Frank is sending some stooges to meet me when I get done tonight? Oh boy!

Not sure what this says about my current movie, but I've listened to two music albums today.  The first was Iggy Pop's first album with his original band, The Stooges.  The second was Frank Sinatra's most-infamous album, In The Wee Small Hours.  The former was decent rock songs made by a band who was very limited in talent but knew how to use what they had.  The latter was for a singer whose early success was in the past and had to figure out what to do next, probably not helped by a marriage to Ava Gardner.

[On the one hand, she's Ava Gardner.  On the other hand, having to marry Ava Gardner?  Call that a tie and just be grateful Frankie took one for the team.  Or be grateful to her, at least she quit being married after this.  Frank still had two more to go and hadn't even met Mia Farrow yet!]

Sinatra can certainly sing but there are places where he seems to be avoiding a genuine tune and others where he's amplifying his voice.  The band is almost entirely just background, just appearing briefly in places like "Ill Wind."  Iggy doesn't have either of those issues, his band is doing most of the work and he's having to use every technique he can think of to keep up as the frontman.

These are examples of talent and experience not meaning much.  The Stooges are a group of young adults throwing everything they have into the mix, Frankie knows songs and production but it doesn't add anything.  I've listened to enough Sinatra lately to really be disappointed in how it's all about the singer.  Obviously this is decades of hindsight, but it's like elevator music when it's not about Frankie.  At least Iggy and the boys have something to go on.  And frankly, I think they win as far as making decent pop songs.

Still, neither act are among my favorites and this is probably a good example of why.  I do like bands with talent and also that make full use of their songs.  As always, I cite Queen, each member being among the best in the world in their field, all capable of writing songs that are impressively catchy.  "Another One Bites the Dust" isn't remotely among my favorite Queen songs, but thinking of it just now as a random example (even as Frankie is still singing whichever tune this is) and the intro jumps out in my head, the bass-line is the main part, the drums keep it going, Brian didn't add much guitar but Freddie does a fantastic outward performance singing each verse in a different way that does what Iggy only wished he could do and Frankie never even tried.  I'm gonna have to listen to that song after I'm done with Sinatra and I don't even like it!

Another issue, I'm not sure how major it is, is that the albums came from a vastly different direction.  Full albums were still new when Frankie got into this so there is that much and to be fair, I haven't heard many others from the era, but still, it's just a bunch of love songs put together.  There's little difference in mood or production from one to the next, nothing the audience can hear anyway.  Most of the songs came from the 30s so they were already as old as Frankie's career.  That is another difference, back then it was said that the song was the important thing, the singer or band weren't.

Iggy and the Stooges came in as bands were expected to make up their own music.  Albums were still only a half-hour or so long but had already become works in-and-of themselves, not just collections of a couple hits and filler.  The previous decade had showed the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Simon & Garfunkel, none of whom sounded like the Stooges.  Hell, Iggy has always cited the Doors as his biggest influence and they didn't sound like the Stooges either.  Say what you will about rock'n'roll, it had already expanded the possibility and diversity in far less time than its predecessors.

For this debut, the Stooges didn't even have enough songs to be approved and had to crank out a few more in a week to get into the recording studio.  The new songs are weaker because the band hadn't learned how to make their limited talents work on them yet but the overall sound still comes through and I assume there are fans who prefer those songs over "1969" or "I Wanna Be Your Dog."  And yeah, there's plenty of reason to complain about the band as a bunch of talentless newcomers, but I think the same complaints could be made against Sinatra's band who weren't remotely talentless newcomers.

That's the thing about music, there's a level where ability isn't determined by knowledge, skill or experience.  In the long-term, it's better to have all that, but even there it's not required.