It’s prob­a­bly fair to say that Iggy Pop is the Kei­th Richards of punk. He’d prob­a­bly hate the com­par­i­son, but giv­en his super­hu­man sur­vival skills in an are­na that turns less­er mor­tals to mush, it seems apt. And now, at 66 years old, Pop and the remain­ing Stooges—James Williamson, Scott Asheton, and the great Mike Watt (replac­ing Ron Asheton)—have released a new album, their first since 2007’s The Weird­ness.

Unlike the Stones, The Stooges don’t rest on their lau­rels. Lis­ten to “Burn” above and tell me this isn’t as raw pow­er as Raw Pow­er. Pop’s voice has deep­ened con­sid­er­ably, his youth­ful machis­mo tem­pered into apoc­a­lyp­tic doom­say­ing. But he’s still got the cocked-hip grav­i­tas and full-frontal gri­mace that car­ried him through well over three decades of boom-bust-boom rock swag­ger. Wan­na hear more? Lucky for you, NPR streams the full album, Ready to Die, this week. Lis­ten to it below and be awed.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

From The Stooges to Iggy Pop: 1986 Doc­u­men­tary Charts the Rise of Punk’s God­fa­ther

Cre­ative Uses of the Fax Machine: From Iggy Pop’s Bile to Stephen Hawking’s Snark

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

We’ve shown you Pak­istani musi­cians play­ing an amaz­ing ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”; also Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ per­formed on a Gayageum (a tra­di­tion­al Kore­an instru­ment); and then the Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” played with  tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese instru­ments. There’s noth­ing bet­ter than these felic­i­tous meet­ings of east and west. So, today we present a Mid­dle-East­ern fla­vored ver­sion of Radio­head­’s 1997 hit “Kar­ma Police,” which orig­i­nal­ly appeared on the album OK Com­put­er. The video above fea­tures Tel Aviv-based singer Rotem She­fy on vocals, Leat Sab­bah on cel­lo, Yaniv Taich­man on the oud, and Ori Dekel on per­cus­sion. This video emerged from a Kick­starter cam­paign that was suc­cess­ful­ly fund­ed at the end of 2012.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radio­head-Approved, Fan-Made Film of the Band at Rose­land for 2011′s The King of Limbs Tour

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Gives Teenage Girls Endear­ing Advice About Boys (And Much More)

In 1991, Nir­vana’s Nev­er­mind album explod­ed into main­stream pop­u­lar cul­ture like–as one writer describes it– “a grenade det­o­nat­ing in your car radio.” The album, and the Seat­tle-based grunge rock move­ment it emerged from, was like a boost­er shot of 70s punk atti­tude into heavy met­al, sweep­ing away the hedo­nism and van­i­ty of 80s bands like Qui­et Riot and Möt­ley Crüe. The song that epit­o­mized the new atti­tude, for many, was the open­ing track of Nev­er­mind, “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” with its explo­sive expres­sion of youth­ful alien­ation:

With the lights out, it’s less dan­ger­ous
Here we are now, enter­tain us
I feel stu­pid and con­ta­gious
Here we are now, enter­tain us

The line “Here we are now, enter­tain us” was a joke Nir­vana’s gui­tarist and singer Kurt Cobain liked to call out to break the ice when­ev­er he would arrive at a par­ty. “A lot of times,” Cobain told Rolling Stone in a 1994 inter­view, “when you’re stand­ing around with peo­ple in a room, it’s real­ly bor­ing and uncom­fort­able. So it was ‘Well, here we are, enter­tain us.’ ”

The title of the song was tak­en from some­thing his friend Kath­leen Han­na, lead singer of Biki­ni Kill, had spray paint­ed across his wall: “Kurt Smells Like Teen Spir­it.” Han­na meant that Cobain smelled like Teen Spir­it, a brand of deodor­ant worn by his girl­friend, but Cobain claimed not to know that until much lat­er. Instead, he saw irony and rebel­lion.

You can hear Cobain’s iso­lat­ed vocal track from “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” above.  The song was record­ed at Sound City stu­dios in Van Nuys, Cal­i­for­nia in May of 1991. The band report­ed­ly chose the sec­ond of three takes. The extreme dynam­ics of the performance–soft to loud, apa­thy to rage–were inspired by the music of the Pix­ies. To watch a video of Nir­vana try­ing out an ear­ly ver­sion of “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” before an audi­ence at Seat­tle’s OK Hotel a month before the song was record­ed, see Josh Jones’s Decem­ber post, “The First Live Per­for­mance of Nir­vana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it’ (1991).”

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988)

The Pix­ies “Acoustic Ses­sions”: See the Alt-Rock Stars Rehearse for the 2005 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val