold display that introduced a record buying public to Raw Power.  LPs vertically stacked in the recess of a stand-up cardboard display, a bare-chested and defiant Iggy Pop on the cover signifying an absolute end to the suited approach seen not 7 years earlier.  Rock had assuredly turned an important corner.

The Stooges were always loud and unrepentant. A listen to any of their earlier classics will easily reveal that Iggy and his cohorts were anything but conventional.  But Rock was always about that defiance of traditional roles.  Iggy and the boys were challengers and pushed that slider to its highest point.

Raw Power was the apex of their career, helping lead the way to more changes that culminated in the true Punk movement of the late '70s.  With original Stooges, Ron and Scott Asheton, and the power guitar of James Wiliamson, Iggy Pop's band was as hardcore as you could get.

Raw Power needs no introduction.  Its 34-minutes of loud, brash Rock and Roll grooved within 8 songs are essential listening.  They might not be to your liking but you cannot deny their intensity and their influence, drawing their own influence from The Stones.  Every glammed-up track is as important as the one it follows or precedes.  From "...love in the middle of a firefight" from the opening song of "Search and Destroy," to "...raw power got more than soul, it's got a son called Rock 'n Roll...," of "Raw Power," to the prophetic "...honey, we're goin' down in history..." of the closing track, "Death Trip," Raw Power is essential!

The Legacy Edition is remastered (sounds great...and loud, just as they intended), and beefed up with bonuses in various forms of the album.  The 2CD Legacy Edition not only gives you the remastered album, it provides a second disc that features a previously unreleased 1973 show in Atlanta, Georgia callers Georgia Peaches.

Georgia Peaches is an eight-song performance that is high-powered in every way, just as Iggy and The Stooges intended.  Cleanly mastered, you can easily hear the audience as well.  It also provides two extra cuts, one an outtake from the sessions that birthed Raw Power called "Doojiman.". It's quite the song delivering an experimental jam with a novelty vocal track, Stonesy, wild and fun.  The other bonus track is a previously unreleased rehearsal track, "Head On" from 1973.

The booklet is a 24-page foray into the album featuring outrageous photos, two recent essays, notes by James Williamson, Scott Asheton, and Iggy Pop, and the album credits.

The Raw Power:Deluxe Edition goes much further into the album with the adds of a third disc filled with more outtakes and some alternate mixes and remixes, a DVD of The Making of Raw Power, and a bonus Japanese 7" 45rpm single reproduction of "Raw Power" backed with " Search and Destroy." The Deluxe Edition expands the set further with a 48-page softcover book with more essays and photos, and five 5" x 7" prints.

Raw Power is an important album in the history of our beloved Rock n Roll, even if the band or ourselves did not know it at the time of its release.  But we know it now.  This Legacy Edition, more so the Deluxe Edition, is a great remembrance of that.