Iggy Pop's 1997 remix of "Search & Destroy"

[MK]

Just in case anyone's curious, the Rhino punk box set, No Thank!, has a much better mastering of this track.

I think a lot of compression's built into the mix, but when Iggy Pop supervised the 1997 reissue of Raw Power, he obviously asked for a LOT more at the mastering stage. He talks about this briefly in the liner notes - obviously, Sony's engineers tried talking him out of it, and he half-jokingly says a compromise was reached where they reduced things by "half a decibel."

There's still nasty distortion in numerous places but if you match the levels from both masterings (try reducing the Sony CD by 50%), the Rhino mastering is more open, not as smooshed sounding as the Sony CD.

The original mix of Raw Power is still the way to go. It's still a weak mix, but not as bad as people make it out to be. The really crappy mixes are on the first and last tracks. The first track is, of course, "Search & Destroy," and I believe this is the one track on the original release that was mixed by Iggy and Iggy alone.

With that in mind, I think Bowie got a bum rap - his mixes could be better, but they don't suck nearly as much as Iggy's on the opening cut. Despite the shitty compression, it's worth having the remix for this cut alone. Well, maybe the last one too, but it's only available on the 1997 CD, and man does it sound like crap.