AMG Review of Wild Animal

Dave Thompson
All Music Guide

Released in 1993 but recorded in 1977, Wild Animal was the first in what has now become a flood of live albums dating from the first year of Iggy Pop's post-Stooges renaissance. Recorded in San Diego on the first of Iggy's two tours that year, with David Bowie unobtrusively tucked away on keyboards, the set is shockingly heavy on older Stooges classics -- just three "new" songs, "Sister Midnight" and a growling "Funtime" from The Idiot, and "Turn Blue" from the then-unreleased Lust for Life -- make the album, but there can be no condemning the rest of the show. Highlights from all three original Stooges albums blaze out with as much energy and conviction as you could hope, certainly when compared to the sloppy seconds served up on the Stooges own 1973-1974 live recordings. A brittle "TV Eye," a tense and seething "Dirt," a defiant "No Fun," Pop put this set together in response to the then exploding punk scene's proclamation of him as its putative godfather, to remind them of what else they owed him. And he succeeded with room to spare.