The Stooges - The Authorized and Illustrated Story by Robert Matheu

Of course, there have been innumerable books about the Stooges over the last few decades and while this large format (9.5x12.5) entry doesn't exactly break new ground, or even pretend to be the complete story, there is some good writing here and plenty of high quality photos from the entire history of the group.

The format is as follows - a basic history of the group, reviews of each of the "official" albums (including, funnily enough, Metallic KO - presumably for its historical content), and a recap of the reunion. The hardest part about reviewing these albums today is trying to put them in the context of the time - pre-punk by a number of years - and just how weird they were to the average rock listener. Nowadays, everyone and their mom claims the Stooges were a big influence on them, but for those of us who were listening to them when these were released, we were considered way beyond outsider freaks. Once punk hit, and every one of the original bands were shaped by these Detroit maniacs, the world's perception of rock'n'roll changed, but this was damn near incendiary in the day!

So, don't buying this expecting to learn anything new (unless you know nothing about these cats, in which case it is damn time that you learned!) but it does give a well-written overview and again, some damn fine pix (many, if not most, that have not been printed before)!