Down on the Street Introduction
In a Nutshell
White Stripes frontman Jack White professed, "In my mind, Fun House is the greatest rock n' roll record ever made. I'll always feel that." (Source)Kurt Cobain of Nirvana reminisced, "Iggy Pop, he was my total idol." (Source)
Mike Watt of the Minutemen said, "[Iggy Pop] is timeless and eternal for me. He writes great words and does the best gigs, he makes things jump out and come alive for me. I dig it much." (Source)
And Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth claimed, "[The Stooges] were the perfect embodiment of what music should be." (Source)
These are just a few of the thousands of artists who cite the Stooges as a major influence on the way they play, perform, write, listen to, and think about music.
"Down on the Street" is the opening song from the Stooges' most definitive album, Fun House, and its often heralded as the Stooges' and Iggy's most "super killer jams."
About the Song
| Artist | The Stooges | Musician(s) | Dave Alexander (bass), Ron Asheton (guitar), Scott Asheton (drums), Iggy Pop (vocals) |
| Album | Fun House | ||
| Year | 1970 | ||
| Label | Elektra Records | ||
| Writer(s) | Dave Alexander, Ron Asheton, Scott Asheton, Jim Osterberg (Iggy Pop) | ||
| Producer(s) | Don Galucci (former keyboard player for the Kingsmen) | ||
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Shmoop Connections
The "street" is an important metaphor in poetry, literature, and especially music.But don't get it confused with the "road," another heavily used metaphor in Western culture, which is very, very different. The road leads somewhere, and takes you on a physical and emotional journey, like in Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road, or Jack Kerouac's On The Road, to name only two.
The choice of which road to pursue is of course, what "made all the difference" in Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken."
The street, on the other hand, doesn't take you anywhere. In fact, it's a very different metaphorical setting, with darker and grittier connotations. The street is a scene of urban blight, boredom, poverty, and crime. It's the street, rather than the road, that figures so importantly in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
"Down on the Street" by the Stooges is a song that renders this oft-used metaphor particularly dark and strange.
On the Charts
"Down on the Street," from the album Fun House, didn't make a dent in the Billboard Charts when it was released in 1970, but many would argue that the endless stream of shout-outs it's gotten from some of the world's most influential rock musicians more than makes up for it.The album has also received unanimously stellar reviews from contemporary publications and critics, including Robert Christgau, Spin, and Pitchfork.
It has been cited on a ton of greatest albums lists, including Rolling Stone's, received a 5/5 star rating from All Music, and perhaps most awesomely, was named "Loudest Album Ever" by Q Magazine.